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.

Comments

small buses, not big ones?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:small buses, not big ones?

[Immerman]

Indeed, small buses, especially if benefiting from the drastically lower maintenance of electric drive, and possibly organized more like a taxi-sharing service. Even just having smaller buses running much more frequently would make busses far more attractive.

Of course the bus driver also sort of doubles as a sort of low-impact security guard, but I could easily see fleets of minibuses in say, Denver, being attended by minimum-wage stoners encouraging people to "just chill out" and doing a little cleanup throughout the day. It'd probably be a heck of a lot more pleasant. Heck, you could probably even get lots of people willing to work as part time attendants in exchange for a free bus pass, and reduce the actual cost to near zero.

Re:small buses, not big ones?

[Joe_Dragon]

The bus driver also helps in stopping people from not paying and riding for free.

Re:small buses, not big ones?

[Immerman]

True, I suppose I was including that in the "security guard" concept.

Re:small buses, not big ones?

[Altus]

Thats funny because in the states we absolutely fund busses with public money. You still pay for public transit but it is subsidized. You guys don't have public busses at all? Just private ones?

We have private bus lines too but they are generally inter-city buses.

Re:small buses, not big ones?

[mrchaotica]

The bus driver also helps in stopping people from not paying and riding for free.

So? Other than the opinions of entitled suburbanite "I demand that you subsidize my roads but don't you dare use My Tax Dollars for transit" assholes, why not just make the fare $0? It's not as if most transit systems fund more than a small fraction of their budgets from fares anyway...

I don't know, Elon...

[rmdingler]

Solving traffic congestion with self-driving buses that poor and middle class people need to ride on is a bit presumptive

Re:Fucking stop it.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

The very definition of an inventor.

Re:Fucking stop it.

[idji]

this exists https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Can't be any worse than what we've got already...

[Type44Q]

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...

No information

[Harlequin80]

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

An uberesque vehicle

[BlueCoder]

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.

Re:An uberesque vehicle

[rtb61]

I like the idea of footpaths with culverts underneath housing star trek turbo lift style transport. Add an extension to the system for your dwelling or enter via a public access point and either use a private transport unit or a public one. Leaving much smaller roads for cargo and emergency services. Interesting 3D transport system with horizontal and vertical lanes at congestion locales, 1 lane, 2 lanes, 2x2 lanes, 2x3 lanes and 3x3 lanes. The whole idea to avoid all interaction between the transport units and anything uncontrolled in the transport space (people, animals and the hugely reduced number of manually controlled vehicles).

Re:No mention of self driving buses

[guises]

More like a self-driving taxi, I'd imagine. A self-driving bus doesn't have any substantial advantages over regular buses, but a self-driving taxi... might be slightly cheaper. Slightly. It's revolutionary!

Re:Fucking stop it.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I'm puzzled. When referring to "rich people", are you talking about rich individuals (which aren't going to buy buses for themselves), or first world nations (which are already buying expensive and comfortable buses from bus manufacturers)? OK, forget that, you'd be wrong either way.

Time for an old Slashdot meme update

[Etcetera]

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!

Re: Time for an old Slashdot meme update

[Etcetera]

What's funny is that the spam problem was solved years ago. Can't remember the last time a piece of spam hit my inbox. You need a new example.

Well, I'd put it more as:

(-) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email

For the most part, and for most consumers, there now IS a centrally-controlling authority for email: Google. And if they're not using Gmail, they're using Yahoo Mail or Hotmail/Live/Outlook.com. Combined, they can basically dictate filtration rules for non-business US spam filtering. And for B2B spam filtering, there's a whollle lot of outsourcing that gets done to one of very few vendors. The meme writers (and all of us back in the day), didn't foresee that distributed (ISP-level or lower) email that you use Eudora, Entourage, Thinderbird, etc. would go away for most users.

It's worth noting that outside the US, and especially in developing areas, spam is still a pretty big problem, even moreso if you consider security/attack vectors as "spam"

Re:Time for an old Slashdot meme update

[Immerman]

Oh boy, are we playing this game again? Do mine! Do mine!

You ban all mass mailing other than those for which the receiver has explicitly opted-in, and can easily opt-out. Nasty fines and rapidly escalating penalties for repeat offenders. Everyone's free to forward any spam to "violations@spamcop.gov", and any sender submitted more than a threshold number of times gets tracked down, investigated, tried, and penalized (the point of spam being to extract money from the recipient, senders can only obfuscate their real identity so much).

Wouldn't be a perfect fix by any means, but I think it would go a long way to eliminating spam from "legitimate" comapnies

Re:Time for an old Slashdot meme update

[serviscope_minor]

The trouble with the spam thing is that it applies to spam not to anything else. Whereas there are in fact hybrid legslative-market based-technical solutions which do ease congestion as you might see in many major cities.

