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In a Self-Driving Future, We May Not Even Want To Own Cars
HughPickens.com writes: Jerry Hirsch writes in the LA Times that personal transportation is on the cusp of its greatest transformation since the advent of the internal combustion engine. For a century, cars have been symbols of freedom and status. But according to Hirsch, passengers of the future may well view vehicles as just another form of public transportation, to be purchased by the trip or in a subscription. Buying sexy, fast cars for garages could evolve into buying seat-miles in appliance-like pods, piloted by robots, parked in public stalls. "There will come a time when driving the car is like riding the horse," says futurist Peter Schwartz. "Some people will still like to do it, but most of us won't." People still will want to own vehicles for various needs, says James Lentz, chief executive of Toyota's North American operations. They might live in a rural area and travel long distances daily. They might have a big family to haul around. They might own a business that requires transporting supplies. "You will still have people who have the passion for driving the cars and feeling the road," says Lentz. "There may be times when they want the cars to drive them, but they won't be buying autonomous-only cars."
One vision of the future is already playing out in Grenoble, France, where residents can rent from a fleet of 70 pod-like Toyota i-Road and Coms electric cars for short city trips. "It is a sharing program like what you see in Portland with bicycles," says Lentz. Drivers can check out and return the cars at various charging points. Through a subscription, they pay the equivalent of $3.75 for 30 minutes. Because the vehicles are so small, its easy to build out their parking and charging infrastructure. Skeptics should consider the cynicism that greeted the horseless carriage more than a century ago, says Adam Jonas. He adds that fully autonomous vehicles will be here far sooner than the market thinks (PDF). Then, Jonas says, skeptics asked: "Why would any rational person want to replace the assuredness of that hot horse body trustily pulling your comfortable carriage with an unreliable, oil-spurting heap of gears, belts and chains?"
One vision of the future is already playing out in Grenoble, France, where residents can rent from a fleet of 70 pod-like Toyota i-Road and Coms electric cars for short city trips. "It is a sharing program like what you see in Portland with bicycles," says Lentz. Drivers can check out and return the cars at various charging points. Through a subscription, they pay the equivalent of $3.75 for 30 minutes. Because the vehicles are so small, its easy to build out their parking and charging infrastructure. Skeptics should consider the cynicism that greeted the horseless carriage more than a century ago, says Adam Jonas. He adds that fully autonomous vehicles will be here far sooner than the market thinks (PDF). Then, Jonas says, skeptics asked: "Why would any rational person want to replace the assuredness of that hot horse body trustily pulling your comfortable carriage with an unreliable, oil-spurting heap of gears, belts and chains?"
Since I live in a city with decent mass transit, I don't own a car in the present, nor do I especially want or need to.
I also note that some cities, such as Copenhagen, have had self-driving subway trains for years.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Your wild guess about the future is as good as any.
In my experience / opinion, I don't think this will take off for real car enthusiasts / pistonheads / gearheads.
Driverless cars mean lack of control.
Real drivers love to blip their throttle, shift gears manually, control the clutch, smell the petrol fumes, feel the acceletration, control the cornering, and at the end of the drive, be totally satisfied that the driver alone was able to control the car with skill and experience.
If a machine does it, it's not fun.
I thought we'd all 3D print our cars at (our also 3D printed) home?
...isn't this just the equivalent of taxicabs? Why do so many futurists seem obsessed with pushing a taxi-based future?
If they actually called them taxis, we probably wouldn't even give it a discussion. But combine words like "personal" and "public transportation"...
I actually like driving. If only those pesky other drivers weren't there.
Your implied premise couldn't be more wrong. There is no link between autonomously driving cars and car sharing. Autonomous driving is just another feature a new car will have. Like cruise control and self parking. These features contributed nothing to peoples desire to give up car ownership. Autonomous driving will not either.
People been making this overall point since google made the self-driving car a possibility on the horizon again instead of a pipedream.
And the reason it was so prominent a thought was that it also collided with the advent of smartphones with GPS.
So whereas back in the 90s and earlier, if self-driving cars were mentioned, you'd be thinking of a cheap chauffeur... after smartphones, it became transformed into the collective consciousness of a taxi you could summon day or night via a single press app, within minutes.
Take a look next time you're on the road during the day, and you'll see plenty of vehicles that are not cars - 18 wheelers, delivery vans or trucks, tradesman vans or pickups, utility company trucks, and law enforcement.
If cars are driving themselves, then they're going to be sharing the road with a lot of vehicles that are not. And I don't think your local plumber or cable guy are going to be renting their vehicles.
Fuck this kind of article.
It is utter bullshit.
There is no single transportation solution which will suit all markets.
End of story.
The real story here is that this guy just figured this out now.
Why own a vehicle you don't control anyway?
