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Elon Musk Plans To Solve Traffic Congestion With Self-Driving Buses (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Elon Musk believes self-driving buses are the answer to solving traffic congestion and mass transit in densely populated cities. Musk has teased the idea while at a transportation conference in Norway, according to Bloomberg. "We have an idea for something which is not exactly a bus but would solve the density problem for inner city situations." he said. "Autonomous vehicles are key... I don't want to talk too much about it. I have to be careful what I say." Elon Musk released the Model X last year with semi-autonomous Autopilot mode, and most recently, announced the "budget-friendly" Model 3 with similar autonomous functionality. There's no question autonomous vehicles are the future. "I very much agree with solving the high-density transport problem," Musk said in Norway. "There's a new type of car or vehicle that would be great for that and that'll actually take people to their final destination and not just the bus stop." The Hyperloop is another example of Elon's vision to revolutionize transportation.
He has lots of plans to solve all the world's problems using technology that doesn't exist.
For a big bus, the cost of the operator isn't a big share of the overall operating expenses. at 100k/yr fully burdened, that's only $50/hr.
But for small buses (minivan sized or maybe up to 20 pax) then automatically dispatched, scheduled, and controlled might be a good way to do it.
Homer Simpson: Public transportation is for jerks and lesbians.
Solving traffic congestion with self-driving buses that poor and middle class people need to ride on is a bit presumptive
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
they are called "trains"...
Both the Bloomberg and the TechCrunch articles do not report Musk talking about any self driving bus. His only comments were:
“We have an idea for something which is not exactly a bus but would solve the density problem for inner city situations, I don’t want to talk too much about it. I have to be careful what I say.”
I'm no big fan of all the "self driven" bullshit being heaped upon us lately but I don't see how the "AI" on these buses could be any less skilled than your typical Denver bus driver...
There is nothing in the article that even points us in the direction of a bus other than "Something not really like a bus". In fact there is nothing in this article that points us at anything
Whatever happened to telecommuting? It was suppose to be the wave of the future but seemingly fell flat. How about we stop traveling to yet another building that needs heated and cooled and parking spaces from an already heated and cooled building with parking spaces to sit in front of a computer that can be done anywhere?
I think he is brainstorming a driverless limo/bus. Without the driver station it could be square to shorten the vehicle. Then separate the vehicle into compartments with say 3 or 4 sections. You can book a whole section for yourself or share. Just imagine a squarish vehicle with 4 sets of gull wing doors.
They don't want to talk about it since it's likely they would be for uber, lift and conventional taxi businesses.
Don't forget once we have driverless the local taxi medallion companies can get in on the game quite easily too.
What's he going to do about the mass unemployment he will create? What will he do when the market can't absorb those jobs elsewhere as AI has entered there too?
Obviously, this redues his own customer base over time.
I think we will call this business strategy harikari.
Back in the day, every once in a while someone would propose some "this will solve everything" solution to the problem of spam, and we'd reply with the list of many reasons why it wouldn't work. I feel like we need to update the meme below for all of the technocratic solutions coming out of Silicon Valley nowadays by people who don't particularly live in the real world, and/or are millennials.
Your post advocates a
( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
How is this different from buses with drivers? That hasn't solved the problem. (Not sure there really is a problem)
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
Fewer people.
Granted, this would take a heck of a lot more effort to accomplish than an autonomous bus, but it would have huge ripple effects when it came to transportation, food and pollution.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Are bus drivers so expensive that they are the thing preventing us from having more buses on the road?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
This is simply the logical extension of Uber Pool with self-driving vehicles - multiple riders sharing their rides to multiple destinations. With a critical mass of riders and vehicles and flexible computer-optimized on-the-fly routing, travel effectiveness is going to skyrocket.
Agreed. Some people might be into it, but it really, really doesn't appeal to me. Especially when people start talking about "OMG GUYS SOON MANUALLY DRIVEN SHITBOXES WILL BE OUTLAWED AND YOU'LL HAVE TO CONVERT". I don't see multi-billion dollar industries just stepping side (aftermarket/performance car parts, motorcycle manufacturers, etc.), or every person being comfortable with that idea, or people being happy about being forced to buy a new car.
Buses and taxis are a different story though, I could see those really taking off if the tech is good enough.
As long as whoever is making them starts considering security, unlike many current car manufacturers.