For example, on the technical side you need a network of public transportation including busses, trains and underground rail. Not only that but they can be tied together with a good tracking system making it very easy to not only plan journies but find accurate up-to-date information for making unplanned ad-hoc journies.

That has to be backed with legislation.

And then you've got more legislation, such as congestion charging where drivers are charged for entering certain areas at certain times in order to push the cost of congestion on to the people who actually cause it, rather than everyone else. This of course allows road based mass transit (i.e large busses) to operate much more effectively which makes people more likely to use them in the first place.

Then you've got more legislation/technical things like adding in protected cycle routes and more legelative things like banning the most dangerous types of goods vehicles which haven't been retrofitted with safety measures for bicycles. And if you don't think bicycles are a solution to congestion, I invite you to come to a busy bike lane in rush hour and count the commuters/per second passing you then compare that to the same count for a motor vehicle based route. The numbers are of course quite clear.

Then from that point, you give people free choice (market based) so that once you've set up things to be good, you then let people choose freely.

It won't solve congestion completely, however it does allow vast numbers of commuters to flow into/out of a city at peak times without significant hold up.

Just avoid Tooting bloody 'ighstreet at rush-aaa innit.

Re:Time for an old Slashdot meme update

[Plus1Entropy]

I had a similar idea for getting rid of scam phone calls. A national (or whatever government level) whitelist, coupled with personal whitelists. Any number not on either your whitelist or the national one simply can't get through, they get a busy signal or something. Companies can register to be placed on the national whitelist, but must prove their validity etc. Abuses can be reported, and fines, suspensions, bans, etc. can be imposed if necessary.

Re:Time for an old Slashdot meme update

[Rob Bos]

You. I like you.

Re:No mention of self driving buses

[starless]

More like a self-driving taxi, I'd imagine. A self-driving bus doesn't have any substantial advantages over regular buses, but a self-driving taxi... might be slightly cheaper. Slightly. It's revolutionary!

Like Uber are working on after hiring a large portion of Carnegie Mellon's robotics department?
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09...

What's the difference?

[infinite9]

How is this different from buses with drivers? That hasn't solved the problem. (Not sure there really is a problem)

Re:What's the difference?

[rubycodez]

picks you up and takes you from exactly where you are and where you want to go. city buses don't do that

Re:What's the difference?

[mattventura]

But you also lack the ability to intervene (or at least call security/police) in case of a fight, or answer question about the route. I've even had a bus driver disallow someone from riding the bus, because, I quote verbatim, "I can smell you from here". Show me a machine that will do that!

Re:What's the difference?

[mrpolyrhythm]

Here's the shocker: human beings in control of motorized vehicles are increasingly DANGEROUS. The autonomous vehicles with human operators as a failsafe is a transition phase. As the AI gets better, accidents decrease, safety increases, the humans will no longer be needed. For long haul truckers, worried about losing their jobs, I would expect their roles to shift to security guards because most likely, we'd want someone guarding those trucks of stuff shipping all over the place. This is technological progress -- humans being replaced by machines. In a constantly evolving technological world, this makes sense. Humans need to be taken out of the problem because with so many error prone humans driving on ever denser roads, the possibility of death increases. At this point, the number of vehicular deaths on the roads is unacceptable, and that is why technology is taking over. To the crowd averse to change, who say things like, "you're not taking my control away," -- you don't get to maintain control on public roads if my safety relies on you "following the rules" as the school bus problem currently exhibits. If you still want to drive your own car, then do it on a track, or buy a nice piece of land. The public road should be automated, and will be automated, because computers are far better at dealing with collision detection and traffic than human beings are. And what will happen is that the crash and ticket incidents will dramatically drop for self-driving cars to the point that the insurance companies end up making driving yourself prohibitively expensive. It will fix itself. And either you will embrace the change, or you will be stuck with your horse and your carriage proclaiming these newfangled devices to be the death to mankind. Progress happens regardless of how you personally feel about it. Slashdot is news for nerds, I'd expect a large part of those nerds to be in IT -- the very place where change happens ALL the time. We should be used to stuff changing by now.

Re:What's the difference?

[rubycodez]

no, because it's carrying a bunch of other people who have most of the route in common. Taxis are very fuel and time inefficient by comparison, hell this is the first thing Musk ever thought of that makes sense. Overpriced electric cars, such that the extra cost is more than double any possible savings in fuel cost of comparable normal car, doesn't make sense.

Are bus drivers so expensive?

[phantomfive]

Are bus drivers so expensive that they are the thing preventing us from having more buses on the road?

Re:Are bus drivers so expensive?

[Hadlock]

Drivers represent something like 80% of the vehicle costs, yes. A diesel powered bus costs about $300,000 as a one time cost + maintenance and last 10 years. and in major US cities a bus driver costs about $60,000-90,0000 per year, plus another $25,000/yr in health costs, retirement costs and administrative costs.
 
