Slashdot Mirror
Robocars As the Best Way Geeks Can Save the Planet
Brad Templeton writes "I (whom you may know as EFF Chairman, founder of early
dot-com Clari.Net and rec.humor.funny)
have just released a new series of futurist
essays on the amazing future
of robot cars, coming to us thanks to the DARPA Grand Challenges.
The computer driver is just the beginning — the
essays detail how robocars can
enable the cheap electric car, save millions of lives and trillions
of dollars, and are the most compelling thing
computer geeks can work on to save the planet. Because robocars can refuel, park
and deliver themselves, and not simply be chauffeurs, they end up changing
not just cars but cities, industries, energy, and — by removing
dependence on foreign oil — even wars. I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords."
(More below.)
Templeton continues: "The key realization is that while the safety and timesavings that
come from having computers as chauffeurs is very important and can
save a million lives every year, a number of interesting consequences
come from the ability of robocars to drive themselves while vacant.
This allows them to deliver themselves to us on demand, to park
themselves and to refuel/recharge themselves. On-demand delivery makes
car sharing pleasant and allows the use of "the right vehicle for
the trip" on most trips. Self-refueling means the people using
cars no longer need care about range or how common fueling stations
are, enabling all sorts of novel energy systems with minimal "chicken
and egg" problems. Because passengers don't care about the range
of their taxis, battery weight and cost are no longer issues in
electric cars and scooters."
In any case I think that people would be better employed saving the planet by working to prevent so many car journeys being made in the first place by trying to put an end to Single Use Zoning and fixing the silly way we build our so-called cities. It's not as geek-friendly or glamorous as rolling out a shiny new car that looks like something from an episode of Buck Rogers, but North American culture has too much faith in high-tech solutions to complex problems.
Prevention is always better than cure. Better to go back to building cities so that they can meet their original purpose of putting daily needs within walking distance. Better to fix the leak rather than put a bigger or more sophisticated bucket under it.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Well, there is the small matter of making the robocars, but I guess it's not the job of a "futurist" to do that. Also, he seems to have jumbled a bunch of different enormous breakthroughs (limitless, cheap, clean energy; enormously powerful and reliable AI; efficient solution of enormous traveling salesman problems) into a single obsession. It's not like robocars per se somehow eliminate dependence on oil.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
This really will be a glorious future. Think about it: no more "...was killed by a drunk driver" commercials! Now, we just need to worry about drunk programmers.
...potentially more "I learned it from watching you!" commercials.
Kurt Vonnegut: "If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind."
our infrastructure isn't even close to what is need to support a billion electric cars.
This is a red herring that gets brought up over and over. Our infrastructure wasn't even close to what was needed to support a billion gasoline-powered cars in 1900 either. Luckily for us, not everyone immediately went out and got a car, and not everyone will immediately go out and buy an electric car either. We can expand the infrastructure over time as electric car adoption increases, just like we've done with basically every other technology that required infrastructure to work.
Well, there's one major unaddressed concern. Two, really. No, three. Four? Where to begin....
The first is that a lot of people use a car not just as a means of getting somewhere, but as a place to store stuff when they get there. For example, if I take a day trip somewhere (fairly common), I don't necessarily have any place wherever I'm going to store all the stuff I might need. Heaven help me if I'm going to a musical gig with two or three instruments, a clothing change, binders full of music, etc. Most of that stuff stays in the car unless and until I need it. That simply isn't practical with non-personal vehicles. This was mentioned briefly, but dismissed with the suggestion of a portable "locker". I can't think of any situation I've been in where this would be sufficient other than commuting to work.... It certainly wouldn't work on the beach. Let's say I'm going to the beach, followed by going to someone's house. I might want to have a laptop with me at the house but not at the beach. I sure as heck wouldn't want to store it in a portable locker that someone could walk off with while I took a walk on the beach, nor is carrying it with me particularly practical. These problems happen almost constantly, at least in my life.
If you go shopping for groceries at two different stores, it would be a huge waste of time and energy if you had to go home and drop off the grocery shopping, call a robotic cab to pick you up again, and go to the second store, but the prospect of hauling that merchandise into a second store is equally unacceptable. The "DeliverBot" idea is cute, but highly impractical. For one thing, the stores will immediately do what they do best: charge you a fee for the cost of the delivery and packing on top of the cost of your food. This means everybody pays more for everything. Worse, for smaller purchases, that would end up being a significant percentage of your total bill. Even a $5 delivery charge is huge if all you needed was a $4.00 carton of half-and-half.