I think this was clear to most people the second self driving cars became a "thing"
Also assume the car will be filled with TV's blaring ads at you while you're on your way. You'll be able to pay $5 for your seat to heat up and vibrate. If it's a long trip there will be a $20 per passenger in-cabin movie from 1982. Pickup and delivery schedules will vary by over an hour unless you pay a "premium trip fee" etc...
What people want is affordable, on-demand, point to point, weather-resistant transportation for themselves and their cargo. Until the transporter gets invented, the automobile is the closest thing we have.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Why would the autos be "parked in public stalls?"
I own a garage. I live near lots of other people. If I didn't own a car, why wouldn't I lease this space to the owner of a self-driving car? After all, it's near lots of people, and I could use the dough.
It's true, the number of self-driving cars will certainly be fewer than the number of cars now, but you'll still need capacity for commuting, for Thanksgiving family trips, etc.
Why would a company spend money to build auto storage in public spaces when they could spend less renting the now less-valued garage spaces from people, so that the cars are closer to where those people are?
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Public transport is socialism.
(I work for an auto manufacturer, but my opinions are my own. And my lifestyle is my own, and doesn't reflect 100% of slashdot).
1. Peak demand. In car-culture areas there's a peak demand. *Someone* has to own the rush hour fleet. But no business is going to want to invest in a fleet that has 21 hours of downtime during non-peak loads.
2. Consumers want reliability and 100% availability. Consider Uber and Lyft that promise this, except during surge pricing periods. People hate this. It's economically correct in the case of Uber and Lyft, and an obvious idea, but surge pricing during rush hour isn't going to work. People will still own their own cars.
3. Personalization and customization. Hey, I like my cars stock, but I still have my stuff in the center console, my presets on the stereo (yes, 760 am in the morning, I'm a dying breed), and my iPhone paired to Sync. A different car every day isn't going to cut it. And think about comfort, especially on a commute. If it's hit or miss as far as comfort, people are willing to pay for 100% access to a Fusion versus an Elantra (or choose an Elantra versus a smaller B-sized car).
4. Toy haulers. You're not going to call Uber or Lyft to tow your trailer to a state park or tow your boat to a launch. And this isn't 99%'er speaking, this is blue collar worker in my part of the country.
Will annual sales go down? Yeah, probably. Maybe undoubtably (how's that for hedging?). But families in most areas are still going to continue to own their own cars. Maybe not two or three cars -- supplemented by autonomous vehicles or ride sharing -- but the private market most definitely won't dry up, even amongst the 99%.
I'm limiting my projections here to about 50 years. Beyond that, who knows. Most of us will be dead then, so it's good enough.
--Jim (me)
I keep reading that self driving cars are just around the corner. But we don't even have self driving trains or planes yet and these are much easier problems to solve.
Self driving cars are the technology of the future and always will be.
In the near future we won't own anything because we won't be able to afford it anyway. Travel will be impossible for most of us. This is the harsh reality. Deal with it instead of escaping into fantasies.
Car2Go uses Smart cars, that can be parked wherever after they are used. Hundreds of them around here, a much smarter and more popular concept than a Zipcar. Among other things, they get more "turns" from their cars because, for example, a given person uses the car to go home, parks the car out front, then the next morning uses it again. If you have to return a Zipcar to its spot all the time, that is much less convenient. There seem to be Car2Go setups in at least Austin, Seattle & Portland.
I come here for the love
can achieve 154 mph indicated. Why should I be tied down to some bolshevik diktat?
In our city the options are mass transit (reasonably priced but on a schedule) or a taxi (kind of expensive). Driving is cheaper than
both. Driving + parking gets expensive.
Ok, so instead of owning a car, you can "order" a car when you need one, it will come to you, pick you up and drive you to your destination, and leave, and you pay only for the length of the ride. So tell, me, how exactly is this "Self-Driving Future" different from today's taxis, which do exactly the same thing?
Granted, taxis are driven by a human, not a computer. But why this really make a big difference? Forgoing human minimum wage, $10 an hour, is not which significantly reduce the price of these taxi rides, so how exactly will driver-less taxis be better than human-driven taxis? With smartphone apps like "getaxi", the human taxi-driver is already out of the loop when it comes to ordering the taxi and paying for it. All he does is drive, and all he needs to know is how to drive - he doesn't even need to have vast knowledge of the city, as the GPS does everything.
(1) affordable -- if your time is worthless.
(2) on demand -- I demand you stand there and wait for the bus to travel on its schedule.
(3) weather-resistant -- bus shelters will keep your head dry, while your clothes get plastered with slush when the bus you don't want drives by.
I come here for the love
This could definitely be revolutionary, and governments on the cusp of spending large amounts of money on conventional transport like rail, should be cautious, because they could end up buying a white elephant. I know a lot of people think this is alarmist, but anybody who underestimates the significance of this revolution, should not be making decisions in government.
