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When Do Robocars Become Cheaper Than Standard Cars?
Hallie Siegel writes: With all the extra sensors and technology that have to go into autonomous cars, you might expect them to cost more. After all, autonomous features like park assist and auto lane changing are added-value components that you pay extra for on current vehicles. But autonomous car expert Brad Templeton thinks it could be that the overall cost of autonomous vehicles per mile driven will lower than traditional cars. Not only because features of traditional cars, like dashboards and steering columns, will not be necessary in robocars, but also because autonomous cars are more likely to be shared and constantly in use, rather than sitting in your driveway 90% of the time.
park assist and auto lane changing
Admittedly I haven't bought a car in 8 years, but ... are those tasks somehow considered "difficult" such that it makes any degree of sense whatsoever to add expense to the vehicle to perform them automatically?
I should think anyone competent to be operating the vehicle to start with should find them trivial by definition, and anyone not finding them trivial should not be operating the vehicle.
How will police departments run without red light and ticket revenue? Similarly, they would completely put taxi services out of business. The short answer is politicians and police departments especially are going to put as many roadblocks in the way as possible to make sure this doesn't happen. They stand to make WAY too much from it.
>> because features of traditional cars, like dashboards and steering columns, will not be necessary in robocars
That makes the question easy. Robocars will be cheaper after fully autonomous cars - with zero driver intervention - are allowed. In other words, probably never.
>> autonomous cars are more likely to be shared and constantly in use
Not my car. I pay the extra money to have my own seats that no one else's bum touches, my own cup holders that never hold alcohol or drippy milkshakes, and my own seat fabrics that only my kids drop their toys onto.
Robo cars will be able to maintain more constant engine speeds, minimize braking, etc., so they are likely to be more fuel efficient and put less wear on brakes, tires, and the engine.
Omne ignotum pro magnifico.
Robocars Become cheaper than standard cars on June 2nd, 2031.
Possibly as soon as you factor in insurance costs. Assuming that autonomous vehicles can live up to some of the hype related to safety, the insurance premiums should be a pittance compared to what many people currently pay. If you have a car that's only likely to be at fault (or better yet, in an accident at all if it can drive defensively well enough) in the event of catastrophic failure, it should cost far less to insure. The initial cost may be higher, but could be amortized over the length of its ownership in lowered insurance premiums.
To some extend that does make it more of a luxury item, but many products start off that way until economics of scale and market competition can drive down the prices. Also it's interesting it that based on insurance costs, the value proposition for an autonomous vehicle improves for people who are the worst drivers. Reducing accidents on their end goes a long way to making the road better for everyone.
When hardware running the autonomous programs are similarly bug free.
So, basically never.
You are all cows. Cows say moo. MOOOOOOOO! MOOOOOOOOOO! Moo cows MOOOOOOOO! Moo say the cows. YOU COWS!!
This depends on how much you drive them. If you walk or use mass transit almost all the time and only need a car once in a while the robocar will be cheaper very shortly after they become available.
Send them through this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_Roundabout_%28Swindon%29
cheaper for the owner:when self-drive becomes uninsurable. cheaper for the maker:when steering wheels are an option. cheaper for the dealer:Hey! EVERYthing is Cheaper at Crazy Charlie's!
Why wouldn't it have a steering column? What do you do in an emergency when the car doesn't know how to handle itself? Airplanes still have control yokes. Cars should still have steering wheels.
Also, why would a car suddenly start getting more usage rather than sitting in the driveway. Are they also assuming that when cars become autonomous, that we will no longer own them, but just call for one when we need one?BR? I am not in favor of a world where i can't own a car, and where I can't take control of a car in an emergency.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
But autonomous car expert Brad Templeton thinks it could be that the overall cost of autonomous vehicles per mile driven will lower than traditional cars.
Never say never but it won't be anytime soon. The sensor package and other hardware to make it work are going to be very expensive for quite a while yet. Not only because there is a lot of R&D and hardware costs to recoup but also because of economies of scale which will not happen overnight. I could see autonomous vehicles being cheaper in specific situations but for general purpose driving it won't be cheaper anytime soon if ever.
Not only because features of traditional cars, like dashboards and steering columns, will not be necessary in robocars,
That's something of an assumption that manual controls will be removed but let's presume it is true. You lose some control surfaces which saves some money but you claw much/all of that back with fancy sensors, driving controls, computers and other hardware. The cost difference in hardware is very likely to be a push and at worst it is an add on to traditional controls if they remain in the car.
