Will Autos go the way of Horses
Horses were a basic, fundamental and universally accepted form of transportation and commerce in 1900 in most contextually moden countries and societies. One hundred (and change) years later, horses in most of those societies are either serving as forms of entertainment and sport, or as sources of transportation in a few isolated businesses and pastimes. A century ago, horses were the cheap and most common form of transportation for the common man. Now, they are expensive luxuries most often serving as entertainment for the wealthy.
With the passing of that century, the automobile has replaced the horse as the most commonly accepted form of basic transportation. Along with that shift, in the same manner that sports based upon horses were extremely common in the past, a whole family of automobile based motor sports have risen in popularity. At their inception, the cars used in those sports were either identical or quite similar to the average street driven models. As these forms of motor sport became more refined, the relevance of the competitive vehicles moved further and further away from the common car. In todays' sports, the NHRA 'Funny Car' and the NASCAR "Sprint Cup Car" have four wheels, but beyond that the resemblance to a car that can be purchased from the manufacturer is remote at best.
The common automobile is today under a great deal of scrutiny regarding its' future. Fuel and energy sources, safety, global warming, affordability, mass transit to name a few are all in one manner or another questoning whether the freedom of the form of personal transportation we know generically as the automobile is the best solution to our transportation needs. It seems almost certain that as the years starting with a "2" instead of a "1" roll on, the universal application of the automobile as that solution will erode and diminish. From as simple an idea as car-pooling to the radical alternatives of trains, subways (and God forbid - walking?) - increased energy costs and associated fossil fuel scarcity will result in a reduction in the default solution of personal transportation in the form we currently recognize as the car.
History can be used to create context for the future. The analogy of the horse and the mass migration to the car in the 1900's should serve as a data point with which to at a minimum momentarily ponder what this initial century of our new millennium might bring. Will cars come to only exist as a luxury for sport and pleasure of the wealthy, like the horse has become today? Will cars become the smelly artifacts of how people used to travel as we move forward into the future of quiet, clean and smart energy consuming forms of transportation?
Logically, it is possible to envision that future as one of the contenders.
