RethinkX

RethinkX is a think tank founded by Tony Seba and James Arbib that focuses on identifying disruptive innovations that could soon impact society.

Rethinking Transportation 2020–2030

"Rethinking Transportation", published in 2017, builds on the ideas described in two of Seba's previously published books. The thesis of "Rethinking Transportation" is that, by 2030, a convergence of exponentially-improving factors will make it cheaper for urban and suburban dwellers to subscribe to Transportation as a Service (TaaS), using self-driving electric cars, than to own their own car. The converging factors cited in the book include:

The falling cost of solar-generated electricity

The falling cost of battery storage

The falling cost of electric vehicles (including purchase price and lifetime operating costs)

The rising autonomy of self-driving vehicles

RethinkX's predictions regarding TaaS have led to debate. Critics generally agreed that the transition to TaaS would happen, but that it would take longer and/or be less complete than RethinkX predicted, for reasons that were:

Economic: Tammy Klein, Founder & CEO of Transport Energy Strategies, stated that RethinkX's TaaS predictions lack "a fundamental understanding of the oil/refining industry, future fuel demand and where that demand would be coming from."

Political: Jeff Siegel, in Energy and Capital—"Practical investment analysis in the new energy economy"—stated that "continued advances in technology will ultimately make renewable energy the most rational choice for electricity generation and, in many cases, transportation" but that "Seba said it's just a matter of policy makers understanding this and making regulations appropriately. And there's the major speed bump…The truth is, you can't rely on policy makers for anything. In fact, I would argue that because of special interests running our government and the inability for most politicians to base their decisions on anything beyond what is in their best interests (not the American people), the transition to a more economically sustainable energy economy will be slower than it should be."

Emotional: Kyle Ashdown, writing for CarThrottle—"The internet's largest community for car enthusiasts"—stated that "Owning a car has thus far been an immortal component of the American Dream, and I don't see people being very willing to give up the emotional attachment to their own cars. People don't make decisions purely based on economic efficiency."

Techno-utopian: Automotive technology trend expert Derek Kaufman described RethinkX's view as a "utopian future," and Justin Rowlatt, then Chief Environment Correspondent at the BBC, wrote that "we are a long way from this utopia."

"Rethinking Transportation 2020–2030" and its precursors (Solar Trillions and Clean Energy Disruption) made specific predictions for the future prices of solar energy, lithium-ion batteries, electric vehicles, and other items, for each year between their respective dates of publication and 2035.

2021: The Great Stranding

This report can be seen as an addendum to 2017's Rethinking Transportation 2020–2030 and 2020's Rethinking Energy 2020-2030. It claims to have identified a flaw in the energy industry's method of calculating the Levelized Cost Of Energy (LCOE) for traditional generation modes such as coal, nuclear and gas, in that their analysis assumes that the capacity factor is constant, and claims that this flaw has caused systematic overinvestment in the world's conventional energy sources while causing systematic underinvestment in alternative energy sources such as solar+battery.