EVs are a transitionary species. A short evolutionary phase between the gas-burning car and the thing that's actually coming. Most people don't see this yet because they're still emotionally attached to the steering wheel — but the steering wheel is already over. It just hasn't been buried.
Tesla's original 2006 masterplan was never about replacing fuel tanks with batteries. Elon wrote it down — publicly, in a blog post nobody read carefully enough — that the goal was to eliminate human drivers entirely. Each generation of car would fund the next, cheaper one, all the way down to the final form: a robocar. No driver. No ownership. No license. Just a service. The cars you bought along the way were R&D subsidies wearing a bumper.
Right now, in San Francisco, you can already get into a fully self-driving car and let it take you across the city. This isn't theoretical. It isn't even early. It's been working at scale for years. The only remaining variables are rate of expansion, manufacturing throughput, and how fast the regulatory layer rolls over. The endpoint is already decided.
When the robocar service goes mainstream, the math flips overnight. Today, normies have accepted that "having a car" costs $30-60k upfront or $500-1,000 a month plus insurance. That's the floor. That's "normal." Anything more is luxury, anything less is poverty. But the moment transportation costs $0 upfront, $0 insurance, and a few credits per ride, the entire frame inverts. The thing you call "normal" today becomes the new luxury. Owning a car becomes what owning a horse is now: a niche hobby for people with land, staff, and disposable wealth.
Everyone alive today learned to drive because there was no alternative. In 1910, everyone knew how to ride a horse for the same reason. Within two generations the skill was gone. You don't see horses on highways anymore. You won't see human-driven cars on highways either — not in your son's adulthood. Maybe 10-20% of his generation, mostly rural, will ever sit behind a wheel. The rest will treat manual driving the way you treat blacksmithing.
The personal arc writes itself. One day you're driving your fifteen-year-old Tesla and noticing more robocars on the road than human-driven ones. Then you notice you're the only one on your block still driving manually. Then you realize the network cars are constantly updated — newer safety, smarter routing, lower per-mile cost — and yours is not. Yours is unsafe. Yours is expensive to insure. Yours requires a parking spot. Yours is, frankly, embarrassing. So one day you sell it. You buy a family pod subscription. You convert the garage into a music studio. You're sixty. You're on basic income anyway. You have more amero credits left over for the AI-generated entertainment.
Yes, amero. The dollar already collapsed. Government digital currency replaced it. Every transaction is logged, every ride is logged, every credit of your basic income is conditional on continued compliance with whatever the social score algorithm has decided this quarter. Most people don't notice because the interface is friendly and the music is good. The boot is wearing a smiley-face emoji.
And then, eventually, the last mile. A robocar shows up at your house. You didn't book it. The app didn't notify you. But you know what it's for. The neighbors smile politely from their windows. You hug whoever is left. You walk to the curb. You close the door behind you. The car pulls away. Your favorite playlist starts. The cabin temperature drops. The gas hisses through the vents. You don't panic, because you've been told for years that this is the dignified, sustainable, climate-conscious way to go. You drift off to a song the algorithm picked specifically for this moment.
The car arrives at the facility. Robots open the door. Robots harvest the organs. Robots dispose of the rest. Your family receives a notification: 1,000 amero credits deposited, plus a digital certificate they can frame on the living room wall. The certificate confirms that you "did the right thing." That you "made the responsible choice." That you "contributed to the next generation." Your kids show it to their friends at dinner parties. The friends nod respectfully. Some are quietly jealous. Their parents haven't been called yet.
This is the endpoint of the convenience curve. Each step felt like progress. Each step removed friction. Each step also removed something — first the steering wheel, then the license, then the car, then the agency, then the dollar, then the body. By the time you reach the last step, the steps before it have already conditioned everyone to consent to it. The system never had to force anyone. It just kept making the easier option the only option, and the only option the moral one.
You don't get rolled over by a tank. You get gently rocked to sleep by a Spotify playlist. Both end the same way. Only one comes with a certificate for the relatives.