Driving My Life Away

(AP photo)

Now I don’t know if Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas is right when he argues that in the future, only the rich will own cars — and even those will be driven by computers. The rest of us he thinks, according to HuffPo, “will be driven by cars that are either a public utility or part of a privately-owned fleet that users subscribe to use.”

Maybe Jonas is right — but I hope not. Getting into your own car and driving it where you damn well please is a liberty, not a luxury. And that freedom of movement is something Americans have enjoyed since horse & buggy days. I don’t mind having computers making us safer drivers, or helping traffic to flow more freely. But a car is a mobile extension of our homes, of ourselves, and “mega-fleets of public vehicles” is a potential tool of tyranny.

Or maybe I’m just hopelessly old-fashioned.

That aside, part of Jonas’s analysis requires a second look:

Over the next decade, rich people will likely swap out the cars they drive for cars that drive themselves. Already, Tesla is planning to roll out a version of its Model S sedan that has limited autopilot features sometime this summer. The latest version of the car, announced on Wednesday, starts at $67,500 after a Federal Tax Credit.

Middle class tax dollars paying to make it more affordable for the rich to enjoy being semi-chauffeured around by electric cars — I’m telling you, the fix is in.