You can buy one additional bus for every three years of employing a bus driver.
 
And since you don't have to deal with humans, you can run the buses 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at the same frequency that you normally do during rush hour. Which means there's a bus coming by your house every 15 minutes, every day, forever. In my city you can get a bus every 15 minutes from 7am-4:45pm, but then goes to once every 2 hours, which makes it really hard to utilize public transit after work.

Re:Are bus drivers so expensive?

[Luthair]

There are a lot of other costs. Cleaning crews, maintenance crews, stations, graffiti, etc.

Realistically this won't solve anything, the issue isn't the driver, its the other people on the bus (which would be worse without someone in charge) and its far less convenient than your own car which takes you directly from A to B more quickly. As someone who doesn't own a car (by choice), by the time I walk to a bus stop I could have driven to most of my destinations.

Re:Are bus drivers so expensive?

[Hadlock]

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.
 
Even if you switched to 12 person buses (three compartments of 4 people each) running a sort of uber pool that ran in a loop, you're looking at huge advantages. And you don't have to worry about graffiti when everyone is authenticating with the GPS tracked cell phone.

Re:Are bus drivers so expensive?

[Michael Woodhams]

If your plan is something more like shared taxis than traditional buses (say 10-15 seats and door-to-door service, pickup on demand within 15 minutes) then there are many fewer passengers to share the cost of the driver, and I imagine it would be a significant part of the cost.

I don't know if this is what Musk has in mind, as the fine article is nearly contentless. (If so, it is hardly an exciting new idea.) I think that a service like this would get many people to go carless. It would do for me.

Re:Are bus drivers so expensive?

[sydbarrett74]

That's why they choose to drive.

Most choose to drive out of laziness and sloth. In a dense urban environment, there are precious few reasons for the vast majority of people not to walk the last few blocks from a bus-stop to their destination. Exemptions go to those who are physically incapacitated or are carrying one or more large objects where use of a hand-truck would be impractical. Otherwise, if you have the ability to use your legs, get off your fucking lazy arse and walk, dammit!

Re:Are bus drivers so expensive?

[N1AK]

In the UK you would need ~5-6 drivers to run a vehicle 24/7 accounting for breaks, holidays, illness etc. If you pay them £10.50 (about the London bus driver rate) then after pensions, national insurance etc you're talking around £3,000 a week, which is £160,000 a year (around $230,000). The driver and the equipment needed for a driver take up space and add weight that adds more additional cost.

London buses are expected to have a £350,000 cost over their 14 year lifetime, while based on the above a drivers costs £2.24 million over 14 years (I'm assuming higher utilisation though). In short, if self-driving tech doubled the bus purchase and running cost it would still cost £1.9 million less over its 14 years in service.

Re:Are bus drivers so expensive?

[Luthair]

How do you not need to worry about the bus being damaged? Security cameras don't give full coverage. Heck just normal wear & tear on vehicles running 12-16 hours a day is significant.

Re:Are bus drivers so expensive?

[Luthair]

In most cities there is still reason to drive, in most cities transit is good along very busy stretches but once you deviate outside that area buses might only run every 30 minutes, miss it or if a bus doesn't run ....

Re:Are bus drivers so expensive?

[Agent0013]

Sorry, but waiting at the bus stop for hours in the snow is not my idea of a good use of time. And the ability to stop off at a store and buy a trunk full, or even more than two bags, of stuff makes a bus impractical also.

Re:Are bus drivers so expensive?

[phantomfive]

Good numbers, thanks

Re:Can't be any worse than what we've got already.

[ArylAkamov]

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.

Re:No mention of self driving buses

[Anonymous Coward]

A self-driving bus doesn't have any substantial advantages over regular buses...

I suspect you haven't rode public transit via bus very much. While some of the bus drivers I've met are very courteous and on time, others can be down right rude, nasty, and seem mentally unstable.

Here's what you will not get with an autobot:

* Rude
* Sleeping on the job
* Changing the route (because I want to, so shut up)
* Driving by you in the rain, while you waive and beg for it to stop
* Medical care liabilities
* A call in saying it is sick
* Paying for someone to sit at the bus terminal and fill in crossword puzzles in case someone calls in sick

While I like to drive my own car, I imagine I would love to ride an autobot.

Re:Fucking stop it.

[rubycodez]

eh, self driving bus in inner city sounds very doable and safer for the present compared to autonomous car that has to deal with different environments and high speeds. the tech is already here and sufficient for it

Re:we already have it

[rubycodez]

electric trains that get you within four blocks are great, I use 'em every work day

Re:No mention of self driving buses

[Imrik]

One other thing you won't get with an autobot, someone to intervene in situations.