The self-driving facet doesn't change things really. If it makes sense to rent, it'll still make sense to rent. If it doesn't make sense to rent, it won't make sense to rent. The logistical and financial aspects don't change in a self-driving vehicle.
People who regularly use mass transit benefit from economies of scale. A bus moving 30 people does not cost 30 times as much as a car, so sharing the cost makes sense. A pod moving according to one persons needs to have the costs recovered just from the person using it.
Renting cars makes sense when you have a sporadic occasional need to cover the gap not covered through mass transit or walking.
Things start breaking down when you have individualized transportation all the time. A rental model is more sensible over owning only when you don't have a near continuous need. For example, I own a car. I paid 15,000 for it brand new 10 years ago. Roughly calculating, I have spent about another 15,000 dollars in fuel, insurance, and maintenance. If I had instead relied upon the pod-like cars, I would have spent $37,500 to just cover my commute over the past decade, and still have had to come up with a strategy to cover the incidents of longer trips.
Just like anything else, renting isn't cheaper, though it may *feel* cheaper up front, unless your needs truly are transient. Whether this is cars, furniture, contract labor, cloud computing, or whatever. For your steady state needs it's better to own than rent because the one renting it out is turning a profit on you that you could save by actually owning.
The question should not be a choice between public transportation and owning your own vehicle.
Someone needs to detatch the passenger portion of the vehicle from the engine.
We like our personal space, and we want to be able to leave our belongings "in the car" while we're shopping or while we are at work.
But most people no longer care about the engine. It's just another black box they have to maintain.
Why can't the two be separated, in the same way that semi tractors have evolved from single component machines (engine firmly attached to the cargo carrying space) to dual-component machines, where any tractor can haul any trailer?
5 minutes before I leave the house, I call for a ride. I wander out to my driveway and get into my vehicle, an unpowered compartment. I have the optional self-directed engine for my vehicle sitting in the garage still, but I only use it for off-grid use, and this trip's strictly on-grid.
A moment later the small equivalent of a semi trailer arrives and docks with my unpowered vehicle. I programmed my destination into the computer while waiting for it to appear (or perhaps it's autoprogrammed, as I always leave for work at this time?) and all I need to do is hit the appropriate button to confirm that I'm ready to go.
I hit the button and slide back into my seat, wishing I was still in bed. Meanwhile, the automated, driverless tractor hauls my vehicle and me to work. It involves a pair of transfers -- my first tractor transfers my vehicle to a string of others towed behind a larger & stronger tractor before I enter the highway (woohoo!!! gotta love the reserved traffic fast lane!), and then I'm given back to a smaller tractor as I leave the highway -- but that happens entirely without input from me.
Twenty minutes after settling into my vehicle I'm getting out of it. My engine-less "vehicle" is sitting in my office parking lot, and the tractor's undocking from it so it can go serve another customer.
Metrosexual types will be happy to hop down to the corner and jump into a "pod" rented by the hour to go get their nails done, but the feeling of power and freedom that comes from driving is not going to go away. Note we are not flying to work as futurists of the past predicted. They seldom take into account practical problems or human psychology, instead replacing both with youthful enthusiasm.
E Proelio Veritas.
Since I live in a city with decent mass transit, I don't own a car in the present, nor do I especially want or need to.
Until your employer happens to relocate you to a city whose buses don't run at all on Saturday evenings, Sundays, or six major holidays.
How long does it take for people to realize that their car could be making them money whenever they are not driving it?
Like Uber but without actually having to drive people around by yourself.
How long after that do they realize that the most profitable solution is to get many cars and have them driving people around 24/7?
How long after that until the people realize that they don't actually need the car - after all, how many of them are renting their living space already without owning it?
Where it won't work like that right away? Rural areas and small towns.
I.e. Places where there are not enough people to keep cars driving around 24/7 and maintenance costs per capita are higher.
Until someone realizes that there is money to be made in being the only game in town in a place like that.
Probably the same person who is already the only game in town regarding cars - be it selling them or servicing them with fuel.
Also, it's a practical impossibility as long as the cars are running on fossil fuels.
Unless you somehow get the people to breathe exhaust fumes instead of air.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
public transport can be affordable, on-demand and weather-resistant.
Can be but isn't in practice. Fort Wayne's bus system isn't quite "on-demand" because it has at least one 36-hour downtime each week: from Saturday evening through early Monday morning.
Having spent years taking mass transit I will never go back. Wait until these fancy little rentals come with fluid and solid leftovers in them.
There is NOTHING you can do to keep people accountable, eventually they will be self driven trash cans.
Although I can drive I have owned or strongly desired to own my own car. I would not like to give up owning my own bicycle, however...
It is not that culture will shift, not that it would not, but that the laws will. The average citizen will simply not be allowed to operate a car that is not driven, overseen, and controlled by AI, with admin access granted only to the police and the manufacturer.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
If you don't know how to drive, what will you do after the Motor Law? Just hop the turbine freight and that's it?
