b'Technology Revolution people dont understand how powerful exponen-The technology revolution is changing everything.tial change is over time. Moores Law was coined by Like other industries, the rapidly declining cost of digitalGordon Moore at Intel in 1965, when he noted that the technologies will have a profound impact on school busnumber of transistors on a computer chip will double transportation. One example is the cost of sensors. every 18 to 24 months while staying at the same price I was at the launch of a 300 km/hour, or 186 mph, high- point. In 1970, an Intel chip had 2,000 transistors. To-speed train in Rome, Italy. Trenitalia, Italys rail company,day, computer chips have as many as 23.4 billion.installed 1,000 sensors that are Wi-Fi enabled on the newThis has had a profound impact on computing cost. train. These sense when a part is about to wear out or breakA gigaflop is a measure of compute speedperforming and send an alert that says, Hey, replace me. a billion transactions in a single second. In 1961, a giga-The intelligence in the system decides whether theflop cost $153 billion on mainframes. In 2018, a gigaflop part needs to be replaced immediately (if its the brakes orcost just two cents (the one on your smartphone).some other critical part) or whether it isnt urgent and canTechnologies that are exponentially improving be scheduled. not only get cheaper and faster, they also get small-Its called predictive maintenance, and its targeted toer, better and lighter. Many of the technologies that save 10 percent of Trenitalias $2 billion a year mainte- are improving safety for school buses and student nance budget. The initiative relies on internet of thingstransportation are following exponential price perfor-(IoT) sensors. mance improvements.Why is This Important? Googles Self-Driving CarA similar approach to equip school buses with IoTGoogle launched its first self-driving car in 2008. sensors, and this is already occurring, would reduceAt the time, the technology cost $200,000. So, Detroit breakdowns and down time, increase efficiency and resultauto executives asked themselves, Who is going to in better scheduling of maintenance. spend an extra $200,000 on autonomous features on This is just one example of a technology that is po- top of the purchase price of the car? They dismissed sitioned on a declining cost curve that can have aGoogles efforts. But these executives didnt under-bottom-line benefit for an organization, while reducingstand Moores Law and the power of exponentially 22%risk and increasing customer satisfaction. That is a certainimproving technology.1,160win-win-win. Just two years later, the technology cost $100,000. 21%899Exponentially improving price performance of a num- At that time, the auto executives still felt justified in 8% 11%ber of different technologies is going to transform theleaving the field completely to Google. 707 650 35%student transportation market. Three areas to discuss are One year later, the technology was $50,000. Today, 57723%digitization, automation and electrification. its fallen to $1,000. And now, all of the car companies 373 26% 18%288 are scrambling to buy autonomous driving technol-214Exponential Technology Improvements 176 ogy companies. They are only now beginning the Many people have heard of Moores Law, but mosteight-year development process to incorporate these 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 new features into their cars. Do you see a problem here? If the world is changing faster than our organi-zations can adapt, disaster is imminent.Average Sensor Cost Forecast One component of autonomous vehicle technolo-$1.40 gy is the LIDAR, which is like radar, but it uses lasers $1.30 to detect objects and distances. In 2012, LIDAR cost $1.20 $1.11 $75,000. By 2018, it fell to only $40 and in 2020, it will be just $10. At that point, it will dematerialize to the $1.00 $0.95size of this tiny purple strip on a dime, which will be $0.82$0.80 embedded into your new $1,000 smartphone for free. $0.70$0.60 And then you will have two navigation systemsone $0.60 $0.51 in your car and one as a backup on your smartphone.$0.44$0.40 If you have trouble believing this, consider that $0.38 10 years ago, you might have bought a $750 Garmin $0.20 GPS. But today, your smartphone already has GPS $0.00 embedded in it for free. It is used in conjunction with 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016E 2018E 2020E cellphone towers and Wi-Fi, so it allows you to use Google maps or the Waze app to navigate traffic and Source: Business Insider get home earlier.32School Transportation NewsSEPTEMBER 201990% Buses80%70% Lightcommercial60%50% Passenger40% Medium30% commercial20% Heavy10% commercial0%2019 2025 2030 2035 2040'