Persuasive Essay On Autonomous Vehicles

Transportation is an issue the world struggles to resolve, whether it regards the environmental impacts it yields or efficiency and time in people's lives. As society's needs changes, so do the desires for changes in transportation. Companies have started and publicly released electric cars that feature auto pilot features, such as the Tesla Model S. From a surface level, these technologies shred off one responsibility from divers. From mechanical trains to autonomous vehicles, advances in transportation result in significant positive consequences. Advances in transportation should be advocated for as they have environmental benefits in terms of alternative fuel sources and promote long term economic growth through productive manufacturing.

The morality behind fully autonomous vehicles is argued because of the vast number of families it can hurt. A scenario, such as this, is commonly known as the process of creative destruction, in which jobs are destroyed, but returns more productive jobs and spurs economic growth. This economic principle is one of the underlying reasons for supporting autonomous vehicles. This destruction encourages those who lose their jobs to seek jobs that are in more demand for society. Another argument against technological advances in this field is that electric vehicles take much longer to charge as opposed to gasoline cars. Planes claims that electric vehicles can take more than a couple of hours, on average, to fully charge an empty battery. He argues that this charging is not practical since electric vehicles can take up to an hour to charge a mere 60 miles, as opposed to gasoline cars which can refuel gallons of oil in a matter of minutes. This pivot, however, is debunked by the fact that driving more than 200 miles with any vehicle is unlikely and unideal. Planes points out the average mile consumption for the U.S. consumer is roughly 40 miles (Planes). Furthermore, he mentions that less than 10% of the cars in the U.S. travel more than 100 miles. To add on, the research involved in such changes mentioned are far too costly. Berman states that the demand for electric vehicles, for example, is not significant enough (Berman). This also implies that companies investing into these kinds of technologies may suffer serious losses due to the lack of demand and high production costs, both in manufacturing and research. Despite the little demand for electric vehicles, the argument does not account for the positive effects electric vehicles, among other technologies,