Moving the headstones not the bodies

[dbIII]

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.

Dear Elon.....

[Lumpy]

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.

Re:Dear Elon.....

[Wizarth]

Electric semi's are already in development and testing. E.G. http://www.popularmechanics.co...

Presumably this concept is aimed more for suburban areas, where hopefully semi's aren't a significant portion of the traffic.

Re:Dear Elon.....

[Gavagai80]

Imagine 30 truck trains on I-80 across the country.

Now imagine being the human driver who needs to merge into that lane.

Re:Dear Elon.....

[CanadianMacFan]

No, you need to get cargo off the highways and onto trains which are much more fuel efficient. Forget the Hyperloop for people. Make it for cargo and get the trucks off the highways. I was leaving Toronto late one night and it was mostly transports. And a lot of those trucks are all heading to the same place. Use shipping containers, put them on trains, and then use trucks to do short haul for the last leg. Then by getting the trucks off of the highways we make them safer and we don't have to keep expanding them.

Re:Dear Elon.....

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

And the weight of those transports is what destroys roads the most compared to regular cars and trucks, so that's another plus for that idea.

Re:No mention of self driving buses

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure about all public transit bus systems, but I do recall the one my family member drove for. They explicitly told them not to get involved in situations, even if someone was being threatened. Call it in, they were told.

Re: You are wasting money

[nsuccorso]

Dear IBM Watson Team, Please put the Slashdot posting bot back into acquire mode. I don't think it's fully baked just yet.

Re:Can't be any worse than what we've got already.

[Minupla]

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

Re: Fucking stop it.

[mspohr]

So , the Tesla electric cars don't count?
Or, the SpaceX launches of satellites and space station resupply?
Or, millions of solar panels?
What have you done... Ever.

Re:Fucking stop it.

[PopeRatzo]

the tech is already here and sufficient for it

Yes, it's called a "train".

There have been self-driving mass-transit vehicles in service for a decade.

Re:Bigger Problem

[rubycodez]

What are we going to do with the massive unemployment the horseless carriages will cause? the breeders, the whip makers, the blacksmiths, the hay balers, the veterinarians, the reinmakers, the shit shovelers.....what will we do when the market can't absorb those jobs as mechanical devices have entered there too?

Re:we already have it

[PopeRatzo]

Trains are worse at taking you to your destination than buses.

Trolleys, my friend. They're buses before Rockefeller and GM convinced cities to give up their electric fleets for polluting vehicles.

http://www.gutenberg.us/articl...

Re:we already have it

[matbury]

Yes, we have trains, trams, street cars, buses, minibuses, taxis, and municipal bikes. The transportation technology is a non-issue, it's totally do-able. The issue is with creating a coherent, coordinated, integrated system that actually works so that people can get from A to B when and where they need to. Private corporations and start-ups just don't do anything like this. That's what government is supposed to do and does do in more civilised countries and regions. I think Elon Musk is talking to a group of people who haven't ever got out into the real world where effective systemic public transport is the norm.

Re: Fucking stop it.

[roman_mir]

Welfare is profitable of course, but you didn't have to 'turn it', it was just there for you to take.

Re:Fucking stop it.

[Applehu Akbar]

Early-adopter testing has been the launch model for every new technology since the atlatl.

The US has a driver culture and a rider culture

[Applehu Akbar]

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.

Re:Fucking stop it.

[PopeRatzo]

In city and suburban areas, it can cost $100M to over $1B per *mile* of track for trains/trams/subways.

Except there were already successful (and profitable) trolley systems in the 50 largest US cities before GM and the oil industry exerted their influence to have them torn up and replaced by GM buses running on diesel. And existing rails are cheaper to maintain than roads.

Just take ...

[PPH]

... a Tesla Model 3 and add some hobo funk. It'll be jus like a self-driving bus.

Gradual change into public transport taxis

[LongearedBat]

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.

Re:Gradual change into public transport taxis

[Neo-Rio-101]

I'm pretty certain in the future, all we need to do is use a smartphone app to call one of the many roving AI driven taxis about to pick us up... or have them routinely scheduled to do so every day. Indeed, we won't need to own our own car - especially in large cities where car ownership is unecessary

Densely populated cities

[hibiki_r]

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.

Re:Bigger Problem

[fluffernutter]

The shift to automobiles did not reduce the requirement for jobs as AI will. The automobile did not replace people, AI replaces people.

Re:Fucking stop it.

[baker_tony]

Yeah, if only he was in the position to be able to make this technology that doesn't exist...

Oi vey! How NOT to solve a problem.

[Chas]

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?

Not everybody works at a keyboard, kid.

[westlake]

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.

One wonders what happens when...

[uncqual]

...a Musk bus meets a Google car?

Re: Fucking stop it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've turn a profit. He hasn't.