In reality I think manual controls will remain a necessity because it is REALLY difficult to explain to even another human exactly where you want to go. I cannot see a robot figuring it out anytime soon. I seriously doubt there is an easy way to explain to a robotic car exactly how you want to park especially when there is no road.
but also because autonomous cars are more likely to be shared and constantly in use, rather than sitting in your driveway 90% of the time.
I'm not convinced of this one either. Possible but hardly a certainty. A lot of people don't really like to share cars and nobody rides the bus because they like it. I can see automated cars getting abused rather badly. Trash, bodily fluids, etc. People don't tend to respect property that isn't theirs. I really don't look forward to the prospect of taxing an automated taxi that smells of urine or worse.
Similarly I bet repairs will be less even for simple things like oil and belts.
But on the other side, I bet that while some people will share robocars, most two car families will continue to own at least one robocar that they do not rent out. Renting a car out means it isn't always available and if you have two people + a family they will have sufficient need to keep one full time car.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
See, in theory, over time the cost of a good goes down.
Which specific good(s) and under what circumstances are you referring to? What specific economic theory are you referencing? There are times when costs go down and times when they go up. Or are you just spouting empty rhetoric?
In practice, companies keep adding doo-dads and wanting to amortize their development costs, so the amount they charge goes up even when the economies make it cheaper to make.
Companies "add doo-dads" because their customers want to buy them. They also add them because if they don't those customers (including you) will buy them from someone else. If they add a "doo-dad" that customers don't want then they will lose money. For products that don't involve "adding doo-dads" (which are called commodities btw) prices tend to rise or fall according to supply and demand. More supply = lower prices. Less supply = higher prices.
There isn't a CEO on the planet who would allow the costs to go down over time, because it's bad for business.
Really? I think the folks over at Walmart will be very surprised to hear that since that is pretty much their entire business model. Seriously, you can absolutely make a business model out of selling stuff for lower margins as long as your own costs are lower as well. Usually this involves either large economies of scale or a technology advantage. Plenty of companies compete on price and in some industries it can be really hard to make a profit of any size.
I pay the extra money to have my own seats...
And when such private automobiles are no longer sold for any amount you can afford?
That's easy:
Then I shall print one.
It's still not going to be sustainable for the size of the population that we will someday have. Computer driven cars can only solve a few of the problems. If they were on rails they would be 80% more efficient. It would cut the weight of the vehicle by over 70%. It would travel to your destination without ever having to stop. It would never crash and would be able to run in any weather.
I've always dreamed of this mode of transportation!
Imagine having a car that's never just sitting idle, depreciating in the driveway or the parking lot at work, when it could be being productive all day long!
Yes, indeed! I've always wanted a car that rather than being my own space to unwind on the drive home could be busy shuttling smelly people and their kids, smelly goods, etc. around the city all day! I could have all kinds of new coffee stains in new places because people aren't paying attention to the pothole that the automated piece of shit is about to drive straight over. I could even have new types of stains on the interior!
Imagine that, even the local corner hooker could use my car as her own personal "by-the-half-hour" motel room! More new types of puddles on the interior to examine and enjoy the aroma of. How exciting!
And nevermind the wear and tear and mileage, Uber is paying me! Another added benefit, I bet by the end of the day I wouldn't even have to decide on what to have for dinner, because there would be plenty of yummy new types of food scents in the car. And probably some garbage to clean out of it, you know how people are with "public transportation". And speaking of, why would anyone bother taking the train or bus when they can just use some other chump's car? And with that, the constant maintenance, repair and replacement of said car. Yes, that's the key! Consume MORE!
As an aside, I've actually gotten to experience this mode of transportation in my life. The kind where it smells like curry and cigar smoke, with something sticky underneath the seat. It's called a taxi. There's a reason I drive my own car and don't take taxis. They stink, they're beat up pieces of shit, they drive all day and night, and they're operated by someone other than me. And I don't want my car to be a bunch of random people's own private subway car for the day. Fuck that.
Robocars (along with fully autonomous cars in general), are never going to happen, will never be practical, and are a stupid idea from stupid people who are too lazy, self-absorbed, and deluded to see why they don't work and will never work regardless of how much technology we throw at them.
People are way too willing to give up their privacy and autonomy for half-assed conveniences nowadays. Considering the behavior of today's public and private institutions, it's nuts.
They always do. Moving violation fines are now tacked on with so many other "fees" a formerly two hundred dollar ticket is now six...
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
They'd likely self-insure for the most part. And no, I figure that insurance prices wouldn't go up.
