Robotic taxis to replace cars: analyst

The automotive industry is entering a period of deep disruption that will make it unrecognizable, according to a new analysis from Morgan Stanley.

“The auto industry is a century-old ecosystem being ogled by outside players hungry for a slice of a $10-trillion mobility market," warns Adam Jonas, the lead auto analyst at Morgan Stanley Research. "Many want in. It’s just beginning. And it won’t stop.”

The car, on our estimates, is the world's most underutilized asset. We believe it's the most disruptable business on earth.

Already Google is experimenting with robotic cars, and tech giant Apple is reportedly eyeing the electric car market. Upstart Tesla Motors is slowly building a business by selling only electric cars.

In a report to investors, Jonas wrote that the two most important technological trends in automotive transportation are the sharing economy and autonomous driving. He said those trends will fuse into what he calls “shared autonomy” or what is essentially a world of competing robotic taxi services.

Jonas has boiled down the massive change the automotive world faces into a chart with four quadrants, or phases of disruption. The horizontal axis illustrates the transition from individual vehicle ownership to an era where cars are shared assets. The vertical axis shows the transition from human to robotic driving.

The first quadrant represents the auto industry model for more than 100 years, Jonas said. High-tech is limited to gadgets for driver convenience or entertainment.