Like some other unnamed people he got a small loan from his father.
In Elons case it was in the size of $28,000 rather than millions.
It's not his dads money he is burning off right now, it's profit he got from selling companies he started.

So to say that Elon hasn't turned a profit is a bit dishonest. He wasn't born into the money he is spending now.

Since we already know that you lied about him not turning a profit I'm going to assume you lied about you turning a profit too.

Implying people do or want to ride the bus

[kheldan]

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.

Re:Implying people do or want to ride the bus

[thegarbz]

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?

There's nothing wrong with public transport. I'm sure everyone would be happy to use it. People are however not happy to use a painful slow form of transport crammed shoulder to shoulder in a tiny uncomfortable cabin which smells of BO while being stuck in the same traffic as they would be in their car.

You don't need mind control, you just need good public transport, though I don't think these things can be solved by a self driving bus.

Re:Implying people do or want to ride the bus

[hattig]

It's not a bus, the article says that. It's public transport, but I think the conveyance is a lot smaller than a bus - maybe a mini-bus size, or even a people carrier size.

The road use enhancements come from multiple such vehicles being able to drive in close formation due to the autonomous and cooperative nature of the system.

And of course even if a carriage only has two or three people in it (maybe 6 people per 10m of road), that's higher density than 1 person in a car (which is 1 person per 10m of road).

Autonomous Taxi Train might be a better term.

Also in other countries, bus use isn't looked down on as it's not a ghetto transport mechanism.

Re:Implying people do or want to ride the bus

[sydbarrett74]

smells of BO while being stuck in the same traffic as they would be in their car

The first objection could be handled with periodic PSA's about the importance of good personal hygiene in crowded conditions (most people with hygiene problems are oblivious and inured to it and if it is pointed out tactfully, they will be sufficiently chastened so as to fix their behaviour).

The second is fixed by having bus-only lanes or corridors.

Re:Implying people do or want to ride the bus

[crtreece]

I don't know how public transport works where you are, but here it runs from approximately 6a-9p. This means it starts too late for a lot of people to use it going to work, and stops too early to use it when going out at night. The routes are designed in a spoke/hub setup, so unless you are going to/from the Downtown area, the efficiency is somewhere between "major PITA" to "might as well take a cab".

If there were more, smaller vehicles, there could be more routes, in more useful layouts. If the vehicles have no drivers, then there is no one to bitch about having to work the night shift, which I would expect is more dangerous.

Re:Implying people do or want to ride the bus

[dave420]

Public transport works wonders in other countries.

Re:Implying people do or want to ride the bus

[kheldan]

The second is fixed by having bus-only lanes or corridors.

Sure. And traffic problems on highways were supposed to be 'fixed' by having carpool-only lanes.. which end up empty, while all the other general-use lanes are bumper-to-bumper. All having a 'bus-only' lane will accomplish will be to piss off drivers who are sitting in traffic while half-empty buses go whizzing by them. Oh and by the way if we're going to have 'bus-only lanes' then we also need to have protected bike lanes everywhere, too -- which will also piss off drivers. The U.S. is a car-centric country, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. Public transit is not practical because it doesn't go everywhere you need to go, and it takes way too long to get anywhere. Everyone riding bikes is a non-starter too because not everyone can or has the time. We've all heard the arguments for and against both and I'm not going to put all of them here, go find them yourself. In the U.S. at least public transit is the province of the poor, and unless you can magically change hearts and minds to see that differently you're not going to magically make public transit 'fashionable' and highly utilized. If you can't do that then you can't get people to vote for legislation to fund huge expansive public transportation projects, which means it won't improve which means nobody is going to use it. Meanwhile it wouldn't matter anyway because the 1%-ers wouldn't be caught dead on a public bus, and so long as that persists, public transit is always going to be viewed as something only the poor use. Meanwhile at least half or more of people who talk about how we should get rid of cars and use public transit will likewise find reasons why they need their cars and not take the bus themselves so none of this ever goes anywhere. You, friend, are just one more person in a long line of people stretching back for 100 years who stump about how we need more and better public transit but you see it never really happens? Please, just give up. People like personal transportation in this country, and improving that instead of trying to force public transit on people is the direction we need to keep moving in. If you like taking buses and trains everywhere and walking then perhaps you should consider moving to the EU where that's the mindset; it's just not going to fly here.

Re:Can't be any worse than what we've got already.

[Bonobo_Unknown]

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.

Re:Bigger Problem

[Bonobo_Unknown]

What's he going to do about the mass unemployment he will create?

People don't live to work, people have to work to live. At least until work is no longer required. Then we'll need a new system of distribution. One that does not couple work output to income. Because soon enough work will be the scarce resource.

Re: Fucking stop it.

[Plus1Entropy]

Paypal isn't profitable?