The lure of 'ownership' is a great advertizing tool, no matter how frivolous the object, especially to possessive people who crave social status. Maybe, some day, man will outgrow such childish desires.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I am a gear head myself. I really enjoy driving cars that are made to be fun to drive. However I can tell you that as time has marched on I have found routine driving to be increasingly less enjoyable. I despise my commute and do everything I can to take my own driving out of the equation so I can do things that are less aggravating and wasteful of my time and money.
I can definitely see merit to the idea of not owning a car. The only reason why I currently own one now is because I live too far off the bus line to walk there easily in the morning. If I lived in the city instead I would almost certainly not own a car at all.
And don't get me started on the Ponzi scheme that we are all required to contribute to in order to hold a valid driver license.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
My immediate thought was cleanliness. When you sit on a hard seat on a bus, it's not going to get as dirty as say a cloth seat and there are other people around to keep you, through general social expectations not to be a slob.
But I've seen people's cars and...no thanks. When a person is alone in a self-driving car, they're going to feel much more free than on a bus to do whatever they please. Coming back from the gym wearing your shorts and tank top? Sure, why not? Smoking...err no one is around to see me. Discard this greasy food wrapper, I'll shove it under the seat and no one will know.
There are examples where other people share facilities buses and taxis, but there is a driver there to monitor things. Hotels rooms, people do some pretty unclean things there but they are (hopefully) cleaned after every use and even then, I don't lay on the blankets. I can't imagine a self-driving car being able to go the depot for inspection between five minute trips. Hey, I have personally witnessed someone changing a babie's diaper on a restaurant table. I'll keep my own car and I'm not a neat freak by any measure.
"In a Self-Driving Future, We May Not Even Want To Own Cars" ... uhm, I neither own nor want to own a car now. Jeah, I'm a socialist european hippie who lives in a big city with useful public transportation. Deal with it. The two times a year I actually transport something other than myself I can rent whatever car I like and still get away with 95% winnings over owning a car (and esp. paying for all the crap like insurance and gas).
ok... soap box alert. Get off your high horses! I take the bus and subway. Nothing wrong with using mass transit. I don't have a car, don't need one, don't want one. What is up with all this status stuff? I don't need it. I dress up in a T-Shirt and jeans when I go run errands, not a dress, jacket and stockings.
Wish people would stop telling me to get a learner's permit. What for? Baltimore has a decent public transportation system. I can take Amtrak or a plane to major cities. I don't need to go to a really rural town in Maryland. Then people say: "don't you need to wait for the bus in the rain and snow? What if the bus/subway/tram is late?" I reply: "That is life. Don't worry about me, worry about yourself dear." I smile and walk away. Why are people so concerned about me? The snow in Baltimore isn't all that bad. I'm an adult, not a little child waiting for the bus in the dark. sorry, had to get that off my chest /end rant.
"... but small enough for the individual to run and care for...." -- Henry Ford.
These time have long gone. Most people cannot even replace a wheel, if the car even comes with one. Or light bulbs. Let alone anything more complex.
I don't think with "care for" he meant "paying others to care for".
We have a "self driving" car technology, it's called a "taxi", and millions of people use them and avoid buying a car already.
Most of us avoid these due to a thing I like to call "being rich enough not to have to put up with that shit".
I own a car because I don't want to share.
That's not going to change if the car can drive itself.
right to repair laws make it so 3rd party shops / yourself can't not be locked out of the car so they can't force you to use the dealer for all repairs.
While most empty headed morons who drive Japanese crap cars aren't interested in driving there's this whole subculture of people who actually love to drive. We enjoy that man and machine bond and really enjoy our time behind the wheel. You might take the average clueless idiot off the road from their traffic induced stupor but people who enjoy driving will stop driving when you pry our cold dead hands off the steering wheel. Until then we will take absolute pleasure cutting off your driver less cars. With you getting the scare of your life and being powerless to do anything about it. :)
The US, especially certain "cities" like Houston, have been endlessly expanding outward, creating an unsustainable mess and taking away precious natural resources such as parks and agricultural lands. This simply cannot continue.
Suburbs in major urban areas like New York, LA, and San Francisco have already been experiencing population density increases, to the point where the vast majority of the big ones are higher in population density than many actual cities (like Houston and Atlanta).
The solution is to redesign existing suburbs around high density, mixed-use (residential and commercial) transportation corridors (trains, canals with ferries, trollies, rapid bus lines). It is already happening in more sensible (and usually higher density) areas of the country.
Rural areas are a different matter. In many of them, car sharing may be impractical.
Within cities, car sharing works great. Outside of cities and for trips that are several hours long, a "car" becomes a kind of living room, something people like to customize and feel comfortable in for long periods of time. Car sharing doesn't work so well in that environment. And I see much more potential for self-driving cars on long distance trips than for city driving.