I pay about $2/day for full coverage insurance. Looks like the average is $1-2k. Let's say that the average is $1.2k/year for liability. Now let's figure that self driving cars, by the time they're released commercially, are an OOM safer than the average driver, and that they win some concessions from congress shielding them from lawsuits. That would drop the price to $120/year, $10/month.
Figure that they charge the full amount up front and escrow it at 6%, they 'only' need to charge ~$1200 up front to cover the expected liability costs for the next 10-15 years. If you want to be paranoid, $1500 at 5% gives a larger safety margin.
If the car is still driving after 10 years, there's a good possibility of demanding that the car be serviced/refurbished. You update the autodrive software and components, and charge enough money to restore the car's portion of the liability fund. Or kick the liability over to the owner, so they now have to pay $10/month to the insurance company to cover the auto-drive component.
Note: This is liability only, 'full coverage' would be a bit more.
I don't read AC A human right
Human drivers kill 40,000 people in the US every year, and that's just the tip of the iceberg when you count severe injuries, property damage, etc. Your liability costs will drop virtually to zero, because most of that premium goes to pay for your incompetence. If you save ten or twenty thousand dollars over the life of the car, that makes a big difference in affordability.
What should people who share cars do with all the stuff we keep in our cars? On a day-long shopping trip with multiple stops, do I have to unpack the car each stop to let it roam free? Where do I keep my spare jacket? My umbrella?
I guess I don't need to worry about the spare or jack or anything, because if my shared car breaks down, I just leave it wherever and call up another one.
Of course, you would use properly licensed modeling files, right? ;)
I mean, you wouldn't download a car, would you?
No, robot cars are not going to eliminate taxi drivers. 1) robots can't deal with unpredictable situations like humans can. Failure on the road can be life or death. 2) Minimum wage humans are good enough for taxis, especially with GPS systems.
The big use of this robot car technology, will be in buses, and big trucks. A 30 ton vehicle can kill a lot more people, than a 1.5 ton vehicle. Heck, it could have a GPS transponder for automatically paying road taxes. The computer can generate a log book, pick up weather forecasts, and have water sensors, or ice sensors, to help the computer decide how it should brake. It could have weight shifting sensors to tell if the cargo is loose. A cheaper human can be used, since many smarts are in the truck.
Sometimes, a "news story" is so obviously a press release that it's almost embarrassing.
Here's a couple of news stories that hit the wire in the past few days, so you tell me why you think there's suddenly a story about how we're all going to live in a robocar utopia:
http://gizmodo.com/hackers-hav...
http://gizmodo.com/chrysler-re...
(emphasis mine)
You are welcome on my lawn.
Robo cars will be cheaper than standard cars because you won't own either; you'll only pay for a robocar when and where you want it. A few people will continue to own standard cars, the way a few people still own horses today. Some casual driving enthusiasts will rent a manual-drive car for recreational driving in a controlled-access environment. The rest of us just won't.
For most people, a car is the first or second largest purchase they make, and that car sits idle 95% of the time. It would be much more efficient to summon a car when needed, or subscribe to a car at certain times for certain routes. This is the model that Uber, Lyft, Car2Go, etc. are building. They're just waiting for the driver to get out of the picture, at which point fares should drop at least 70% (the drivers' cut of the fare) and even more once economies of scale and central management kick in.
It's odd to me that most people I talk to can't get past the idea of not owning a car. Consider what you could do with the money you waste every year on car payments, gas, parking, maintenance, and insurance. Why wouldn't the future be nearly everyone taking a robo-Uber whenever they need to? In the future, driving or owning a car will be just another interesting hobby.
Ask me about my sig!
So never. Well ok probably around the same time you don't have to manually map the entire route out to 50m in all directions at all times beforehand with cm resolution or the system nearly shuts down like google cars do today. If you actually had the processing power and algorithm capability of a squirrel you could run a car with a crappy stereo camera, 3- axis accelerometer, 3 axis gyro, and dual microphone like us meat bags can. All these fancy sensors are a crutch for the inability to extract features newborn animals with inferior sensors can, when we can do that in software then the tech is ready for mainstream use. For the obvious reasons above few to no Americans are ever going to share their ride for a few extra dollars when it means getting it trashed daily, autonomous or not. I sure as hell wouldn't for my personal ride.
...automated, self-driving car outta my cold, dead hands as soon as you can hack it. Which should be in about 3 ... 2 ... 1
Yeah, never gonna get one of those things.
