Nowadays things change so fast that today’s change is old hat by tomorrow. This is especially true in the Motor Industry.

At least we know that the three constants – Death, Taxes and CHANGE! – remain unchanged!

I thought I’d share a few other interesting and astonishing statements and predictions that appeared in a LinkedIn article recently with you:

Uber is just a software tool. They don't own any cars, yet they are now the biggest taxi company in the world.

Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don't own any properties.

Artificial Intelligence: Computers become exponentially better in understanding the world. This year, a computer beat the best Go player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected.

In the US, young lawyers already don't get jobs. Because of IBM Watson, you can get legal advice (for more or less basic stuff) within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans. The gurus expect that there will be up to 90% fewer lawyers in the future and that only specialists will remain.

IBM Watson already helps nurses in diagnosing cancer four times more accurately than human nurses.

Facebook has pattern recognition software that can recognise faces better than humans.

In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans.

Autonomous cars: In 2018, the first self-driving cars will become available for public use.

Experts believe that around 2020, the entire industry will be revolutionised. You will call a car with your phone, it will show up at your location and drive you to your destination. You will not need to park it, you only pay for the distance travelled and you can be productive while driving. Our kids could never get a driver's license and could not even own a car.

It will change the cities, because we will need 90 to 95% fewer cars for that. We can transform former parking spaces into parks.

1.2 Million people die each year in car accidents worldwide: We now have one accident every 100,000 km. It is believed that, with autonomous driving, this figure will drop to one accident in 10 million km – saving a million lives each year.

Traditional car companies try the evolutionary approach and just build better cars, while tech companies, such as Tesla, Apple and Google, will follow the revolutionary approach and build computers on wheels.

Real estate will change. Because if you can work while you commute, people will move further away to live in a more beautiful neighbourhood.

Electric cars will become mainstream in about 2020. Cities will be less noisy because all new cars will run on electricity. Electricity will become incredibly cheap and clean: solar production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but you can now see the burgeoning impact.

Last year, more solar energy was installed worldwide than fossil energy. Energy companies are desperately trying to limit access to the grid to prevent competition from home solar installations, but that can't last. Technology will take care of that strategy.

With cheap electricity comes cheap and abundant water. Desalination of salt water now only needs 2 kWh per cubic meter (@ 0.25 cents).

We live in interesting times!

For other interesting developments outside the motor industry – read the full article here