The Industrial Revolution ushered in a monumental shift from hand production to machine-operated production powered by steam engines. Decades later, Henry Ford invented the assembly line, dramatically lowering the cost of a Model T and placing car ownership within the reach of average Americans.
“I really do believe that in our lifetimes you’ll be able to go buy something that’s like a Ford F-150 for $1,000,” Luckey said. “The cost of extracting and transforming it will go to near zero, and we’re going to compete the margins way down. It’s just not that crazy.”
The tech founder predicts producing and recycling vehicles will become so cheap, cars could become seasonal purchases.
“I bet you’ll be able to recycle [a car] with 90% efficiency at the end of the season,” Luckey said. “You’ll say ‘what’s my summer car going to be? Let’s go down to the mall and buy one and try it out.’” Luckey also said this efficiency will extend to homebuilding as inputs such as steel, wood, and energy grow cheaper.
As the creator of the Oculus Rift VR headset and founder of defense products firm Anduril, Luckey has spent years at the cutting edge of technology. He’s bullish on AI’s economic potential, citing its ability to drastically cut costs and streamline business.
The Anduril founder predicts AI will upend the economics of manufacturing, adapting current streamlined processes for things like clothing production to larger projects, like building a car or a house.
“I think what you’re going to see is that same level of automation that has dominated textiles and agriculture [will] start to apply to everything,” Luckey said. “AI is going to make it easier for resource extraction, processing, and manufacturing.”
Luckey said, though, it’s not the inputs that are keeping costs up. He said he thinks the government is the factor that’s keeping prices sky high.
“The components are not expensive,” Luckey insisted. “It’s the transformation and the regulation that have made it really expensive.”
For Luckey, the path toward radical affordability depends less on new scientific discoveries and more on overcoming policy bottlenecks.
“This is what I mean when I say we don’t need technological breakthrough so much as we just need to just do things,” Luckey said. “The tech to do this is going to catch up.”