I am looking forward to a day when I no longer need to own a car. I only put about 5000 miles a year on the one I have. unfortunately public transport option between my home and office are a non stater but 95% of the store i use are within 5 miles and i would say 70% are within walking distance. The day where I can pay a monthly or year plan for X number of miles or something and have a robo cab at my beckon call with in a few mins of calling it on my smartphone is the day I will sell my car and never look back (assuming its cost effective) There are little issues. To work out like the car will need to gas up possibly more then once a day if its running 24/7 the car provider will have to work out deals for gas stations to pump gas into empty cars the drive up or have some sort of credit system for passengers who have to fill up the car because it ran low during their fare. Most likely a car service with no manual controls will have to have some sort of support center where if the car gets into an environment (say complex road work) that a remote human support person say in VR gear can take control and drive the car remotely till its clear and then warn other robo cabs to avoid area if possible.
There will ALWAYS be a full set of manual controls on EVERY car and truck, and you will ALWAYS be required to be trained, tested, licensed, and insured to operate one, so get over it! Ideas to the contrary are complete and total fantasy, and this Brad Templeton guy is just some jackass saying whatever he has to say to get free publicity.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
A big part of the reason a drone is cheaper than a plane is that it doesn't have to carry a person in it. No life support systems, no cockpit, no displays or controls in the plane. And it doesn't have to be designed to the same safety and recovery standards. Fire a missile at a drone and a lot of them don't even have counter measures. And if they are brought down there's no ejector seat etc.
When we talk about drone cars... they'll get cheaper if they don't have to carry humans or if the entire car can be simplified for computer only control.
The cars are going to be hybrid systems for the foreseeable future and those are not going to be cheaper because they'll involve aspects of both systems. Redundant systems increase costs. Period.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
What is it that notorious car-drivers hate about public transport, so that they end up spending like 5-10 times more money than what public transport would have cost them?
That is the question that you need to answer before you can make predictions like in the slashdot summary.
Public transport has "quantization noise". If you leave for work 3 minutes later, you'll miss the bus, and end up at work 15 minutes later. Sure you can prevent that. Just be at the bus stop 5 minutes before the bus. This means you invest 5 minutes every day to prevent a 15 minute occasional delay.
Second: when you use public transport, you don't have "your own space". This means that if you leave your wallet, ipad or whatever lying around when you step out of the vehicle, barring exceptions, it is gone. If you have your own "transport space", you can also stock it with stuff you might need while travelling (e.g. my brother has mints in his car), of that you might end up needing at the destination (e.g. umbrella).
Third there is a cost issue. If you see the cost to you every time you move, that makes you consider it more. People ignore the: "the car needs xx petrol to drive this far, so it costs me at the least yy to make this trip". They see the filing up and paying whatever that takes as something that must be done, and then they pretend driving the car is free.
Those are the things the car-drivers will need to have satisfied before they can be converted. And if you don't convert the car-drivers you will not have the economy of scale to have "leaving out the steering column" make a difference.
The current topic will "solve" the quantization noise. You hit a button in your house a few minutes before you leave, and the system will get a self-drving-car on your driveway before you close the door. It does not solve the other problem. You cannot leave the umbrella in the car "in case it rains when I get there". You forget your stuff and the next occupant might take it. (or at least "where is my presentation" is not solved with a run to the car park).
The "self driving" and "semi-public-transport" ideas will only work if everybody gets to keep their private module. Those could be powered with say a small 1kW motor and have a 40km/h (25mph) speed limit. Then when they end up at the freeway, a bunch of them group together with a "power-unit" and they can travel on the freeway at high speed. (Pay more and the "maximum grouping delay" goes down).
The most expensive part of a car is the driver.
As soon as self-driving cars become practical, taxis will become cheaper than owning your own car.
If you think Uber is shaking up the industry now, it's nothing on what's coming when taxi companies don't need taxi drivers.
Never trust a man in a blue trench coat, Never drive a car when you're dead
"...because autonomous cars are more likely to be shared..."
I can't really understand why I keep hearing this utopian bullshit? The tragedy of the commons, anyone? Have you ever even BEEN in a public restroom?
Or, alternately, maybe we only share cars amongst the Eloi. Is that a better solution?
-Styopa
For some sharing will work but not for others.
People who just need a car like a taxi to take them from one place to the other will benefit greatly from the robocar and not having to own or maintain it. Mostly this is going to be in urban and suburban environments.
People who have cars that are entertainment for them will not want to share their toys.
People who live in very rural areas will not get this shared benefit.
