Slashdot Mirror
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.
>> 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.
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.
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.
That's what bribery is for ... no, wait - I mean PAC donations!
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
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.
Doesn't have to be bug free. Just has to kill fewer people than humans do. Or drunks, for that matter.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
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.
Insurance prices are going to go up, I think. Not insurance for the drivers though; insurance for the car manufacturers, who need to pass that cost on to someone. I could imagine premiums being pretty high since you can't take it out of the hide of an at-fault human driver.
Then the tipping point is when the cars can handle any emergency a human could and anything it can't handle couldn't be handled by a human either.
I'm sort of expecting a functionality amounting to: if an automatic car has no idea how to proceed, park by the side of the road, put the hazard lights up, and request human takeover.
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.
Security issues up the wazoo need to be addressed, but what if, as part of that, it has the ability to request a remove driver assist? IE the creator of the automatic system employs a number of professional drivers who, when the car requests assistance, reviews the available information and provides the necessary assistance. Said session is recorded to go to the programmers to (hopefully) add that situation to the database of programmed responses.
I don't read AC A human right
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
It would travel to your destination without ever having to stop.
Assuming of course that your destination is somewhere along where those rails run and that no one else is on those same rails and stopping between you and your destination,
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Of course, you would use properly licensed modeling files, right? ;)
I mean, you wouldn't download a car, would you?
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.
How about just letting people handle their own shit and call AAA if they need help, or 911 if they're in dire straits? They're there, the remote 'driver' is not, and the computer is too stupid to know what it is looking at. So what now? The average driver is to be considered too incompetent such that they must wait for a 'professional' driver to take remote control of the vehicle when the computer's heuristics inevitably fail?
Automation is supposed to make life better, not disenfranchise people and bind them ever more tightly to bureaucratic expectation. All ideas like this do is breed learned helplessness into individuals. I don't idea of a future where citizens are totally helpless and dependent on these systems to bounce them from one crisis to the next.
The average driver is to be considered too incompetent such that they must wait for a 'professional' driver to take remote control of the vehicle when the computer's heuristics inevitably fail?
Here's the problem: Once you introduce true self-driving cars most 'drivers' will stop being drivers. I'm not necessarily talking about the current generation, but what do you expect an 18 year old who got a self-driver for his first vehicle to do? That's worse than a driver who learned on an automatic trying to drive a manual for the first time.
I don't read AC A human right
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!
I understand. It doesn't bode well for that 18yos freedom down the road. If it becomes mainstream, you can bet access to that remote controlled mobility will depend on an ever increasing list of state/institution imposed expectations. That's a powerful leash.
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.
How many people would choose to do without a car, or would own less cars per household, if one could subscribe to a car service like one subscribes to cable television service? If that subscription guaranteed essentially a level above conventional yellow taxi (more like a London Black Cab) but not quite as premium as a pricey sedan service, and could, based on your phone location service as you move around, attempt to prioritize and queue cars up to make it easy for passengers to summon cars, it might be possible to avoid both the headaches of car ownership or leasing and the headaches of conventional taxis.
This is where I think companies like Uber are ultimately headed- a middle-market between a random-hail taxi and a pricey sedan, where the cars are clean (after all, losing one's subscription would be a penalty for abusing the cars) the cars are timely as they're repositioning vehicles based on subscriber patterns, and the cars are priced where it costs the user somewhat less than private ownership without losing too much on the convenience. This model where Uber employs drivers with their own cars is a stop-gap until the technology is ready for them to push this kind of service in-earnest, and they'll drop the human drivers with their own cars in a New York minute if they can.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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.
if one could subscribe to a car service like one subscribes to cable television service?
You'd be better off not comparing car rentals to cable companies, which are known for bundling services and channels you don't want, charging exorbitant prices, blocking free market competition, and providing atrocious customer service.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Driving skills will go the way of horsemanship, becoming a niche specialty.
"Robocars become cheaper than standard cars on June 2nd, 2031."
And because of the concentration of computing power in one confined space, I-5 in the Los Angeles area will become self-aware.
...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.
I expect someday we may have truly autonomous cars, but everyone is acting like it will be in the next 5 years. Maybe 30-50 years out I will believe it, but a lot of the wild claims of "sooner than you think" are a bunch of hot air.
computers are not the only drivers that go haywire or get into situations they can't handle. It happens to people all the time. They have strokes or seizures or heart attacks behind the wheel, they get distracted, they drive into deep mud, they hit puddles at high speed. If you are in the car when something like this happens to you, what do you do?
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.
hot damn, I always wanted a car with a manual choke and a crank starter
can we have synchomesh in the transmission or is that too modern for you?
I remember someone saying that about CRT displays, they thought that LCD displays would never get cheap enough to replace them.
Cars outpaced horsemanship because they were faster and could reliably go longer distances. Self driving cars come with rather heavy leashes that current cars do not, mostly due to crappy politics.