Johnnycab: The fare is 18 credits, please.
Future passenger: Sue me, dickhead!
[cab tries to run passenger down, crashes, and explodes]
Johnnycab: We hope you enjoyed the ride!
Often times, that battery can be remotely deactivated.
So, if you're late on payments or there is some other disagreement: poof, car goes nowhere.
Welcome to the end of ownership.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
And i want computer-driven cars banned.
the end.
People promoting "public transport" or trying to predict the future don't understand what people like in cars.
* private space.
* linearity
With private space I mean that
* you can leave stuff you occasionally need while "in transit" in your car.
* if you leave your phone in YOUR car, it will still be there in the evening.
With linearity I mean that if you leave three minute later because of something, you'll be at your destination about 1 minute later. If you take a bus at 07:35 every day, you'll leave home at say 7:30 to be at the bus stop at 7:33 in time for the bus. But leave three minutes later, youll miss the bus of 7:35 and have to wait for the one at 7:50. A three minute delay in getting your things caused a 15 minute delay at getting to work.
So, IMHO a future public transport will work if you let people buy the modular "passenger compartments" and provide shared "motor compartments" that automatically show up in time for your trip.
It's always struck me as obvious that driving will be automated in order of difficulty of job. First, trains (already done for many of them). Then buses in "BRT" systems (where the buses have a dedicated lane) and then buses on regular roads. Only after all of these have become routine sights will you see your automated Car2Go -type taxi services.
But just automating mass transit will increase the use of it. Why are trains lumped together in 3 cars that only come by every 15 minutes? To save on drivers. One car every 5 minutes is the same capacity but one-third the waiting time.
And you could be getting to the station from your house from bus stops where a small van comes by every 5 minutes, too. Chopping out that time-consumption (and where I live, COLD waits for half the year), would probably double interest in mass-transit right there.
Effects that make mass-transit more appealing have a positive feedback loop effect going for them, because of the same "network effects" that drive adoption of new popular communications like fax then E-mail the social media. If twice as many people take the train, then it comes every 2.5 minutes, and they start building tracks to more places.
Meanwhile, there's then a positive feedback loop hurting the car industry. The fewer people buy cars, the more expensive they get and the more likely your employer is to charge you for parking, because only half the employees even use it, and why should you be subsidized? These positive feedback loops can lead to "tipping points" more quickly than most people would tend to predict.
The Auto makers ought to be afraid - very afraid
You can keep your 'future' where people are just herd animals being shuttled around from place to place, not actually being in control of where they're going and when. I can think of nothing worse than not being able to transport myself from place to place as my will and whim seems fit. No, I am not trying to be funny here, not in the least. I have said it before, I will keep saying it, and I am certain I am not anything like alone in this sentiment: I will not own or even ride in an 'autonomous automobile', not unless it's just a feature that can be turned off, and there are standard manual controls to operate the vehicle with. I am no Luddite, I've worked in technology since I was 12 years old, I fully and completely understand everything that's being developed in the field -- and therefore I know enough to not trust it with my life, even if I wished to relinquish my personal freedom to something that can be hacked or otherwise controlled remotely at the whim of police or governments. Not on my watch, and not during my natural life, thank you very much. I sure as hell don't want to live in a world where your only choice amounts to 'public transportation', either; I have used public transportation in situations where it was apporpriate, and may have to again over the course of my life, but given a choice I'd rather not. Aside from the 'personal freedom' aspect, I find myself living in a world where people are increasingly becoming less knowledgeable, less skilled, and less physically fit, instead relying on 'convenience technologies' and the Internet, instead of actually moving their bodies, learning physical skills, and acquiring actual knowledge. Remember the movie "WALL-E"? Rememeber the fat, weak, uneducated people living in that ship, never even standing on their own two feet their entire lives? Did you think that imagery was just meant to be funny or something? It's a cautionary tale: That's what the Human race is headed for, if we don't take steps to avoid it, starting right now. How many of you saw the news story from this week about how 2.1 BILLION people in the world are obese, and the cost of that in trillions of dollars? How can you take this as anything other than a sign that things are going very, very wrong with the human race in general? How about other various recent news I've been seeing where programs to outright give schoolchildren computers or tablets have not improved their test scores, or even made them worse? Think about it: We're teaching them to rely on Google instead of actually learning anything for themselves; why bother retaining knowledge when you can just go look it up on the Internet? How many of you, if you lost your cellphone, can remember the phone numbers of your friends and family? I'm betting not many of you. This is the phenomenon I'm talking about: Why bother learning anything yourself when you can just look it up on the Internet? Similarly, why bother learning to drive a car when it can just drive itself? Why bother learning to drive a car with a manual transmission when there's automatic transmission? Why bother going to the gym, or even bothering yourself to go for a brisk walk for an hour a day, when you have vehicles, or for that matter why bother even getting off your couch to leave your home at all when you can just click a button and have everything delivered to your door? Why bother learning how to cook decently nutritious foods for yourself when you can just have food delivered, or throw something in the microwave, or (if you're adventurous enough, in this dystopian future) go through the drive-thru and get whatever food-substitute they're selling? Meanwhile on the other side of the equation there are violent groups out there in the world that are not only shunning so-called 'progress' but that want to turn back the clock by anywhere from 50 to 1000 years. If the human race, especially in 1st-world countries keeps going in the direction I see them going, the assholes of the world who go around cutting people's heads off and posting it on YouTube are going to just waltz
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Not just parking, but the whole transportation "task" can be offloaded to the machine. And with no driver to pay, the ride can be as cheap as engineering can make possible. A fleet of electric Smart Cars could probably deliver you anywhere in the city for less cost-per-mile than your own car, if you include fuel, insurance, upkeep, etc.. Even the extra cost for a ride home from the city (after a night of drinking, say) would be a bargain compared to other options. Cheap, safe, driverless taxi service would make it practically effortless to do the right thing with respect to driving and drinking, and that would be great news for everyone.