Re:No mention of self driving buses

[Plus1Entropy]

You left out the part "Autonomous vehicles are key". So not specifically buses, but this is modern journalism, after all.

Trams and buses already exist

[gweihir]

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.

Re: Fucking stop it.

[Barsteward]

how can we tell if you turned a profit? Do you employ as many people as him?

Re:Fucking stop it.

[Monoman]

Those train things require rails which is expensive and limiting compared to the autonomous vehicles being developed use existing roadways. Adapting routes due to construction or unexpected traffic jams isn't really an option with trains.

Re:we already have it

[Monoman]

Trolley's still require rails which is expensive and not very adaptable to unexpected roadwork or traffic jams. An autonomous vehicle running the same "route" could be rerouted if needed for special events, scheduling, etc.

Decoupling Road-Train-Bus

[hattig]

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.

Re: we already have it

[nehumanuscrede]

Cars are for people whose commute distance makes taking the buss unrealistic.

Cars are for people whose job hours can vary from day to day which makes bus schedules frustrating.

Cars are for people who once had no other alternative than to take the bus and, after the experience, swore to never step on one ever again.

Cars are for people who don't wish to sit next to the masses in a confined space. Because they include any or all of the following:

The guy yelling into his cell phone.
The guy who forgot what a bar of soap is.
The guy who smokes like a chimney.
The crazy guy talking to himself.
The gal who used a gallon of perfume.
The 500lb guy who sits right next to you.
etc. etc. etc.

So, tbh, I don't care if the bus is autonomous or not. In fact, it could be FREE and I still wouldn't use it for the aforementioned reasons.

Re:Bigger Problem

[Gussington]

The shift to automobiles did not reduce the requirement for jobs as AI will. The automobile did not replace people, AI replaces people.

It took more people to maintain a horse than a car.
Widespread robot cars are still a pipe dream at the moment, making statements about how many or how few jobs it will destroy is quite brave.
If you need a suitable analogy, we have robot trains right now, and a the rail company still hires lots of people.

Re: Can't be any worse than what we've got already

[Type44Q]

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. :)

Re:No mention of self driving buses

[Imrik]

Even calling it in is intervening, and I wasn't so much referring to major situations, as little things. Like if the bike rack is full deciding whether or not there's enough space on the bus for someone to hold their bike, deciding if someone who can't pay should be allowed to ride, asking people who are being obnoxious to keep it down or get off, telling someone with a large dog that it needs to be muzzled to ride.

Re: Can't be any worse than what we've got already

[Type44Q]

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.

Re:Fucking stop it.

[N1AK]

The issue with trains is that you've got fixed routes and stops with very little scope to modify these. I've just started a new job that's virtually on top of a train station in greater london. Even though I live within 15 minutes of two stations on different lines and 30 minutes on another line, all of which go into London, it is considerably faster for me to drive for 90 minutes each way than get the train because none of those lines are the one that goes where my work it.

My wife was looking at a role in Tooting (another area in London) near a station and you'd think by the number of train and underground lines, combined with the amount of London traffic it'd be a no brainer to use public transport... wrong, the need for three changes means it's much quicker to drive or even bike. Start looking at somewhere that doesn't have hundreds of stations and it becomes even less likely that rail transport is the way forward.

Now if someone offered a automated bus that took ~15 mins longer to get from near my house to the office and cost ~£30 a day (my effective car cost) I'd be all over that.

Re:No mention of self driving buses

[N1AK]

Perhaps think of a bus on the scale of 6-12 passengers rather than 30+ and it makes more sense. If 5 other people who commuted something similar to my route and were willing to pay the same for a bus service as they pay in fuel and other costs then that'd be ~£180 a day for that commute; and the vehicle would be available to do other work during the day, on weekends and in the evening.

Is that revolutionary? Maybe not, but if it could be made 20% cheaper than driving that's £1,500 I save a year, and I'm getting to sit in a comfortable environment and do something other than drive with 3 hours a day (and yes I appreciate that 1.5 hr commutes are an edge case, and no I don't intend to do it forever), and there'd be 1 vehicle on the road instead of 6.

UberPool with self-driving, electric cars

[edtice1559]

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.

Re:Can't be any worse than what we've got already.

[ThosLives]

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...)

Re:No mention of self driving buses

[U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M]

While I really like driving my own car, I suspect I would much prefer the autobot.

What if you get the nasty, rude, and potentially mentally unstable decepticon?

Re:Fucking stop it.

[PopeRatzo]

many rail systems still exist in the 50 biggest US cities so now you're just making stuff up.

I said "trolley". There is a difference.

Re:No mention of self driving buses

[arth1]

One other thing you won't get with an autobot, someone to intervene in situations.

