Never Stop Driving #105: Victory Tower

Halfway through 2024, I’m shocked and awed by the bursting of the autonomous vehicle bubble. The idea that driving could be banned in exchange for robot-driven taxis was floated in 2015 by Elon Musk, and longtime auto executive and car expert Bob Lutz quickly agreed. For those of us who get great pleasure from driving a good car on a good road, things looked very bleak. The founder of a company that made hardware for autonomous vehicles even went so far as to politely inform Hagerty CEO McKeel Hagerty, “I’m really sorry, but I’m going to bankrupt your company.”

After listening to the 1981 Rush song thousands of times Barchetta Redwhich was imagined in this YouTube video, I was well aware of a future vision where cars would be banned. As much as I loved driving and cars, I could also see the potential benefits of robot drivers, namely fewer fatal accidents and potentially less traffic jams. I also know that you can’t stop technology, although I wish my kids didn’t have smartphones.

Throughout its 40-year history, Hagerty has always encouraged a love of cars, and we knew we were perfectly positioned to take up the torch. Cars and driving are important. Around 2016, McKeel and Soon Hagerty reaffirmed the company’s goal: Save driving and car culture for future generations. Boom! This is not to say that we are advocating the foolish mission of stopping new technologies. On the contrary, we would be at the forefront of ensuring that car enthusiasts who want to drive can still do so.

So began our regular drumbeat celebrating cars, driving and the people who love them. To illustrate the positive benefits cars bring to people’s lives, we launched a video series called “Why I Drive.” The May/June 2018 issue of Hagerty Drivers Club The magazine – get future issues by subscribing here – explored possible future audiovisual scenarios and suggested that tech hype could be just that: hype. McKeel and I traveled the country, holding seminars with industry leaders to get a feel for the technology and advocate for the preservation of driving. To highlight our position and philosophies, we even wrote a book, Never Stop Driving, Better Life Behind the Wheeland later added an audio version. The reviews have been overwhelmingly positive, so read or listen to it this summer.

This newsletter and the Never Stop Driving podcast are also part of our strategy to continually advocate for drivers. We are not alone in our campaign; writer and philosopher Matt Crawford published a book in 2020 called Why we drive: towards an open road philosophy.

Meanwhile, the auto industry has gotten into AVs. Ford and VW funded Argo AI. GM invested billions in Cruise. Apple is reportedly working on a self-driving car. Uber built an autonomous unit. Google/Waymo was way ahead of everyone else, and my heart broke when the powerhouse unveiled a Playskool-like autonomous pod.

The tide has definitely changed, the audiovisual hype machine briefly stopped when an Uber prototype struck and killed a pedestrian in 2018, a tragedy that highlighted a major question: In an accident, who is responsible? The driver or the car? Last year we learned that in this case it was the driver. Over the past two years, Argo AI shut down, GM slowed its investment in Cruise, and Musk’s repeated promises that true autonomous driving (known as Level 5) was months away were going to and came. And he came and went.

Today, the automotive industry is once again turning its attention to cars that provoke emotions in drivers, passengers and spectators. Last fall, Chevrolet changed its slogan from “Find New Roads” to “Let’s Drive Together,” which, I point out with pride, is awfully close to Hagerty’s “Let’s Drive Together.” Toyota produced an animated series called Handlewhere the villain makes self-driving cars and declares that the era of autonomous driving is over. Ford CEO Jim Farley said Ford would also preserve the art of driving on and off-road. Sound familiar?

Plus, sports car racing and Formula 1 have never been richer in automaker dollars and fans. It’s as if the world has been jolted into embracing something—driving—that was taken for granted until it was threatened. And let’s not ignore the reality: autonomous technology has proven far more difficult and expensive to develop than expected. It turns out that humans and robots don’t mix, at least so far.

Technology will of course continue to advance, and we can expect driver assistance systems that offer more and more help behind the wheel. Waymo now operates driverless fleets in San Francisco and Phoenix, and the technology will increasingly be deployed in congested urban areas. But I haven’t heard of anyone who thinks driving will be banned in our lifetime. Phew.

This is my last newsletter before a two-week summer vacation. I’m heading east to visit family in Vermont and upstate New York. I’ll be looking for winding roads with lush trees, perfect for my 1990 Miata. I hope you enjoy your time behind the wheel as well, and feel the same satisfaction as more and more people recognize what we already knew: driving matters.

There will be plenty of new Hagerty content to keep you informed and entertained while I’m gone. Bookmark hagerty.com/media and our YouTube channel, and of course, we’re on social media too!

See you in July!

Larry

PS: Your feedback and comments are welcome.

Please share this newsletter with your car-obsessed friends and encourage them to sign up for the free weekly email. The easy-to-fill out form is here . And if you’d like to support Hagerty Media’s efforts, consider joining the Hagerty Drivers Club.