Old Man Lutz Gives Dealerships 20 Years to Live, Doubles Down on Driving Dystopia

Longtime auto executive Bob Lutz has always been an incredibly outspoken individual. His years of hard work have given him an insight into the industry that few possess, and he’s only become more willing to share that information as he ages. Like the industrious caterpillar, his ceaseless labor has allowed him to metamorphose into what is arguably his perfect form near the end of his lifecycle — a candid automotive butterfly.

We love hearing anything has to say, as his insight borders on the surreal, but with more than enough truth to come to pass. Last year, he divined a future where the car as we know it is destroyed by governmental regulation and advanced technologies. The dystopian plot seemed impossible upon a cursory glance, but the deeper you drive, the more plausible it begins to seem.

Lutz refocused this week at the SAE International WCX World Congress Experience in Detroit, saying the traditional dealer model will be among the first things to go in the brave new world of mobility. He called car dealerships an “endangered species,” suggesting to the crowd that it had “another 20 to 25 years before it’s all over.”

“We’re in a historic transitional phase in the automobile business,” he said. “In order for the automobile to preserve its surface function, it’s simply going to have to evolve. We all know this end state is coming. It has to come.”

According to Automotive News, Lutz believes engineering and design will still be important in the short term. But ultimately, automakers will be required to ready themselves for future in which they either turn into fleet providers or go out of business. Once again, Lutz predicted a world where vanilla self-driving vehicles replace traditional cars — moving through traffic swiftly without any risk of collision.

“Are they going to be fun? Absolutely not,”Lutz said. “There will be no joy in sitting in an autonomous vehicle … But it’s going to be enormously efficient.”

He expects ownership to decline to a negligible level. Instead, individuals will have access to ride-hailing services that pick them up and drop them off wherever they please. “When you send [children] off to college, you won’t send them with a car, you’ll send them with a subscription to a driverless vehicle service that they can use at their leisure,” he mused.

We’ve poked holes in this argument before. While it’s certainly possible, the timeline Lutz presents seems extremely short. Autonomous development may be advancing rapidly, but recent events show there are plenty of hurdles yet to cross. Tesla’s Autopilot continues to garner controversy and Uber’s fatal collision with a pedestrian in Arizona proved how catastrophic a technical mishap can be.

There’s also that matter of efficiency. Urbanites would likely be well served by phone-based fleet access, but the situation becomes much trickier as things become rural. In addition to having to wait much longer for vehicles to arrive, having empty vehicles mill about in underpopulated areas wouldn’t be great for the environment. Autonomous cars will still expend energy and fleets will rack up miles much more quickly than personal vehicles that spend the majority of their time waiting patiently in a garage. We’re not sure how economical it is to digitally hail a self-driving car that has to make an extended journey every time it needs to pick someone up outside the city limits.

However, we like that Lutz is one of the few people with industry ties who’s openly considering the long game. For the most part, the government remains singularly fixated on the lives autonomous technology could save, while automakers focus on boasting about their technological achievements and the possibility of new revenue streams — like data acquisition and in-car marketing.

We don’t know if the future will play out exactly as Lutz has described. Still, there’s reason to give it serious consideration. While ownership rates went up slightly in 2017, leasing has been on the rise for years and many automakers have started implementing entirely new subscription services. Autonomous vehicles have also become a priority for most automakers, but even those that aren’t working feverishly on a self-driving car are still attempting to normalize semi-autonomous hardware that does at least some of the work for you.

Meanwhile, tech companies like Waymo and ride-hailing services like Uber are desperate to advance the technology for their own purposes. And all of this is being done without much in the way of regulatory oversight. The government appears to want the technology implemented just as badly as automakers and tech firms. If it continues with its hands-off approach, the market is likely to become flooded with autonomous cars while maintaining room for traditional vehicles.

But, if the government finds this new mobility to be legally incompatible with clumsy, self-driven cars and starts legislating their demise, we’ll know Lutz was right all along.

[Image: General Motors, via pontiacunderground/ Flickr ( CC BY-ND 2.0)]