Or prevent situations from happening, simply by being there.
Vandalism, violence, sexism are all curbed to at least some degree by there being a driver present who can observe and report.

Cameras are fine, but who are going to watch the cameras? And what to do when one stops working - stopping and auto-calling 911 just in case?

Original interview

[pere]

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.

Re:Bigger Problem

[fluffernutter]

Perhaps it took more people to maintain a horse then a car, but when cars became popular they still needed domestic employees to manufacture them.

Re:Fucking stop it.

[mrchaotica]

Bull. Everybody and their dog has "planned" autonomous cars and hyperloops, but that doesn't make them inventors. Musk is only different because he has the cash to execute the plans.

Just think of what could be accomplished if we didn't limit innovation to people who won the Paypal lottery...

Self-driving buses will be far more efficient

[stomv]

if they communicate their positions to self-driving cars. Then, those autos get the heck out of the way of the bus. Consider:

• A bus lane that reverts to a non-bus lane when the bus isn't nearby;
• A bus that doesn't have to wait for your illegal parking/standing/stopping car to get the heck out of the way because the self-drive doesn't allow the car to be (illegally) in the way in the first place;
• A bus that has an easier time making it through intersections because self-driving cars organize themselves to provide enough room in the queue to turn right, to not stop ahead of the stop bar thereby preventing the bus from a wide turn, or by inching up and/or over to allow the bus to clear the intersection;

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.

Re:Oi vey! How NOT to solve a problem.

[Jeremi]

You're right, nobody should ever think of a new idea or try to solve a problem. Something bad might happen!

Re:Bigger Problem

[stdarg]

It took more people to maintain a horse than a car.

It takes very few people to raise and care for horses, even including accessories like horseshoes and saddles. 1000 years ago a sizable town could comfortably employ an entire horse industry to serve the local area. No way could one town employ an automotive industry for the local area. Cars are one of the great examples of increased productivity resulting in vastly greater complexity rather than fewer jobs.

Widespread robot cars are still a pipe dream at the moment

Depending what you mean by "robot cars" it's already here. We have lane assist, brake assist, parking assist, etc. There are a number of mainstream car models that are basically robot cars.

If you mean fully driverless, then still I wouldn't call it a pipe dream because we have proof of concept, huge money and will to implement it, and obvious business opportunities. It's going to happen.

Re:Bigger Problem

[rubycodez]

I suspect you are ignoring the mining, energy resources, refining of various materials, science and engineering, manufacturing, distribution, sales and marketing

Re:Bigger Problem

[rubycodez]

You are so funny since computer intelligence, artificial or otherwise, doesn't even exist. There has been no significant development in AI since the 1960s other than more raw processing power and storage to throw at a problem. Neural nets? 1950s! symbolic AI? 1950s! ontologies for symbolic AI? 1960s! genetic algorithms? 1950s! But this magic voodoo is going to cause massive unemployment? Hell even for what some call "AI" now there is massive market for developers

Re:Bigger Problem

[fluffernutter]

The bigger concern is robot semi-trucks. Robot cars will eliminate the taxi industry which is small compared to the trucking industry by an order of 1 to 100. Furthermore, efficiency is everything to the shipping business which is the greatest benefit that automation provides. There has already been a successful automated shipping test in Europe. There are 3 million truckers in the US alone with their jobs on the line.

I Hate Busses

[BrendaEM]

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.

Re:Can't be any worse than what we've got already.

[Minupla]

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

"something which is not exactly a bus" != "a bus"

[j2.718ff]

The headline and summary talks about a bus. The quote from Mr. Musk says it's not a bus.

Re:Bigger Problem

[fluffernutter]

I agree with you that we haven't really seen anything tangible come out of the new AI movement, and in fact I have made the same kind of comments before. On the other hand, Google seems very confident that their cars will be safe enough to drive people around very soon even though they are still driving into buses in perfect weather conditions. Judging by the amount of money being thrown into it, people are very confident. I am kind of dubious about it as well, because there seems to be a virtually infinite number of edge cases that they will need to capture. And they haven't even considered snow and ice yet.

Re:Oi vey! How NOT to solve a problem.

[Chas]

*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.

Dear Mr. Musk...

[msc.buff]

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.

Re:Fucking stop it.

[pnutjam]

Wish I had a mod point for you sir.

Re:Bigger Problem

[HiThere]

And yet...
Transport is only one arm of the problem, and blaming everything on the developers of automated transport is missing the point as much as claiming that there will be reasonable replacement jobs.

