The end of cars - VPRO documentary - 2014
167Self-driving cars or the end of cars? This documentary is about the future of our transportation means. Cars will become less prominent. Bill Ford of Ford Motor company claims that in ten years’ time the company will sell mobility, not cars. Which mobility awaits us in the future? The first spectacular signs are manifesting themselves. Big Data is making an impact in transportation too. Will data lead the way in the decline of the car? Are cars with artificial intelligence our future? Can we trust a car with AI? With: Elon Musk, Carlo van de Weijer, and David Frigstad.
Original title: Bye bye car
The car is less popular among young people. How will the new generation move in the future?
In 2004 something went wrong. For the first time in decades in the US, there was a decline in car purchases. But even more remarkable was: that happened before the big credit crash! What happened? the younger generation especially does not buy cars anymore and drives less and less kilometers. Cars are polluting, expensive in use and maintenance, and they stand for 90% of the time in the way without being used! And above all: driving interrupts your mobile phone communications so inconveniently! Are we slowly saying goodbye to a status symbol? Backlight goes on research: how will the new generation solve "mobility problems"?
Bill Ford, the grandson of the T-Ford inventor, and Ford Motor Company's chairman, announced last year at a mobile communications conference: "We are no longer in the car of the future, but rather on everything that has to do with integrated transport networks'. Whether the car manufacturers of this world survive the transition can be questioned. After all, it was not the radio people who invented the TV. So it's only the question of whether automakers feel the new social movement soon enough. Youth in 2014 put the issue in a much wider social context: how do we, as an individual and as a society, really want to organize mobility and transport in the future?
Both in the Netherlands and in America, Backlight is going to guide director Martijn Kieft towards users, researchers, engineers and experts. What does smart mobility look like? What are the prospects for the self-propelled car? What role do technological and demographic and socioeconomic developments play? What is the future for the tax industry? In the US, where a report of The End of the Driving Boom, 1946-2004, was published, the Google car is being filmed, visited by the new Uber taxi service and at the Silicon Valley Research Division of Nissan, where the self-propelled car is being developed. How to move in cities in the future via an app, we hear from RideAmigos in Los Angeles and two eighties babies in San Francisco show their automobile existence. Tesla CEO Elon Musk tells about how the computer takes over the car and how it looks at the developments around the self-propelled car. For the Netherlands, head smart mobility at TU Eindhoven Carlo van de Weijer is our hands-free guide, and here too, pioneers show us how to provide social mobility with Snappcar for your mobility needs.
We slowly go from a world in which WE are no longer wearing the devices and having the vehicles to a time when hi-tech is going to carry us: connected, genetically engineered, optimally matched, extremely efficient, self-propelled and maybe that do think for us?
Originally broadcasted by VPRO in 2014.
© VPRO Backlight February 2014
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Credits:
Directed by: Martijn Kieft
Research: William de Bruijn
Production: Jenny Borger
Editors in chief: Henneke Hagen & Frank Wiering
English, French and Spanish subtitles: Ericsson.
French and Spanish subtitles are co-funded by European Union.