One of the reasons I choose nort having a driver's licence, is because I'm not interested on women known here as car predators. So, what that little turd have in mind, when she keeps stalking me, if I don't have any atraction nor even interest in her? That shit didn't even passed the first item in my priority list, which I don't mention because I don't care if she changes her lifestyle.
He might try getting hus non-autonomous vehicles to function correctly first. Also, his ignorance of logistical issues can be downright shocking at times
Roads do need to be kept in condition for these things to work so it's worth considering those costs as well when comparing to other forms of transport such as rail, trams and weird chairlift pod things that sound less stupid every day.
"Just add X to the roads we have" doesn't consider the long term and may not be the best choice, especially when it's time to try to add more road capacity.
No. Perfect the self driving Semi Truck and get robotic trucks out there to replace truck drivers. you can drive at the speed limit for 24 hours and get there faster than the current drivers that speed and overall drive like turds making things unsafe. plus you can get the trucks to drive in trains saving fuel in a huge way. Imagine 30 truck trains on I-80 across the country.
This is where it needs to happen.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I've said for awhile that the company that can cross uber with self driving and audible to give me a plan where I can pay 500$/mo in order to have a car come and pick me up when I need it will get me to give up my car.
I think a self driving car fleet could make that happen. I'm not one of those people whose identity is tied up in my car, it's just a box on wheels that I use to get from point A to B in the most efficient way possible. Getting from point A to B in the most efficient way is what I want, not the box on wheels.
Min
Min
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
My city has tons of buses. I ride them frequently. It's awesome to have the bus to myself like I often do.
The driver culture considers owning one's own car as a crucial element in their self-image of freedom. Historically, they have voted for transit systems only when they think buses and trains will take enough loser-cruiser-users off the road to lessen the traffic around their treasured freedom chariots.
But if ridesharing services and autonomous cars proliferate, a large number of new users will unwittingly move over from the driver culture to the rider culture. If you get used to Ubering and riding autonomous cars in the city, even you hold on to a weekend land yacht of your own, you will now be a lot friendlier to the idea of riding a multipassdenger transit vehicle when this will save money than you ever were before.
Put all vehicles on tracks, and let a computer operate the track and vehicle. This type of system will pay for itself in 5 years.
Have gnu, will travel.
I predict...
0. Self driving buses might work well. But I think the breakthough will begin with...
1. Taxi companies will run fleets of self-driving taxis: alledgedly safer driving, less risk of driver/passenger abuse, cheaper.
(Initially the public sector would not do that because of "joblosses". The private sector has no such qualms.)
2. Once the risk of joblosses is past, then taxis would evolve into public transport, because...
3. Private car ownership would decrease, due to:
- convenience (available upon demand, hands free, no licence needed, passenger safety, no parking issues, etc.)
- price (no inital outlay for a vehicle, electricity cheaper than fuel, no insurance, etc.)
- safety (allegedly safer drivers, road rage not aimed at other people, etc.)
4. Less car ownership leads to fewer cars overall because, unlike privately owned cars, taxis don't spend most of their time idly parked. That might reduce public spending overall due to less congestion, less road maintenance, less accident costs, fewer traffic crimes, etc. On the other hand, some of those are revenue earners, such as parking and speeding tickets, so I don't know.
So certainly, self driving could reduce congestion, but I think it'll happen best starting with taxis and of course... it will take time.
If a society also moved to basic income, then I would imagine public transport taxis becoming part of the overall basic income system.
Sounds a bit like communism or socialism to me, but perhaps an aspect of such that might actually work.
The problem here is precisely the dense population. Most places with horrible traffic don't have anywhere near the population density for a plan like this:They are traffic nightmares because they have huge, low density suburbs, making any bus system fail, even if the price of running it went down in half. LA, Seattle, Austin, DC.. Buses don't fix that. Improvement on buses would probably fix San Francisco, and might help in NYC, but those are places where buses are already usable.
There are ALREADY known issues with driverless CARS being plonked down into mixed traffic with humans.
So, he's going to double-down and and increase the weight (under dubious "control") by 8-11 times?
So instead of just endangering a couple people on the road, we can now endanger dozens?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Whatever happened to telecommuting? It was suppose to be the wave of the future but seemingly fell flat.