Automation *IS* coming. Fast...but not fast enough. There will be 2-3 more decades of transition, at the end of which almost nobody will have a job. Whether they will still be alive hasn't yet been decided. The choices we make today shape the form of the civilization that we can't really see coming. And during the transition there will be a lot of needed jobs, but nowhere near as many as there are people who need jobs. This is already happening, and has been in process since at least the 1980's. For awhile new jobs were created as fast as the old jobs were destroyed, but that had stopped happening by 1985. Perhaps earlier, because you can't trust the government records. They keep redefining "unemployment" to make the current administration look good. It wasn't, however, significant before around 1960, because before then the Supreme Court hadn't decided that cities couldn't have a residency requirement for general assistance, so there were reasonable estimates (though they were seasonal, and differed in different parts of the country).

Re:Fucking stop it.

[Wraithlyn]

A train doesn't have to deal with "different environments", just the opposite.

Re:Bigger Problem

[westlake]

What are we going to do with the massive unemployment the horseless carriages will cause? the breeders, the whip makers, the blacksmiths, the hay balers, the veterinarians, the reinmakers, the shit shovelers.....

These analogies are nonsense.

The blacksmith was repairing plows, threshers and other farm machiney beginning around 1860 --- and began moving into auto repair around 1900. There is a reason why early automobiles looked like horseless carriages: they were using the same roads and being built and maintained by the same people.

The modern farm tractor, with PTO and three-point hitch, doesn't appear in recognizable form until the late 1930s. There were about 18 million draft animals in service on American farms in 1930 and less than one million tractors. Trust me on this, there was plenty of shit left to shovel in the thirties, just not so much in the cities.

Re:Bigger Problem

[Gussington]

Perhaps it took more people to maintain a horse then a car, but when cars became popular they still needed domestic employees to manufacture them.

The country I live in has no domestic car manufacturing industry, and the sky hasn't fallen on our heads...

Re:Bigger Problem

[Gussington]

It takes very few people to raise and care for horses, even including accessories like horseshoes and saddles.

That's because not everyone owned a horse, because they were expensive to own and maintain.

1000 years ago a sizable town could comfortably employ an entire horse industry to serve the local area. No way could one town employ an automotive industry for the local area.

Of course they could. My uncle built his own car in his garage. It wouldn't be as easy or cheap, and only rich people could afford them, but it could be done. Pretty much exactly like horses in the old days, or how the early car industry operated, local manufacturing in local areas.

Cars are one of the great examples of increased productivity resulting in vastly greater complexity rather than fewer jobs.

Fewer horse jobs, more car jobs.
You know we have robot trains right now, and people still work in the train industry?

If you mean fully driverless, then still I wouldn't call it a pipe dream because we have proof of concept, huge money and will to implement it, and obvious business opportunities. It's going to happen.

Of course, but that is like looking at AOL in 1996 and saying you know what the the future of the Internet is. Who knows where robot cars will land, I can't see them simply being as 1 for 1 replacement for regular cars. Some people might not want one (I have robot feature on my car and hate them because they still aren't as good as I am at navigating/parking/awareness etc) , some might not need one due to improved robot bus and taxi services.
In short, the sky isn't going to fall on your head.

Re:Bigger Problem

[Gussington]

The bigger concern is robot semi-trucks. Robot cars will eliminate the taxi industry which is small compared to the trucking industry by an order of 1 to 100. Furthermore, efficiency is everything to the shipping business which is the greatest benefit that automation provides. There has already been a successful automated shipping test in Europe. There are 3 million truckers in the US alone with their jobs on the line.

I wonder how many elevator operators lost there jobs when elevators became fully automated?

Re:Bigger Problem

[Gussington]

I suspect you are ignoring the mining, energy resources, refining of various materials, science and engineering, manufacturing, distribution, sales and marketing

Only you are ignoring evolution and domestication.

Go on, make a horse and a car from scratch, (with no existing horse) and let me know which is easier...

Re:Fucking stop it.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Just think of what could be accomplished if we didn't limit innovation to people who won the Paypal lottery...

Sounds like circular reasoning to me. You wish we didn't limit innovation to people who've demonstrably innovated?

Re:Bigger Problem

[rubycodez]

I do believe there is a true path to AI though, but it won't be the computer scientists but rather biologists who will provide - we'll grow our AI computers. Probably in the future grow everything else as well: clothing, shelter, tools, etc.

The digital age may be a transient thing to something else

Re:Bigger Problem

[rubycodez]

irrelevant, was speaking of human effort only. the offspring of a wild horse can be domesticated easily, the past is of no import

Again, the fallacy of one bus vs 50 cars

[burbilog]

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...

Re:Oi vey! How NOT to solve a problem.

[Jeremi]

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.

Re:Bigger Problem

[Gussington]

irrelevant, was speaking of human effort only. the offspring of a wild horse can be domesticated easily,

By a human. How many humans does it take to domesticate a horse? breed, feed, and house it?
I don't have the exact figures, but I'll be willing to bet that the net human effort to build a billion cars is less than the same effort to produce a billion usable horses.

How would this solve...

[Psycho_Bunny]

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.