And as someone who is lucky enough to live in a city with excellent public transit, I can attest to the liberation one feels when not burdened by vehicle maintenance. Here are some things I spend zero time doing (and very little time even thinking about): 1. Parking; 2. Driving (except when I want to); 3. Filling up with gas; 4. Plugging in the EV; 5. Washing the car; 6. Vacuuming the car; 7. Changing the oil; 8. Checking the fluids, tires, etc.; ETC... There is also a monetary cost associated with most of these things, but leave that aside for the moment. Just consider how much more unfettered time I have because of this.
I just came home from visiting a friend in another city, a few hours away. I have a 10-minute walk to the MRT station, from whence I ride four or five stops on the subway, then walk about 50 meters to the bus for his city. From my "primordial-mindset" point of view, I walked to my friend's house yesterday, and walked back today. Yes, there were a few "shortcuts" along the way involving motorized vehicles, but essentially I walked there and back.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
In post-Soviet Europe I suspect it will be difficult to find differences between the car to and the stick usedvfor moving self driven cars out of the road.
once I live in the UK some of my fears may be quite specific to the way things work here. Prediction 1: insurance will go up in proportions to the distance driven by the human. More risk= higher premium and since the first gen auto-automobiles will require a licensed driver, I don't expect the insurance requirement to go away nor the price to go down.prediction 2: in the same way the m1 has variable speed d limits today, some roads will become "fully managed" by a control tower that will run gulate speed for all automated drivers. When there's a human driver in the vicinity, everyone will slow down to a speed lower than the maximum permitted to the orchestrated traffic. Everyone will moan at poorer, antiquated drivers for preventing 100+ mph speeds.prediction 3: it will be the passenger trains that will become obsolete because of self driving cars. High cost of infrastructure and of running the service will be beaten by the convenience, cleanliness and flexibility of individual electric self driven cars. The USAans will have the last laugh while the UK city councils will charge load of money for parking and for empty cars running about while their owners work and shop.
When we reach a level where traffic is dominated by automated traffic, why would we even allow people on the roads?
Automated only means no stupid mistakes ever.
And more control for large players is quite popular as well.
So, not only will for hire be the norm, it will be the only alternative.
Self-driving cars aren't likely to dominate, simply because many people actually LIKE to drive. At most, it will be used as an autopilot cruise control.
The continued collapse of the middle class will mean fewer and fewer will own cars outright... the self-driving aspect means you can tell a car to pick you up and take you to destination X, maybe with less hassle and delay than with present-day cabs, for those few occasions you really need one. Less car ownership means less revenues to the state, which means they'll REALLY have to jack up the fees to make up for it. Electric and hybrid cars have already given states fits because of less fuel taxes paid, and now they're trying to come up with per-mile-driven schemes.
There's a network effect for shared vehicles. Availablility is best if you have one big pool of cars rather than lots of little ones. So there will be a single winner in that space for each city.
Imagine Uber having the power of GM and Google combined. Run by the current team of assholes.
The cost of medical care alone will start to severely limit our choices. For example if a robotic driver has 15% less accidents than a human driver the differential in medical loss to tax payers could be enough to cause a must have robotic ability at all times to be required in order to have a vehicle on the road. Guns and motorcycles will face similar legal challenges. For example one severely wounded motorcycle rider can have a lifetime medical care cost of over twenty million dollars and leave the rider with no way to earn any money at all on top of that. A bullet can cause similar nightmare medical situations. Since the tax payer always bears the brunt of the costs of such incidents our law makers may feel they have the right to either control or completley banish long established industries as well as restraining the rights of the people. This is one reason Obama care is a bad compromise. Only single payer medical with government as the payer can control medical costs and it is vital that those costs be controlled.
