Shift Commission Candid Conversations: The founder of Zipcar on self-driving cars and the future of work

The Shift Commission meetings officially kicked off in New York City on Sept. 30. Robin Chase is a member of the Commission, co-founder and former CEO of Zipcar, and author of Peers Inc: How People and Platforms are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventing Capitalism. She found time during the New York meeting to sit down with me to talk about the future of work.

In the wide-ranging chat that follows, she discusses the impact of self-driving cars — predicting that within five years of the introduction of autonomous vehicles, 80 percent of the vehicles in those cities will be autonomous. Robin also shares her thoughts on the effects of climate change, and why she thinks our networked age leads to a magnified perception of inequality.

Jack: Why don’t we start by you telling me who you are and why you decided to come here today?

Robin: I’m Robin Chase, mostly known as founder and former CEO of Zipcar, and I also wrote a book called Peers Inc. When I was writing it, I realized that if everything that can become a platform does becomes a platform — and most employment is pushed outside the corporation — workers will be working without social safety nets and workplace rules, all of which are now attached to full-time employment. This new way of work, on platforms, is completely different.

I have this sentence I got from someone: “My father had one job in his lifetime; I’ll have five jobs in my lifetime; and my children will have five jobs at the same time.”

Jack: It seems like a whole class of people across America are waking up to the vulnerable state they’re in due to shifts in the economy. Why is this a conversation we’re starting to have now?

Robin: I spotted the implications of this transition late in the game. About a year and a half ago, I thought, oh my God. Look at this thing that’s happening. In the transportation sector I look at the pace at which autonomous vehicles are coming upon us, and instead of the technology hype being overpromised and that future staying distant, the promised dates for self driving cars are instead getting closer! I know a lot about cars in cities — it’s going to be economically compelling for bus, shuttle, and taxi services to get rid of drivers in cities, and from the demand side this will be a much cheaper way to travel than owning my own car. The result will be a huge loss of jobs at a very fast pace.

Jack: When you say “very fast,” are we talking under a decade in terms of the period of disruption?

Robin: I’ve been arguing — well discussing — with a lot of people over this point! In major dense metropolitan areas, within five years of the introduction of autonomous vehicles, I’ll think we’ll see 80% of the vehicles in those cities being autonomous. So if we’re looking at 2020 as the date in which most manufacturers and people who are building them promise to start selling them, that means by 2025 most big cities will be mostly autonomous vehicles.

Jack: What’s the difference between this and when we had the launch of smartphones? Smartphones have had a huge effect on employment but we didn’t seem to anticipate it in the same way.

Robin: Whenever I get into a taxi in the cities I’ve been in, I’ve been asking drivers, “Have you thought about autonomous vehicles? Do you see them coming? Is it changing what you’re thinking about your own work?” Every taxi driver I’ve talked to has understood what’s going on and has started to think about it. They haven’t come up with solutions yet, but in their minds, they’ve been thinking, “Oh my God, this thing I’ve been doing is about to disappear.”

Jack: Autonomous vehicles is one of the huge trends you see shaping work and working life. Are there any other ones that you expect will have a huge effect on things?

Robin: All the big companies are seeing themselves as very vulnerable to disruption right now, and they are seeing that they need to become more platform-like, because if they don’t do it someone else is going to disrupt them. That is happening in every sector. In retail, they are really seeing that the way they deliver services is in a moment of high disruption because of smartphones and connectivity.

Something we haven’t talked at all about today and that is constantly in my mind that I think is a huge disruptor is climate change. We are having to reinvent our supply chain and our consumption chain at a very rapid pace. All the while, the natural ecosystems are being disrupted. I keep thinking about the impact of climate refugees, like Syrians. We have this huge economic unrest as economies are made vulnerable because of climate change. That makes them economically stressed, resulting in huge, chaotic disturbances and people are now fleeing to better economic opportunity.

What I’ve been struck by is that a lot of our solutions around this precarious future of work are to provide social safety nets to everyone regardless of their work status, right? That is in direct conflict with the idea of having a whole bunch of new immigrants come to your country. This is what we’re seeing in the Nordic countries and in France and Germany, and perhaps here in the US with Trump supporters anti-immigration focus; there’s this tension between a country that provides great social safety nets that are ubiquitous and this influx of a new population.

Jack: So, say we got in a time machine and we went up to Robin Chase 20 years ago and brought you here today, what do you think you would have been surprised by and what do you think you would have been surprised had not happened by this point?

Robin: Let’s go to 16 years ago, 17 years ago, when I started thinking about transportation and Zipcar. I profoundly believed we were going to see the rise of shared vehicles as the dominant form of transportation in cities. I might be surprised at the slowness of the transition. The move to shared transportation is moving faster in cities now, but I thought it would happen sooner. Twenty years ago the Internet was so nascent that we hadn’t understood its talents yet. We hadn’t understood the powers of empowering individuals so much and how that would ripple through the economy. I definitely did not perceive that.

Jack: Final question: What do you think we are failing to measure about the modern economy that leads to government officials seeming to be surprised by changes which are rippling through it?

Robin: I think today we are underestimating the power of income inequality in a world of ubiquitous media. If we think about what television did to the people in their huts in Kenya, they say, “Wow. This is something I want to aspire to or this is something I want to have.” Now, even in your own city, you are seeing the haves against the have-nots and that is a very powerful push for unrest, right? That’s what I think we’re seeing with Brexit and that’s what I think we’re seeing with the rise of Trump. People are really feeling, “I see this other world happening and I’m not a participant in it.” That makes you really unhappy.