Yes, whereas massive numbers of computers are hacked all the time, causing all sorts of issues. Instead of one human going nuts and causing an accident, we'll have dozens, hundreds, or thousands of compromised or badly programmed cars killing many times more people. If we can't even guarantee security of our currently networked devices, then it's only a matter of time before these cars are hacked through the wireless mesh. They will be very tempting targets.
Assuming you're doing what you're supposed to behind the wheel, you're watching the cars around you as well as your environment. You see that truck with the loose cargo that looks unbalanced? That object in the road, is it a plastic bag or a rock? You see a car two cars in front and one lane to your right.. By the type of car, it's behavior over the last 2 miles, and its condition, you know there's a high probability of erratic or aggressive driving. You know to watch that one. Good luck programming a computer with this. Humans are slower and less predictable, but they are much more aware of details in their environment and this more than makes up for those weaknesses. A computer is just a state machine programmed by someone else making assumptions and using heuristics to guess which situation the car is in atm. Google gave a talk about their system, and it works just like that.
A proper human driver is miles ahead of any computer. If the problem is inattentive driving, then the answer is to fix that, not to encourage more dependence and laziness.
If you are in the car when something like this happens to you, what do you do?
You hit the emergency stop button if it's a computer car. If it's a traditional one, well, you do what you can, but if your father strokes out while he's driving the car while you're in it, it's not designed for somebody else to take over. I'd probably try to turn the engine off via the key.
I don't read AC A human right
A proper human driver is miles ahead of any computer. If the problem is inattentive driving, then the answer is to fix that, not to encourage more dependence and laziness.
That's attempting to fix human nature though, and that's harder than making millions of self-driving cars.
You see a car two cars in front and one lane to your right.. By the type of car, it's behavior over the last 2 miles, and its condition, you know there's a high probability of erratic or aggressive driving.
And if you're a computer car you don't care because your reaction speed is so much better than it's driver, you assume every driver is probably going to be aggressive and thus drive defensively, and get into 10X or so fewer accidents. Sure, a autodrive + human guide might be better at accident avoidance.
If we can't even guarantee security of our currently networked devices, then it's only a matter of time before these cars are hacked through the wireless mesh. They will be very tempting targets.
I hear about a lot of 'tempting targets' that are never attacked in the wild, but lots of not so 'tempting' targets are also attacked. I agree that the problem needs to be addressed, and very seriously, but I don't think it's insurmountable.
I don't read AC A human right
If it becomes mainstream, you can bet access to that remote controlled mobility will depend on an ever increasing list of state/institution imposed expectations.
Such as what? Why would the people tolerate it? One could say the same even more for things like driver's licenses, but those remain something of a joke for the skill level required to get one. New drivers are experiencing more limitations, with the intent of them not getting distracted while still mastering(theoretically) the basics, and California and a few other states will yank your license if you're sufficiently behind on your child support(how's that supposed to help?). But other than that it's stable.
Besides, the newest generation doesn't want to drive, as a whole. They want to be able to play on their phones, tablets, and such.
I don't read AC A human right
Why do you think that? The transportation companies have done the math and know what they can save if they can get rid of the teamsters. Once the technology is there, there will be a continuous lobby for teamster-free trucks. The law will change. Regular cars will follow.
So then if the remote 'pro' control is inferior to having manual controls, then removing them would put costs ahead of safety. Meanwhile the whole argument for a pro is to nullify the argument about the computer's lack of awareness. I'd rather just have a competent driver in the seat, and encourage that as much as humanly possible than hand my agency to some hellish oversight system that treats me as a statistic. People who want to spend every minute of their travel time on facebook should take taxis or trains wherever they can. Why sacrifice autonomy, privacy, and safety to cater to this childish impulsivity?
In a critical situation, the last thing I'd want to do is hand control over to someone else who doesn't have skin in the game. Driving in rain/snow is not 'that' hard. It just requires a bit of practice and common sense. Frankly, if the situation is so bad that I'd need a 'pro', it's probably best to just pull over and wait for the calamity to pass. In split second situations, there's no time switch controls anyway.
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).
Computers can fly it better and they can handle emergencies better than humans, but for psychological reasons people think it's more acceptable to die because of a pilot error or a suicide (pilot or hijacker) than because of a computer malfunction.
I might have been one of the early adopters of the trend, getting my drivers license only at age 27, because I really didn't need it before.
How about failing to pay taxes (who cares if you're in debt and need to get to work to have a shot at paying them)? Most people who don't, don't because they can't. ..and what about your example about child support, you want those bureaucratic tyrants at DCF even more power?
Would you really want the police having remote control over every car? Cops already abuse the powers they do have so there's plenty of precedent.
The typical model involves boiling a frog by slowly turning up the heat. History has shown us this repeatedly, and today's culture has tolerated massive heating already.
So we should all give up autonomy, liberty, and arguably, safety, so those short-sighted fools can play with their phones an extra hour or two a day? If driver's licenses don't filter out enough incompetence then the answer is to fix that.
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
here 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.
Why? Let's start from the beginning: You have a computer, controlling engine and steering by wire. You can easily have a tiny remote control so you can do the steering by wire if the computer fails, or if it gets into a situation that it cannot handle (presumably short term). If the steering by wire fails, you send a pickup truck like you would now in case of a break down. If something goes wrong and there is no qualified driver, you call for help and a qualified driver arrives. These things are so rare that the slight inconvenience doesn't matter.
"...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
Put the car in neutral. Turning it off is a bad, horrifically so, idea. You will cut power to the brakes and steering and may lock the steering wheel by going to far. Neutral is also closer. You are going to want to steer the vehicle to a safe spot. Having no power steering is going to make that more difficult.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
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.
I think you're taking for granted what it is you're driving right now. There are mechanical linkages between the steering wheel and the actual steering mechanism that turns the front wheels, and a mechanical/hydraulic linkage between the brake pedal and the actual slave cylinders that stop the wheels, and the reason they're there is NOT because of cost, it's because of safety: If all the electronic systems fail, for whatever reason, you can still control the vehicle and prevent an accident from occurring. THAT is why there will always be a full set of manual controls, and why you'll always have to be trained, tested, licensed, and insured, in order to operate a motor vehicle: Because you will will always be required to take control from any automated system at any time for safety reasons. Vehicles are designed the way they are with safety in mind, and your 'convenience' secondary, and so long as human lives are part of the equation, that will always be the case.
By the way, if you think I just 'don't understand technology' or something like that, maybe you should understand me before you make that sort of judgement: I've worked in computers and electronics for 35 years, have some engineering background, and have repaired my own cars, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles, and whatnot that entire time; I spent more time under my first car than I spent driving it, because my dad was cheap and we bought a car that needed work done to it before I could even start driving it. I've been a 'Maker of Things'. I've written my own software. I am not a Luddite by any stretch of the imagination. I understand how vehicles are designed and why they're designed that way. That's why I know that there will always be manual controls and you'll always be required to be proficient at manually operating a motor vehicle, and the people whose job it is to ensure that there are laws in place to protect the public agree with me. Additionally, I've never encountered anyone IRL who wants a vehicle with no manual controls.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
I've looked at the last hundred or so of the comments you've posted on various subjects, and it's fairly obvious you're just another one of those people who like to stir shit up and argue for no reason other than to stir shit up and argue, so I'm going to ignore you; shoo, troll, shoo. Go find some other way to feel relevant, OK? Go do work for a local charity or something, I guarantee you it'll make you feel better about yourself and your life than being a PITA on the Internet.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
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."
Self-awareness in Los Angeles? Ha! Surely you jest... San Fransisco will become self-aware and pretentious. Well, more so. However, I do not see LA becoming self-aware. ;)
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
I worked in traffic modeling. The roundabout (rotary) that you speak of is known by a technical name. "Pants-on-head Retarded." The term may not suit a layman but it is the vernacular of the experts. I would absolutely abhor being tasked the the algorithm creation to autonomously navigate such. I would, on the other hand, tackle it manually if given a chance to do so. I have driven in the UK but never been near any of the few intersections. They are one of those ideas that look good on paper but are absolutely mind bogglingly stupid when they go beyond the concept phase.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
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.
and what about your example about child support, you want those bureaucratic tyrants at DCF even more power?
If you don't need a license to operate an automatic car, then it's removing power from them. As for my example, I'll toss it back at you: "Same difference". If the government is out for your blood, it's going to get it.
Would you really want the police having remote control over every car? Cops already abuse the powers they do have so there's plenty of precedent.
Again, if the cops want your car stopped, it's going to be stopped. The remote control only makes it cleaner.
The typical model involves boiling a frog by slowly turning up the heat. History has shown us this repeatedly, and today's culture has tolerated massive heating already.
The frog thing is an urban legend. As for the culture heating, well, we've also seen massive pushback happen before. It's happening right now.
So we should all give up autonomy, liberty, and arguably, safety, so those short-sighted fools can play with their phones an extra hour or two a day? If driver's licenses don't filter out enough incompetence then the answer is to fix that.
Fixing driver's licenses would only drive even more to self-driving cars. Self-driving cars can grant MORE autonomy and liberty to those unable to drive themselves. It's almost guaranteed to increase safety.
In the end, it depends on how much of a override that government officials get.
I don't read AC A human right
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.
You're half right, safety is a special problem. (I am working on the development of Strong AI - including for cars...) The basic problem with your argument is that if the autonomous control does fail the driver will very rarely have time to react before the vehicle has crashed anyway.
The solution is to have at least two layers of redundancy - the AI core is internally redundant, and there is a completely separate emergency only stop system.. The AI core will also be EMP protected and the interfaces will be as EMP robust as possible, even the power supplies will be EMP protected. (Why EMP protection? because of lightning strikes.)
If all that sounds expensive it will be, estimated cost is $30,000 minimum extra to fit a vehicle with full SAI control.
For a fully servo driven AI steering system the steering column will merely be an energy draining impediment able to cause crashes if inadvertently touched. An additional useful trick for fully AI controlled vehicles is four wheel fully independent steer - using a separate steering servo on each wheel.. There will probably still be steering wheels on many or most SAI cars but they are less likely to be directly mechanically linked..
Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
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