If your daily commute is a city bus, chances are quite good your lifestyle is closer to Rosa Parks than Steve Jobs.
Human legs and feet can solve El!'s problem.
Space the bus terminals 1300 meters apart.
Then the human legs and feet work to form a filter to the terminals thus reducing congestion.
Simple.
Ja Ja
Give it ten years. You will have what you wish for.
...a Musk bus meets a Google car?
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
If Elon Musk wants to invent something that will improve mass transit, how about a mind control device that will make people actually want to use public transit in the first place? All a 'self-driving bus' will do is make bus drivers less skilled -- because they'll still have to sit there, supervising some shitty pseudo-AI that is pseudo-driving a 9 ton chunk of metal and flesh on wheels that could kill dozens of people if it fucks up -- and make no mistake, it will be required to still have manual controls and a qualified human operator, alert and supervising it, at all times. Stupid idea.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Personally, it would have to be a lot cheaper than $500/mo. Maybe half that - I haven't had a car loan in over a decade.
Agreed. I mean from time to time you can still see horses on the roads. Most people don't ride them anymore, sure, but some people just love 'em.
We don't believe in radical loony monotheistic religions from the middle east -- we're Christians.
They do solve this problem, even if they currently still need a driver. The problem is that most cities without a well-working public transit system are lacking vision and/or money. But there really is no need for "self driving buses" to implement working, efficient and reliable public transportation.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I expect it's a road train bus thing.
Pick up is via individual carriages, in the outskirts of the city where density is low.
As the carriages get closer to the centre, they couple up (maybe not physically - just driving really really close) to other carriages going in the same direction.
It then decouples near the destination to take each small compartment of people to their actual drop off points.
That reminds me of an amusing story; I had the misfortune of living in both Muskogee and Spencer, OK but I did see one cool sight in both places on a regular basis: blacks on horseback, wearing cowboy hats... Just saying. :)
I'm not one of those people whose identity is tied up in my car
I dont know about "identity" (I hate American cars in general and GM in particular; I drive a Suburban) but I'm going to suggest that it's a good thing you (unlike me) don't feel a need to be behind the wheel? Why? Because to become truly proficient behind the wheel, you need to be passionate about it... and which you, obviously, are not.
Of course, you also need to not be stupid (I'm not suggesting you are), which of course rules out 40 to 60% of the drivers on American roads. In any case, the solution isn't the bullshit "fake AI" they're desperately (i can smell it) trying to foist on us, but rather to require a far more stringent certification process to obtain a license.
I've said for awhile that the company that can cross uber with self driving and audible to give me a plan where I can pay 500$/mo in order to have a car come and pick me up when I need it will get me to give up my car.
Which would be more expensive than what my car costs a month even with gas, scheduled maintenance, and insurance account for. Plus I don't have to wait for it every time I need it (hired cars are never consistently on time.)
I'm anything but an Uber fan. However, what he is proposing is probably something very similar to UberPool with self-driving cars and, unlike other forms of public transit, this would be a significant improvement over private transportation. Other posters have pointed out that specially made electric vehicles could provide private passenger compartments although I'm not even sure that's necessary. Sharing is usually less this issue on public transit than the fact that it's cramped. I've ridden in black cars that are quite nice and spacious and wouldn't really care who was in the other seats as long as they are hygienic.
I'm with the AC above - $500/ month? That's a lot of cash. Now I realize that, amortized, that's probably about the monthly cost of buying a [gas] car outright plus fuel and maintenance over a 10-year span. But there's a big difference between a one-time cost and recurring monthly payments: recurring financial obligation.
Personally I prefer larger one-time payments and then having no recurring obligation. (Incidentally, this is why I also dislike the idea of software subscriptions - those pesky recurring obligations...)
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
The original interview/discussion is available as an embedded video in this article: http://e24.no/digital/elon-musk/elon-musk-norge-har-en-fantastisk-fordel/23663856
Elon Musk starts talking about it 40 minutes into the video.
Self-driving cars can essentially be "more polite" to the bus than the best drivers, and a hell of a lot "more polite" to the bus than most drivers. This could have a very minor or a more significant impact on trip time and/or on trip time consistency depending on a variety of factors. Note, too, that some of these items could help with streetcars, trolleys, or other rail-based at-grade transit too.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
You're right, nobody should ever think of a new idea or try to solve a problem. Something bad might happen!
