Last-Mile Deflation Part 2: Autonomy And Free Distribution

Too Long; Didn't Read

The decline in ecommerce delivery prices outlined in Part 1 of this post, <a href="https://hackernoon.com/retail-ownership-and-winning-the-last-mile-86ef4eb1a7e7">Retail, Ownership, and Deflation in the Last Mile</a>, has been driven mostly by business model innovation (UPS/FedEx, subscriptions, marketplaces) rather than a change in the underlying cost of transportation. But that may change soon. Just car ownership grew from a few million (predominantly wealthy) households in 1917 to mass adoption over the 20th century, the <a href="http://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/tesla-stock-price-number-on-the-road-is-about-to-skyrocket-2017-9-1002582859">few hundred thousand electric vehicles</a> of 2017 with partial autonomy capabilities are multiplying. This could produce a second transportation revolution, no less dramatic in scale than the one that took place a century ago. And just as the advent of the automobile brought massive, unpredictable changes in both consumer behavior and retail geography, so too will autonomous vehicles.