People who need specialized vehicles - extremely common in rural environments - will not be able to do the shared gig. We customized our truck so that it has a animal carrier area in the back interior for hauling livestock each week to butcher, a middle section that switches between refrigerated and passenger space and a forward space that is for driver and navigator. Believe me, you don't want to share our vehicle - we haul pigs in it every week. I also don't want you sharing it because I need our specialized vehicle ready for hauling pigs and not messed up by someone else.
What the robocars are probably going to do is replace taxis, some subways and some buses to a large extent. Run of the mill people moving. The easy stuff.
The problem with calculations like this is Joe Average rarely thinks about Total Cost of Ownership when it comes to his car. Generally, he thinks about gas and parking, and that's it - So they'd cringe at a car sharing mode at 50 cents per minute (for example) because "Gas and Parking costs way less than that."
In thinking about the future of cars when explaining what self-driving cars are to friends and family, I often am asked and ponder the question “why would someone buy one?” If you had one, there is, of course, the ability to do other things while you're en route, like read, work, watch media, sleep (perhaps this won't be allowed?), etc. This benefit in itself “adds value” to that vehicle over a traditional one, especially for those with long commutes. I also imagine the navigational complexity of them eventually including real-time traffic/hazard avoidance so that they can arrive faster than cars without those systems. There will be some consumers which will see self-driving vehicles' lack of ability to “drive aggressively” as a deal breaker. However, I imagine a solution where at some point (a tipping point may be where there are as many self-driving cars as traditional ones) traffic lights will only need to be respected by traditional cars since the self-driving ones will be on a mesh network talking to each other and traffic controllers and can safely avoid hitting each other looking like something akin to controlled chaos. Again, this efficiency of arriving to your destination much quicker than a traditional car would add value. Time is money.
It would appear that the law can be adapted to be either no or never.
Sig: I stole this sig.
Thought it said "robocops".
Somewhat ridiculous article.. As someone who is developing future Strong AI technology with target applications including fully autonomous cars - I can put a basic price on the technology.. The basic price for adding fully autonomous SIA control to a car is about $30,000 to $40,000.
If I add in every feature I can think of that can climb to astronomical levels - at least $1 million per car.. but such systems would obviously be more intended for very expensive cars...
One of the biggest and most expensive extra features is giving the car an 'enabler' - an additional robot interface - for basic passive defence, basic maintenance like refuelling or changing tyres, passenger protection, and cargo loading/unloading, etc.. Basic marketing suggests a primary application is carrying passengers unable to drive themselves, and this particularly includes carrying children or young teenagers.. an application that requires either an adult human bodyguard to 'defend' the child/children or some machine equivalent. Another situation that requires defence is driving autonomously with no passengers - as the vehicle is naturally very vulnerable to being hijacked and stolen..
On car sharing - certainly a possibility and will appeal to some. I see a varied eco-system with robotically (or human) driven taxi's or small busses in a service similar to Uber taking up the core, With maybe share owned cars or vans shared between groups of families.
Looking slightly longer term I see that for large dense cities (like London) a better solution is a system of small personal 'pods' that work rather like an automated small-scale rail network, that run underground, and are driven by a large centralised control system. Very like the turbo lifts in Star Trek but over much larger scales. (The pods tunnel system can form the centre of a complete unified services system - partly mitigating its costs.)
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
Just sharing shopping carts with the unwashed masses gives me the shivers, don't think I want to share cars with them.
autonomous cars are more likely to be shared and constantly in use, rather than sitting in your driveway 90% of the time.
Sorry, no. If I want to "share" a car, I'll call a taxi, or uber. The whole point of owning a car is that it's there when you need it, and since 90% of the people need 90% of the cars at the same (local) time, namely rush hour, it's not going to benefit me to share the car. Especially if I hop in to find dirty upholstery, or trash in the car, or physical damage to the interior.
That said, electronics are cheap. No matter how expensive they were to develop, once mass-produced, the total cost quickly approaches the cost to manufacture. The reason electronics like navigation and cameras are expensive in cars today is because they can charge a ridiculous amount. Charging for "premium audio," or "lane departure" is all about market segmentation -- charging people 25% more for the same car. Once features start coming standard on low-end models, then new features are added to charge more for, and the process continues.
Since "automated driving" is a pretty basic feature of a driverless car, the technology itself shouldn't cost much once it hits critical mass. At that point, expect car manufacturers to add butt-fluffer massage seats and augmented reality windows and charge thousands. And of course, the "premium audio" upsell will never go away.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere