Ten years down the road, Apple may be better known for its cars than its phones. It has been testing driverless cars for years. So is Google. In California, Google’s driverless cars have notched up over 100,000 miles in testing in moderate traffic on the state’s freeways with few accidents.
Meanwhile, Tesla has begun taking pre-orders for its Model 3 electric car. The response has been overwhelming: nearly 2,00,000 pre-bookings poured in within the first 24 hours at a deposit of $1,000 per car (priced at $35,000), putting over $200 million in Tesla’s bank account.
With a battery range of 344 km per charge, the Tesla may need to be recharged by most people no more than once a week. Tesla founder Elon Musk tweeted after receiving a flood of pre-orders in the first 24 hours: “Model 3 orders at 180,000 in 24 hours. Selling price w/avg option mix prob $42k, so $7.5B in a day. Future of electric cars looking bright!”
Within another two hours, the orders had climbed to 2,32,000, putting $232 million in the bank. At $42,000 per fully loaded car, Musk expects to collect over $8 billion in revenue on just these pre-orders when the cars are delivered.
The Tesla M3 will be ready for delivery in 18 months. Indian enthusiasts like VVS Mani, creator of India’s first electric car, the Reva (now owned by Mahindra), were among the early bookers.
Plenty of other high-profile Indians are excited. Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma tweeted that he wants to order a red Tesla. Serial entrepreneur Mahesh Murthy booked a Tesla on day one. Amit Bhawani of PhoneRadarBlog is another early booker.
According to a report in Business Standard, the move towards electric cars is rapidly gathering momentum: “In India, there is an increased push for electric vehicles. The governments of Delhi and Karnataka have already eliminated all local taxes on electric vehicles. Further, under the National Electric Mobility Mission plan, the central government is planning to offer subsidies on electric vehicles with a target of having seven million electric and hybrid vehicles in India by 2020. The government has also created a working group under transport minister Nitin Gadkari which is evaluating the possibility of switching entirely to electric vehicles by 2030.”
So is the future of the car likely to be radically different? Not quite – and not in India. Tesla needs charging stations. India has very few. Once the infrastructure of charging stations is in place, electric cars, which cause negligible pollution, will gradually replace petrol and diesel cars.
Driverless cars are even further in the future. But both Apple and Google are confident that their prototypes will be in commercial use in selected areas in the next few years.
Uber meanwhile says the days of two-car ownership are over. It’s moving towards an era when owning even one car will be an oddity. Uber taxis will be so ubiquitous, easy to call and inexpensive to ride that car ownership will dwindle.
It’s tough to tell the future. Robots, predicted 10 years ago to take over our lives, are still largely factory-bound. Electric cars will certainly replace petrol and diesel cars over the next 20 years. But to predict a driverless future is hazardous.
What is certain is this: just as General Motors, Ford and Toyota dominated cars in the twentieth century, Tesla, Apple and Google will be the brands increasingly seen on the cars we drive – and those that drive themselves.
Columnist
Minhaz Merchant is the biographer of Rajiv Gandhi and Aditya Birla and author of The New Clash of Civilizations (Rupa, 2014). He is founder of Sterling Newspapers Pvt. Ltd. which was acquired by the Indian Express group
