No one can predict the future! However, we observe things and like to soothsay; here are some things I've noticed and how they may affect our future.

Elon Musk

He started as one of the Pay Pall founders, and made a fortune when it sold. He is now leader of a Tesla, SpaceX and the Boreing Company. Each of them is challenging the status quo with grand plans, bold business ventures, and sound innovation.

Tesla

The Tesla story has many pieces, but I'll focus on one that seems like it will break the back of big oil and many traditional auto manufacturers. In 2018, China invited Tesla to build a factory, without a Chinese partner, which gives Tesla a unique position in the Chinese economy. All other foreign companies with factories in China must be half owned by a Chineese company. Why did they facvor Tesla in that way? Obviously, they want Tesla to sell cars in China. 

In fact, China has the worst pollution in the wold, and is doing more to eliminate pollution than any other country. In fact, China made solar panels so inexpensive, they are replacing coal plants around the world, because solar generated electricity is less expensive. There is much more to this story, but it isn't the point of this post. I mention it to show China's commitment to green energy.

China started building a the Shanghai Tesla Giga-factory in January 2019, one of the biggest buildings in the world, 1 M square meters (10 M sq ft). At the beginning of June 2019 the floors, walls and roof are almost complete. Tesla has announced they expect some production of cars by the end of 2019. Note that the twin towers (destroyed on 9/11) had about 10 M sq ft and took almost four years to build. In general China builds things incredibly fast, but if they had higher priorities than the Tesla Giga-factory, they may have focused on other projects and let the Tesla factory build go slower.

How can the Tesla factory best help China? Self driving electric taxis.

Tesla has the best car autopilot in the world, by far. They have over a billion hours of data from hundreds of thousands of Teslas driven by owners around the world. Every Tesla has a powerful computer that records data from a dozen cameras, a radar and sonar. Elon Musk says it will be ready for autonomous taxi service sometime in 2020. When autonomous taxis become common what will happen.

Musk says that a Tesla auto taxi can carry people for $0.18 / mile. Lyft is about $1.00 / mile. It will be less expensive to use an automated taxi than owning a car; thus, car ownership, will decline. Moreover, automated taxis will be carrying people 80% of the time and parked 20% of the time, which means the automobile industry will collapse. If you own stock in a car company, I recommend selling, unless it is Tesla. Ford just announced 36,000 layoffs and GM closed several US factories recently. These electric self driving taxis will only use petroleum for lubrication, so the oil and gas industry will collapse as well; though, ICE cars already on the road will be driven for another decade, extending the use of oil into the 2030s.

Where will automated driving be made legal first? My best estimate is a city in China, probably Beijing. When, I expect they will start soon, probably 2020; although, they may have a pilot project in a smaller city.

While other car companies can produce electric cars, they do not have the battery production necessary to produce large numbers. Moreover, they do not have a viable autopilot. Tesla is the only one, and they too are limited by battery production, even though Tesla produces about half the li-ion batteries in the world.