"There may be times when they want the cars to drive them, but they won't be buying autonomous-only cars."
A future where people can opt out of buying an autonomous car sounds great but it's not feasible economically. Traffic lights and traffic signs are all things needed for cars being piloted by humans, autonomous cars don't need them. At some point we'll be spending billions maintaining human-readable infrastructure and road rules when there are fewer and fewer actual humans driving.
It's just like the Sunpass you use out on the tollway in Florida. There are fewer and fewer options for driving on the tollway when you don't have a sticker. It won't be long before it's mandatory. It's the same with autonomous cars. Once cars start to take over the day will dawn when we don't want to collectively maintain the signage, traffic lights and human readable infrastructure.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
In private powered transport, cars aren't the most expesive element anymore. Unjamed roads and especially parking space are. In Europe at least.
So, yes, if we'd all take a step back and turn on our brain, no one would want to own a car, they'd rather own the right to use a reservationable parking space. Cars would be used on-demand.As they are in the car-sharing offerings poping up all over Europe - even in Germany! German automotive manufacturers actually are scratching their heads, because there is a whole generation growing up in Germany just now that simply isn't interested in buying cars.
Our cities are absolutely packed with them. ... Germans spend 4.7 Billion man-hours per year in traffic jams.
So, yes, there are tons of insentives to move the burden of ownership somewhere else, away from the private owner.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I live in a small town / large village, and I would love to do without a car, but it's just not practical. The town is at an uncomfortable size where it's too large to walk to many places, but too small to make public transit feasible. What would help the most, I think, is some kind of "lane management." It's too dangerous to use the highways as they are now configured with bicycles, motor-scooters, or motor-carts -- though these would suffice for most tasks. If this were made safer, it would be more feasible to rely only on rental cars for longer trips. The city council has taken steps to add bike lanes, and has just approved the use of electric motor carts. These are steps in the right direction, but we've got a ways to go. Still, I like the idea of being able to give up owning a car -- and not just for some green / altruistic reason -- I just don't want the bother.
"The wisdom of the Patriarchs was that they *knew* they were fools." --Master Foo
Presuming Jamie Lentz is talking about Portland, OR, he is wrong about the "sharing program like what you see in Portland with bicycles." Portland doesn't have a bike share program. The City Council approved one about two years ago, but no sponsors have stepped up to fund it.
It's funny that Portland gets all this credit for bike stuff that far exceeds what it has actually accomplished. Several other cities, including Seattle, have approved and launched bike share programs in the time since Portland approved its non-existent program, yet Lentz defaults to "Portland" when talking about bike share. I guess perception is 90% of the battle, never mind reality.
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality;..."
Personally I'd find it more fun because I get to watch a thinking machine control a metal box on wheels and guide it to a destination.
Why do so many people say "taxi cab" like it's a bad thing? These are taxi cabs that you OWN. Personally I'd rather not have to focus on driving just to get from point A to point B.
People may soon be arriving at airports in self driving cars and be unwilling to get on airplanes that still require human pilots.
I drive places that most people won't even try to drive, much less a self-driving car. Guess I'm an outlier, and this doesn't pertain to me.
That said, S.D.C's will be retained to where they're easiest: the highway, and to and from the supermarket.
My bike rack will be on the trailer hitch with my bike on it when I get up.
My hunting gun will be in the trunk, packed there the night before the trip to the cabin.
My self-protection gun will be secreted exactly where I want it to be and not need to be retrieved or possibly forgotten before departing.
The sunglasses I use will be in the center console.
The insurance stuff will be in the glove box.
Various hobby stuff or work things will be in the trunk where I don't have to remember to pack them.
Etc.
Without even "other passengers" to dissuade them; what won't people do in such vehicles? As much as I look forward to the smell and sight of vomit, urine, fecal matter, seminal fluid, and the occasional dead body: I think I might want to have my own car... even an autonomous one.
I luck out in that i work in a place were strong perfume is NOT ALLOWED so it is limited to when one of the products is broken open but yes some of the stuff makes you want to have a gas mask.
until your rented car drives up to your front door with a big pile of puke on the front seat.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
will likely embrace this more. Folks don't easily let go of rights they acquired, but its easier to grant less over time. Younger kids today are ok with no/minimal online privacy, minimal freedom of speech - because they never really had it, nor understood the need. Us older folks grew up with actual privacy and it was more work to eavesdrop. Eventually what rights a drivers license grants will erode (certain lanes/roads/time of day) until like today's smokers, they are pushed out to the fringe.
When we can become permanent rent/lease slaves?
