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Report: By 2035, Nearly 100 Million Self-Driving Cars Will Be Sold Per Year
Daniel_Stuckey writes "The rise of autonomous cars might turn out to be more rapid than even the most devout Knight Rider fans were hoping. According to a new report from Navigant Research, in just over two decades, Google Cars and their ilk will account for 75 percent of all light vehicle sales worldwide. In total, Navigant expects 95.4 million autonomous cars to be sold every year by 2035. That's pretty astonishing. For one thing, that's more cars than are built every year right now."
They start making up figures on a market that has not started yet?
Seems like a real great (and useful) idea to me...
The numbers are that high because so many of the cars crash into each other and people need to buy more.
You want full control? You can't handle full control! Nobody can. Self driving cars will save thousands of lives. It will be that much safer. The proof is in the airline industry. Operator error is by far the most important factor in all accidents.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I personally wouldn't trust any auto driven care made by anyone. Its all about control baby and i want full control.
I trust other drivers far less than I trust engineering, and I find driving long distance to be a tedious chore.
So I can't wait until driverless cars are on the market. I just hope I'll be able to afford them when they are, and I hope they won't require any oversight from me by the time I'm old and gray, so I can happily nap at the wheel.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I just spent over 300K on a new house so I can take the train to work. A self driving car that could drive me to work while I take a nap. They will sell like crazy.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
You want full control? You can't handle full control! Nobody can. Self driving cars will save thousands of lives. It will be that much safer. The proof is in the airline industry. Operator error is by far the most important factor in all accidents.
You mean, the same airline industry that is now questioning whether pilots rely too much on automation technology?
Hindsight - it's always 20-20.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Ridiculous. If a car can drive itself, it is much easier to share with others. No need for a family to have 3 cars anymore if you can just send one to go pick some one up.
There'll be a taxi style service, or cars shared by people living in the same block, and cars will just go where they're needed.
They won't have to outlaw them. You don't need laws when you have insurance companies. Once self-driven cars are declared safer, insurance rates will skyrocket for manually driven cars, so only the rich will be able to have one.
"The plural of anecdote is not data" -- Bruce Schneier
Auto trans
self-locking doors
auto ride control
auto headlights/self-diming & on-off
automatic seat belts
airbags
proximity keyless entry
ABS
lane drift monitoring
auto brake on object detect
...what part of 'automatic' snuck up on you over the last 50 years?
Engineering is done by humans as as the thousands of poorly engineered building,bridges, cars, planes,trains, consumer products killing thousands/millions have shown us is that engineering is no guarantee of safety.
Could you cite those statistics for death caused not by human error?
Because, according to the CDC, 35,000+ people died of auto accidents in 2010, compared to only just under 17,000 for all "other" non-transport, non-firearm, non-poisoning, non-fall, non-fire/smoke, non-drowning deaths. And that was a GOOD year for automotive deaths -- one of the lowest in decades. For all the national panic over September 11th, we lose well over 10x that number of people every year thanks to auto accidents. More people die every year from car accidents than from firearms, fire, and poison combined.
That's just the fatalities! Only about 8% of crashes result in fatalities thanks to nearly miraculous advances in modern medicine. There are about 6 million crashes per year and about 2.3 million people sent to the hospital as a result. That's about a $70 billion drain on the economy every year. 44% of people with spinal cord injuries obtained them from a car accident.
Getting in a car is the single most dangerous thing you do every day.
While engineering may be no guarantee of perfect safety, but it's practically a guarantee of lowered risks. Human error was the sole cause of 57% of all accidents and a contributing factor in over 90% Mechanical error alone was only 2.4%. The top three contributing factors to accidents are driver inattention, alcohol, and speed. A driverless system (that obeys traffic laws) eliminates all three.
To make the argument that driverless cars would be less safe than humans is a joke, especially when it's such a low bar to reach.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I suspect if you look at modern automatic transmissions, you'd be surprised, especially with some models which may see a 1 mpg difference between automatic and manual versions (and this is for vehicles that get over 30 mpg).
Better tech, electronic shifting, and more gears does wonders.
Self driving is the single feature that would ever get me to shell out for a new car. Nothing like having your own car drive you home after a couple of beers after work.
Ultimately, the huge capacity to save lives and the economic advantages of self-driving cars and trucks are going to drive this step very fast. Tens of thousands of lives every year, hundreds of thousands of injuries, tens to hundreds of billions in insurance costs, tens to hundreds of billions in savings on transportation, etc. In the face of the possible gains I think the regulatory aspects will get resolved faster than most people think.