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
to require a far more stringent certification process to obtain a license.
Which would prevent a lot of people from getting licenses, thus potentially denying them a practical way to get to and from work unless there's also a massive expansion of public transportation. How is that going to help the economy again?
Buses are expensive.
They provide a monopoly in an area for a particular transportation company.
They are the constant threat to bicyclists.
They are noisy.
In metropolitan areas, people make themselves vulnerable by waiting for them.
In many areas, their schedules and routes are limited to commercial interests.
Smaller personal transportation is a better answer.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
I factor in opportunity cost too - I spend 2 hrs a day of my life driving to work (averages - some days it's a lot worse then that). If I could ignore the trip and get work done, I make money that I'm leaving on the table at the moment. Driving time is lost time to me, and time is money so I'd be willing to pony up for the extra time. That having been said, I'd take the deal for less then 500 too if you wanna negotiate them down? :)
And I totally get that there are people who treat this as their hobby, and that changes things. I do lots of things as hobbies that make no financial sense. Driving isn't one of those things for me, so I add up all the costs of car ownership and the costs of driving to work, driving the kid to her places, etc and come up with a number that when someone can meet my requirements for that number I'll be willing to sign. Ya, I'm probably towards the early adopter side of this curve, but that's what it's worth to me.
Min
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
The headline and summary talks about a bus. The quote from Mr. Musk says it's not a bus.
*Facepalm*
Grow up.
My problem is, they don't have the basic autonomous control worked out to the point where these things are safe on public streets with regular cars weighing in at 3-4000 lbs.
So they're going to take the same flawed control system and drop it into a bus that weighs in at 28-33,000 lbs?
This isn't about "new ideas" or "solving a problem". This is trying to shoehorn faulty tech into yet another situation.
Said faulty tech already endangers lives. They're simply creating a situation where it will now endanger MORE lives at the same time.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Bravo on Space-X. Bravo on Tesla. But, please stop spending money on autonomous cars. 'Johnny Cabs' are a wasteful mode of transportation and they don't solve the real problem of crumbling infrastructure (crap bridges/highways/roads) and over population (too many cars/buses/trucks and not enough space). Also, stop with hyper loop. A vacuum tube? really? Please put your resources and Engineering talents into helping http://www.skytran.com/ become a reality. Thanks.
What you said PLUS no retaining trip logs past whatever is needed for bill settlement, strict 'need a warrant' laws for cops (violation of which carries dismissal and jail time), and no access at all for employers, insurers, and civil attorneys. Then I MIGHT think about it. Maybe.
The big thing about busses, commuter busses, etc, is that one bus that holds 50 cars worth of people (the average commuter car holding 1 person), only takes up three "car spaces" on the highway, in the city, etc. 50 cars take up the space of 50 cars. Plus the "gap" space between them for safety.
This is so fucking wrong. These 50 people go to different destinations and you can't take single bus to many destinations, so they occupy two, three or may be four buses in sequence. Suddenly, your "equation" does not look that great because you need much more buses than one. And these buses have to run all day even without full load to provide reliable service and your "equation" is less great again.
I live in Moscow all my life and I *had* to buy a car at some point, because it was about 20 minutes of driving from home to work while public transport took about an hour and a half. Take a bus, enter subway, switch subway lanes, take a bus. Or, take a bus, then another bus, then another bus (much less reliable than subway and generally longer). Do that in -20C weather, wait your bus for 20 minutes while strong wind blows. Do that in 0C weather with roads covered with icy puddles. Then advertise public transportation...
So they're going to take the same flawed control system and drop it into a bus that weighs in at 28-33,000 lbs?
Yes, they are. And they are going to test the hell out of it, and not put it on public streets until they are pretty damned sure it won't kill someone and get them sued into bankruptcy.
It's not difficult to understand, as long as you realize you're not the only smart person in the world. It's not like they haven't considered the risks -- they aren't just going to throw a self-driving bus onto the streets tomorrow and hope for the best.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Pedestrians jaywalking intersections when the crossing light starts flashing red (and counting down if your city has the countdown lights)? It's amazing how many people think it's legal to step off the curb when the countdown has started.
As far as I can tell, jaywalking is 85% of the congestion problem in most metropolitan areas. It definitely is in Seattle.