On September 26, in the Rayburn House Office Building, at the Commission on U.S. Transportation Sector Efficiency, Audi America’s Brad Stertz, spoke on the panel Pathways for Reducing Transportation Sector Energy Use 50% by 2050.
“And told them, when I was evangelizing the need for change and thinking about things differently, at different state capitals around the country. It's the fact that automation, which is the electrifying the discussion on transportation in the US, is really something we've lived with for more than a hundred years.
When you think about automated elevators, we've had automated elevators, and here's one of the problems that I've tried to express. The automated elevator, where you go and push a button, existed in 1900. It took forty-five years for people to get in, realize they could actually push the button, and go up.
It didn't happen until a strike in New York City basically crippled the emerging skyscrapers of that great metropolis for people to realize, hey, I could do this myself.
And you think we're talking about thirty-two years here. We don't really have the time to sit around and worry about things that may or may not happen. We need to work together to really understand where this technology, where this great opportunity that [Pittsburgh] Mayor Peduto and others have mentioned this morning, is gonna take us.”