Seriously, what kind of idiot thinks up shit like "You may not want to own a car"?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Ohhhh.... and we could then create an institution tasked with stopping those AI cars when they malfunction and every method of remote shutdown fails (mechanical shutdown switches inside AI cars? why would I need those?). This institution would employ teenage girls and boys who'd drive old cars (think Lancia Stratos or Lotus Europa) and stop those runaway AI vehicles by blinding all their sensors. And I'm way too obsesed with old anime.
even if this fully automated and not mine where available today (and they are not), how many time do we need to replace current cars with automated ones ? 10 year ? 20 ? 30 ? more ?
Once the corporations have persuaded us all to want (and pay them for) exactly the same thing, there'll be no dissent, no limit to profits, not the smallest ripple of on the surface of the lockstep identikit masses - peace. The peace of the mortuary slab.
Disney's Futureama of the '50s showed us un-crowded 2-lane roads with hands free driving, and almost 'free' electricity due to 'cheap' nuclear energy.
Such is the same now.
I do see the 'robot cars', but more look forward to 'robot trucks' given the inexperienced truck drivers on the road, and the lack of any truck drivers available at the current time. Still, I don't expect to see them in mass in the next few years. It does take society some time to convert even if it seems like a 'no brainer'.
In a Cloud Computing Future, We May Not Even Want To Own PCs
John Smith writes in the LA Times that personal computing is on the cusp of its greatest transformation since the advent of the internet. For decades, desktop PCs have been symbols of freedom and status. But according to Smith, users of the future may well view desktop PCs as just another form of cloud computing, to be purchased by the gigabyte or in a subscription. Buying sexy, fast gaming PCs could evolve into buying minutes of game-time in games runnign in the cloud, streamed to their screens. "There will come a time when using a general purpose computer is like riding the horse," says futurist Joe Singularity. "Some people will still like to do it, but most of us won't." People still will want to own PCs for various needs, says John Doe, chief executive of Cloud-Megacorp's North American operations. They might be hard-core gamers and use their video cards intensively. They might have a lot of data to process. They might own a business that desktop PCs. "You will still have people who have the passion for using personal computers and feeling the power," says Doe. "There may be times when they want the cloud to guidde them, but they won't be buying cloud-only computers."
"It is a sharing program like what you see in Portland with bicycles," Lentz said. I live in Portland, OR. We don't have bike share (yet).
I'll have to investigate better the question of the local "community car" scheme for those once-a-month situations when I need to do shopping or delivery that is larger than I can comfortably do on the bicycle.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
1) The analogy doesn't fit. That horses were argued to be more reliable is not at all relevant to whether or not people wanted to own some form of transportation. They did, and they continued to even after the automobile supplanted the horse.
2) Most cars are used and sit idle during the same parts of the day for a large portion of the population, so sharing wouldn't substantially reduce the number of vehicles in use, and without reducing the number of vehicles in use (getting more rides per vehicle) you're not going to lower the cost per trip, which reduces the incentive to share.
3) Most people would prefer not to sit in other people's filth (but, ironically, many are fine sitting in their own filth). Regardless of any logical inconsistency, the "ick factor" will weigh heavily in any determination of whether to rent or own.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Hopefully the phase-in of autonomous vehicles will bring about an end to rush-hour. It's a ridiculous misallocation of resources to have major arteries clogged maybe four hours of the day and underutilised the remaining 20. And all because most businesses cling tenaciously to anachronistic 8a-5p 'business hours' in many parts of the Western world. Flextime and telecommuting should be the rule. The whole convention of set business hours is about nothing more than the PTB controlling the lives of the unwashed masses.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
I am, or was a car guy. I couldn't wait to get my licence. I restored old sports cars on a shoestring budget, I bought and made tools to extract engines and re-build suspension. I drove hard, but not crazy hard. I drove everywhere. When my business made money I bought a Porsche, then another one. But at the same time changes were happening on the road. Speed cameras everywhere, traffic everywhere, parking a complete nightmare. I started riding my bike to any appointment less than 20km's away. I now very rarely drive, and when I take the Porsche out, its still enjoyable, but the traffic is still there, and the parking is still awful. I look forward to a future where cars are a rent-as-you need commodity, and the large proportion of under-skilled drivers are relieved of the task of guiding their two tonnes of metal and plastic safely through congested streets. Of the kids I know who are just old enough to be driving, there is a distinct lack of interest. They don't see the car as the symbol of and means to achieve freedom that I did at their age. I have to think that I was on the arse end of the American Graffiti era, where cars marked a right of passage. I am pretty happy about this, I think in general cars have been a necessary evolutionary step, but we have the technology to replace the model where every family has two cars doing nothing for 90% of the time. The idea that there is a new future where mechanised mobility is still readily available and convenient but car ownership is rare makes perfect sense.
Once cars become cheap, automated, electric, and widespread in all parking lots, I think it is true that many people may give up owning a car.
But that is a much more likely scenario in moderate to hot climates, like California. I can't picture that happening for a long time in snowy parts of the country.