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Lyft CEO: Self-Driving Cars Aren't the Future
Nerval's Lobster writes Google, Tesla, Mercedes and others are working hard to build the best self-driving car. But will anyone actually buy them? In a Q&A session at this year's South by Southwest, Lyft CEO Logan Green insisted the answer is "No." But does Green truly believe in this vision, or is he driven (so to speak) by other motivations? It's possible that Green's stance on self-driving cars has to do more with Uber's decision to aggressively fund research into that technology. Uber CEO Travis Kalanick announcing that self-driving cars were the future was something that greatly upset many Uber drivers, and Green may see that spasm of anger as an opportunity to differentiate Lyft in the hearts and minds of the drivers who work for his service. Whether or not Green's vision is genuine, we won't know the outcome for several more years, considering the probable timeframes before self-driving cars hit the road... if ever.
I'll tell you what the future is, and the CEOs of Lyft, Uber, etc. know it as well:
Self-driving car-sharing vehicles.
I'm a huge fan of the new car-sharing services that have popped up in recent years. The ones where you simply pick up a car wherever you find it (your iPhone App will show you the nearest ones if you are looking), drive to where you want, and leave it there for the next person to take.
You have a car when you need it, don't need to bother with it when you don't, you don't need to worry about fuel, inspections, washing it - nothing. And you can take the car you need for today. Good weather? Cabrio. Need to transport something? Bigger trunk. etc.
Main disadvantage? Sometimes there's no car nearby, and of course the usual parking space hunt in the city.
Solution: Self-driving cars. Tap a button on your smartphone, the nearest car comes and picks you up. Just exit it at destination and it'll go away by itself, either finding a parking space or going to the next person who called one. If it's an electric car, it can also go and find a charging station if it wants.
Who needs taxis? Who needs Lyft?
They know this, of course, and they know it's coming.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
More like 1500ms of braking time (it is likely the child / dog running into the road is an unexpected event so reaction times are *much* slower).
Self driving cars operated by the owner are a different situation from that of self driving taxis. The owner and rider interests diverge when those are different people. A self driving taxi has to protect itself from theft & abuse and protect its owner from lawsuits. That mean the person riding in the taxi won't be allowed to arbitrarily stop it, assume manual control, or exit in locations considered by the taxi owner to be unsafe. Putting my car in self driving mode with my average speed 10 mph in gridlock sounds attractive. Getting into a little vehicle capable of traveling to arbitrary locations and trusting it like I would a train takes the early adopter impulse right out of me. Maybe self driving buses would make the transition better.
For what, +1 Irrational Fear? Seems like that should be -1 to me. You won't see ubiquitous self-driving cars until the system is better than meat-popsicle cars. Once that happens, the rational argument flips: "do you want some incompetent person driving a hunk of steel on a road near where your child plays? *shudder* Think of what would happen if that human had to react to something!"
Sure, you could say you don't think self-driving cars will ever be safer than meat-popsicle cars, but that's like saying "640 kB ought to be enough for anybody". Technology is advancing at a staggering pace, and these systems are only getting better and more reliable.
Amen, as long as avoiding risking behavior is a mandatory feature in autonomous driving software. I'd speculate a majority of accidents and road fatalities are nearly all avoidable, brought on by either poor choices, risky behavior, or bad driving habits. Case in point just today on my way to work I narrowly avoided two accidents. The first, the driver did not scrape his windows from ice and could not see any of the drivers around him - nearly plowing into me and others around him as he was changing lanes. The second, another driver decided to use the right lane as a passing lane in a 4 lane road, driving 55 while everyone else is going 35, denying anyone in the left lanes the ability to change lanes and make a right turn. Let me repeat, that was just today. Stuff like this happens everyday to millions of people. For myself, getting tail gated while I'm already going 10 above the limit is a regular *daily* occurrence. I'm barely even going to bring up the young, inexperienced, risk-loving drivers because all of the problems there should be understood without even saying.
I for one am eagerly looking forward to autonomous cars purely because of the minor few that make the roads dangerous for everyone else. But like the poster above, it's probably going to be awhile before they're reliable enough for use. But it will happen because technology will be improved over time. Changing, people's attitudes and driving habits? Yeah, far more difficult and expensive than technology with diminishing returns. Good luck on that!