I think the biggest market for cars has now become China. India will probably reach the top-5 in the next 10-20 years. Looking forward to the next 30-50 years the biggest demographic increases (meaning future car buyers) will come from places like Africa and South and SE-Asia. It would be myopic to disregard those places as having people who would never afford cars. To continue with your example, almost all of Sub-Saharan Africa passed from having no phone at all to having cell phones (because it was too expensive to install land-lines).
I'm not saying that China and India will never have self-driving cars. There's obviously tremendous profits to be made in bringing cars to those markets.
My point is that a self-driving car doesn't have to be ready for those markets to be launchable as an excellent and profitable product. The iPhone very successfully launched in only select markets—and then made even more money after expanding to China. It'll probably be similar with self-driving cars.
Why exactly do you think a self-driving car has to be globally deployable before launching in the US?
> Why exactly do you think a self-driving car has to be globally deployable before launching in the US?
I think it can launch in the US all-right, but I don't think it will easily export to the other markets because of the above reasons. In iPhone's case that was easily fixable by people in said markets reaching middle-class status, but in case of self-driving vehicles I don't see that happening because one would have to change very ingrained cultural traits (basically you'd have to re-teach most than half to three-quarters of the world on how to drive sanely, good luck with that).
I'd say that for such a capital-intensive market like the car industry only relying on the US and some select Western European markets (+ Japan and South Korea) won't be profitable on the long term, hence my pessimism that self-driving cars will conquer the world.
you'd have to re-teach most than half to three-quarters of the world on how to drive sanely, good luck with that).
This is already happening in the wealthier parts of the world.
I don't think current self-driving cars will work very well in India. But I think they'd work just fine in the rich parts of Pune, to name one area I know well. That's because driving norms in this region are already becoming quite sane. From what I've seen the same is true in the wealthier parts of Mumbai. Lane discipline isn't quite as good as in the US, but I'm perfectly comfortable driving a two wheeler on these roads.
(I'd be a lot more scared driving in Delhi.)
I question whether "sane" driving is actually cultural. Is it possible that "sane driving" is actually just the natural human reaction to good roads and homogeneous vehicles capable of driving at similar speeds (as opposed to a mix of cars, auto rickshaws, pedal rickshaws, 3 wheeled mini trucks, etc)?
> I question whether "sane" driving is actually cultural. Is it possible that "sane driving" is actually just the natural human reaction to good roads and homogeneous vehicles capable of driving at similar speeds (as opposed to a mix of cars, auto rickshaws, pedal rickshaws, 3 wheeled mini trucks, etc)?
The difference in driving styles from Switzerland to its neighbor Italy is quite big, at least from my own experience as a tourist of both countries as a driver and as a pedestrian. The roads in Switzerland are a little better, I can agree with that, but the vehicles present on the roads of both countries are from the same class (no rickshaws and I don't think I've seen 3 wheeled mini trucks in Italy, though AFAIK they used to be quite popular in there not that long ago).
