Is Your Product Too Expensive? How to calculate price and cost.

[StormTrek]

Let's see, if crash avoidance is the next step, the following step must have something to do with shortening trip length while not compromising safety. Something like networked GPS navigation assist over 4G cellular wireless. Add RFID to license plates and readers at major intersections or traffic choke points. Change traffic lights on demand and then broadcast better routes to drivers.

[MarkProffitt]

@StormTrek Perhaps. Once safety is improved then the most under-satisfied desire will be next. That might be speed / travel time. It might be people who could never use a car before. Remember that cars that don't crash can be a lot cheaper so it could open up new markets. Without doing more analysis it is hard to say which it will be. It could be multiple.

[StormTrek]

@MarkProffitt I think a good description for the time when cars no longer crash might be better described as a period of punctuated equilibrium; the period of cataclysmic change where industry leaders go extinct. As you say, cars that don't crash are a lot cheaper. You could wind up shopping local car manufacturers like you shop local farmers.

[MarkProffitt]

@StormTrek Look at WikiSpeed. In 3 months they designed and built regular gasoline powered car that gets 100 miles per gallon and costs under $25,000. The used the Agile method (something I worked on before Predictive Innovation).

[k1ng401]

why must you take off and land only at airport? Why not land on normal, not busy road and drive into toilet stop?

[MarkProffitt]

@k1ng401 The road must be not busy when the pilot needs to land. It must be straight, smooth & long enough to land & take off. It can't have any wires over or near it. That excludes most roads near most cities in the USA. Remember that for something to be accepted as an innovation it must be so much better people are willing to change what they are doing. The total benefit and total cost must be better or people won't change. Do flying cars do that? Not for average drivers.

[MarkProffitt]

@k1ng401 A lot of Australia fits the undeveloped area I described in the video. So flying cars have a much better change of catching on in Australia than North America, Europe, or most of Asia.

[kokopelli314]

Seems like at the end, you're saying that flying cars should be made for the rich. Hmm.

[MarkProffitt]

@kokopelli314 When you say "should" there must be a purpose for the sentence to make logical sense. To be commercially one of the viable customer types is luxury buyers. The video also points out there would be utility in locations without roads, which would appeal to more price conscious buyers. And there are business uses that might be valuable enough to make it profitable (monetarily or for saving lives) to use a flying car.

[kokopelli314]

Sometimes the journey is more important than the destination.

[MarkProffitt]

@kokopelli314 Yes if the journey is more important than arriving at the destination, which is basically the description of luxury travel, a flying car offers value. The other instance is where you are doing some kind of work while travelling like surveying.

[Steve8207]

How would they be able to control traffic if everyone had flying cars? It would be complete chaos. Cars that drive themselves are being developed but the technology is still in its early phases.

[MarkProffitt]

@Steve8207 Automated land cars are very easy if you look at the entire system. Put beacon on the road then the cars can follow the path. This would only need a little upgrade to roads. The first motorized land vehicles, trains, used that exact method for 1 path. The next technological step is many roads. RFID markers in or next to the roads would allow cars to both drive themselves on marked roads and manual control on unmarked roads. Automated everywhere (continuous) is not the next step.