The Futures of Cars?

I was persuaded to take her indoors shopping for a small piece of perspex. This entailed a trip to Wickes. 'Nothing wrong with such a request', I hear you say but hang on a mo, I ain't at home for one thing as I'm staying in a place not to far from the center of London, in fact quite close to Heathrow Airport and because of this I had no idea where Wickes was. I thought I should play along as my idea that shopping shouldn't be carried out with cars might well be a mistaken one - yeah, right.

Horrendous. Millions of cars all over the place, roads leading here there and every where. Just dreadful but at least we found the bloody place. As luck would have it the 'small' piece of perpex fitted in the car even though it was around 8 foot long: one end over the windscreen held solidly in a shelf and the cavernous boot the rest: thank God it was a Doblo is all I can say. Oh, I should mention the rain as I got both feet absolutely soaking wet opening the tailgate.

On the way back we were immediately stuck in traffic where I had time to reflect on the 'Future of Cars' as I see it. This future also encompasses highstreet shops as I see not so rosy a future for them too.

Cars are not going to be for casual shopping eventually. This will either be imposed or will just not be viable or it will not be a reasonable thing to do. Many highstreet shops will no longer be there unless a town has many pedestrians. Why do I say this? It is grossly unfair even now for people to shop using their cars in such places as London and the surrounding areas as I just witnessed. I say unfair because this was close to the time when people were trying to get home so they should have been given priority. Shoppers can easily shop online and get stuff delivered so they do not need to be on the road. I really felt out of place and guilty for helping to clog the roads up when it wasn't at all necessary.

The future for cars? Eventually they will be automated entirely which will go some way to reducing congestion but as far as casual shopping trips are concerned this will die a death I reckon or will greatly reduce owing to shoppers shopping online. Highstreet shops will close in droves even more than now and depos will feed the public through online shopping only.

Summary

Use your car for essential reasons or even for recreational purposes but stop using them for shopping. Shop online and get the damn stuff delivered.

F*** shopping!

Re: The Futures of Cars?

Very much depends what we want, most items I agree we try to get on line but we want a rug for the bedroom so will head out in the car for it as looking on line P&P is astronomic and we want to actually feel the quality of the rug before we pay for it.

We also rely on our cars a lot for weekends away and work so I can't see them disappearing too soon.

Re: The Futures of Cars?

Well she sounds perfectly unreasonable !

I hope you sat in the car whilst she waded her way through ankle-deep puddles, wearing sandals, in torrential rain, to the shop and back, carrying the 8ft long piece of corrugated plastic roofing and umbrella.

Use a sat-nav or plan your 10 minute journey beforehand.

Re: The Futures of Cars?

If 'she' hadn't decided to buy half a roof I wouldn't have got my feet wet.

Re: The Futures of Cars?

Lols where have you been the past decade ?!!!

Online shopping took off years ago and high street shops have been decimated ever since. The Post Office recognised that its future was in jeopardy some 10 years ago, both with the coming age of email to kill the sending of physical letters, and with the coming age of online shopping. What they realised was that the online world would still require all those goods to be delivered so they focussed the business on parcel processing, creating depots and delivery lines across the country.

In some cases, the "High Streets" are slowly trying to recover but it will still be a long time before they fully return. The key problem as always is greed and money. Shops, retailers simply try to rip the public off by buying goods cheaply from overseas and selling them expensively here WITHOUT adding any significant value to the goods themselves. That was a luxury the big corps had for years, but one which has now been taken from them. It was a long time coming imo ! Now we can surf the web and for ANYTHING we want to buy, we can see how much it costs across hundreds of other sellers. We can pick and choose and have it delivered quickly. For any wouldbe retailer the onus is now on showing some ADDED VALUE and accepting that they can't rip people off any more (well except the really ignorant and stupid who still "trust" and don't research before they buy). They have to offer a service rather than just a product.

To my mind, many retailers are still struggling with this. They still try to go back to the old ways of ripping us off, and lean on advertising campaigns to try to bamboozle us and make us feel ok about being ripped off. They try to create monopolies and if not they group together in cartels to artificially create high prices. Some get caught and are punished by regulators, but doubtless much goes under the radar.

In the end "Cavet Emptor".

Research research research,

Re: The Futures of Cars?

MJK

Although for medical reasons i am not allowed to drive at the moment (awaiting ok from DVLA)
Yes cars are getting too intelligent. My new Nissan 4 trak Tekna has more electronic evices on it than you can shake a stick at. Automatic type pressure readout- self parking- 5 cameras - average fuel compsumption for the previous 7 days at different sppeds- auto breaks if one does not stop in time- reads road speed sign and displays in dash -white line crossover warning- tiredness warning ant that is only about 2 % . It can even pick up travel arrangements from the home computer.

It is mind blowing to say the least , so we are virtually on the brink of cars drivingthemselves

Re: The Futures of Cars?

Wellies may be your answer but not so good for driving in

Re: The Futures of Cars?

Well, I could see this coming a long time ago and this latest trip has proved me right. It took a trip like this on the edge of London to really drive the point home. The point I'm trying to make now though is that the road should be left to the delivery drivers, people travelling back and forth to work or emergency service drivers, with the rest of us keeping out of way as much as possible.

Re: The Futures of Cars?

I do hope that reasonably priced self-driving cars come in before I decide to give up driving. Our lives would be so much poorer without a car.

Re: The Futures of Cars?

Is a piece of perspex essential shopping Mark couldn't you have had it delivered