Question: What does the self-driving car mean for car cultures?
The answer isn’t a simple one.
Car cultures are interesting things. They’re incredibly varied in the subjects of their interest, while being exceptionally similar at the same time. They arise for a variety of reasons: interest in particular makes, models, manufacturers, styles of vehicle, and even types and styles of modifications. One thing that they all have in common, though, is that they all develop because of a love or passion for the automobile.
Automobile enthusiasts—”car guys”—are a passionate group. Whether this passion is for the mechanical, aesthetic, or experiential, every car guy has their reason or their “thing”.
Enter the self-driving car
Over the last 20 especially, cars have become increasingly more technological; they’ve become marvels of invention and engineering with more efficient engines, alternate fuels, more complicated computer and entertainment systems, and even becoming wifi hotspots on wheels. Their design, competitive advantages, and uniqueness, however, are becoming less defining factors of the car and more an “added bonus”. They’ve evolved.
The self-driving car is just the next step in the evolution of the car.
The car and the car guy
At the same time that cars have become less unique and individualistic, the car guy has be come more so, evolving with the car, adapting to new technologies and new ways and reasons for being passionate about their vehicles.
A new generation of car guy has been born.
This new generation of enthusiast is more interested in the technologies and capabilities of their vehicles rather than horsepower and torque figures. But what about the “traditional” car guy? What will happen to them?
The short answer: nothing.
The long answer: as new generations of car enthusiasts grow up, they will enjoy and collect their own varieties of cars, which has always been the case. This is why car culture is so interesting, its eclectic-ness. Car cultures are passionate. Though their individual passions vary, they’re based in nostalgia, self-identification or identity, and novelty. This fact will not change, at least not anytime soon. They will evolve and adapt, just like their cars do.