Even if you could get around that problem, you still have the issue of it arriving, finding out that it isn't what you ordered, and having to send it back, plus the extra latency of having to go out, shop, then wait for somebody to pack it somewhere and deliver it to you. That might work for large purchases, but it reduces spec buying to absolutely zero, so stores will fight it with every fiber of their being and will en masse refuse to participate in such a program in any useful way, so the result would be that such services would have to be run by third parties who would have to charge money for the service. Because people generally aren't willing to spend even a couple of bucks for delivery, such a service would almost inevitably die just like countless grocery delivery services before it.
The notion that people adapt to not having cars is about like saying that people adapt to not having feet. Yeah, sure, but that doesn't mean I'm interested in having surgery to remove mine unless it would save my life. It would be possible to adapt, but every instance of that adaptation involves having to either build lots of additional facilities and pay extra money to use them (e.g. public lockers at the beach) or go a significant extra distance (driving back to your hotel/home/office) for no good reason. The former is expensive. The latter increases driving, which in part negates the environmental improvement these were designed to solve.
The second is that people tend to want to personalize their automobiles for comfort, particularly on long vacations. Whether it's a vibrating seat or a DVD player for the kids or whatever. Either all of those sorts of comforts have to be built in or you'll have to have a way of specifying that you require those, at which point you've greatly increased the complexity of fleet management.
Third, an eight hour road trip will, in fact, still require stopping to fill up at least once, and if the suggestion is changing automobiles, I suspect the author hasn't eve
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
You will find many of your issues addressed in the article. In fact, I have a large section on the question of how people like to store stuff in their cars, as I am one of those people. At the same time, in cities like NYC, where nobody owns cars, people seem to have managed to get past this "insurmountable" problem.
Suggest you read the article for more on your concerns. If you wish to shop personally, by the way, you would load the deliverbot, not the store. Deliverbots should cost around 5 cents/mile, I predict, for small one suitable for typical cargo.
People who want to own cars will still own cars, but they can own different cars, and hire specialized cars for specialized trips.
The sleeper car does not need to refuel, if it's going slow. My example is a trip to Lake Tahoe that's 4 hours at 75mph but 7 hours at 40mph. Cars actually get *better* MPG at slower speeds, so it would have to refuel *less* often.
As for renting durable goods. It costs more because there is a large overhead in renting today. Picture a world where delivery is quick and cheap, and thus the durable goods are also rented a far larger percentage of their time. This is a side-issue, but I think the potential here is very large for much cheaper rental, always beating the cost of owning something you use 2 hours/month.
I am adding a section to the deliverbot concept about a room for the deliverbot. That's where the bed arrives, and stays if you like. I'm also wondering if we don't see better in-house robotic tech for moving furniture but I don't want to depend on it. Guest beds are worth paying extra for (to cover disinfect, inspection and work of moving in a house) because the real cost of a permanent guest bed is not the cost of the bed -- it's the space in the house an infrequent guest room takes.
But I agree the deliverbot/renting speculation is a sideline to the real message of the article, so tell me what else you don't think is credible there.
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
So you're saying that in 50 years (two generations), autonomous vehicles won't be possible? You are seriously underestimating what will be accomplished in that time frame. I think we'll start seeing prototypes on the road within 20 years at the outside. About 10% of the U.S. auto fleet is replaced every year, so yes, add 30 more years and practically every car on the road will be autonomous. Everything else will be clunkers and antiques.
And please note, no one will be taking away your freedom to drive when you want, where you want. The only difference is that you won't need to be behind the wheel.
Here we get to the crux of your argument. You enjoy driving, and can't imagine anyone taking away something that represents maturity and independence to you. You're still thinking like a teenager. Clearly you're not sitting in rush hour traffic an hour every day. Driving is pure drudgery 95% of the time for most people. I think the overwhelming majority of drivers will embrace robocars. They may occasionally choose to take manual control for a spin in the open country, but most of the time they'll be perfectly content to let the computer handle the grunt work.
It seems several of your concerns revolve around what you perceive as lack of privately owned cars, but that is not actually a premise of the essays. He specifies that some people will still maintain personal vehicles, though for many doing so will no longer make economic sense. Similarly, your complaint of refueling on longer trips assumes there will be no more fuel-powered vehicles, but that assumption is not made in the essays either. If you read the whole thing (including the "stories" section), I think you'll find he's made a compelling case.
Oh, and also your concern about store hopping -- just reserve the car until the trip is concluded, nothing I read would stop you doing that. Same for gigs, beach outings, etc.
The only really big legitimate objections I can see many people having are that
(1) the scenario he envisions would probably result in privately owned vehicles dedicated only to their owners' convenience becoming quite a bit more expensive than they are now (though I would actually call that a good thing, as IMO it should be more expensive to be wasteful), and
(2) individual privacy could be affected. But then really, personal privacy is quickly becoming a thing of the past anyway, and may well be unavoidable. But that's a whole other can of worms...
Caveat Utilitor