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Why Elon Musk Doesn't Like Flying Cars (yahoo.com)
boley1 quotes Business Insider:
According to Elon Musk, the main challenges with flying cars are that they'll be noisy and generate lots of wind because of the downward force required to keep them in the air. Plus, there's an anxiety factor. "Let's just say if something is flying over your head...that is not an anxiety-reducing situation," he said. "You don't think to yourself 'Well, I feel better about today. You're thinking 'Is it going to come off and guillotine me as it comes flying past?'"
He also doesn't like them because his company, The Boring Company, wants to provide a competing transportation solution.
He also doesn't like them because people will report on that, and then people will talk about his boring company. It's extremely profitable dislike.
On the other hand, I agree with him. Adding more air traffic is inefficient at best.
On the third hand, there's probably plenty of places where tunnels won't work. That's not a reason not to build tunnels where they will work, but we still need something which handles those situations. I still like elevated PRT.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
and warp drive?
A list of things he doesn't like would be a real time-saver.
Is that what he really thinks when he sees a flying bus (aka airplane)? An anxious panic, "That thing's going to come off and guilotine me as it comes flying past!"?
If so, I recommend therapy.
"He's a liar whose lawyer is lying about his lying lawyer's lies."
One can hear a helicopter kilometers away. Now imagine having thousands of those in the air all the time. Unbearable unless they first pass a law to surgically make us deaf. Then it's OK.
they can barely keep out of collisions on the ground, which covers left, right, forward and backwards, if they get the added complications of up and down and crash landings from up high it will only cause more death and destruction on top of the messes the typical driver does already
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
That I don't care for the driving of quite a few of the people that I share the road with now. I don't want to think of what they would be like as pilots. Besides, flying cars are only appealing while there are a limited number of them. I don't even want to consider those traffic jams.
If flying cars are available the defenses will be useless.
They already are, if that's what you mean by useless. It's already possible to practice flying in simulation, then get some manuals and learn how to actually start up a plane, then stroll onto an airfield someplace and steal one since so many of them have basically no security.
You won't be allowed to control a flying taxi manually, and they will be totally dependent on their computers to fly so you're not going to be trivially overriding them from inside the cockpit.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What brand of toilet paper Elon uses should make front page of Slashdot.
According to this genius, we live in a simulation.
Shoeless bandit was a teenage kid who stole several planes without any pilot training.
If flying cars are available the defenses will be useless.
Naw, the flying cars won't work well enough to be a security problem.
Seriously, You're absolutely correct. I expect that once the problem becomes apparent, the use of Personal Air Vehicles will be SEVERELY restricted. Might still be some usage for taxis and delivery services -- if the vehicles can be made safe enough, if they can't land on people, and can really be kept out of restricted areas including military bases, public areas, parks, etc, etc, etc.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
The threat of getting killed by one is also the reason why I don't want flying cars. Not just when I'm walking outside but also when I'm in my house. I don't want any Donnie Darko situation for my kids either.
... it is just a matter of time before someone ships himself instead of 100kg of Amazon purchases.
My fear would be 16 year old neighbor getting his flying car permit, I see Elon's point. Howeve,r a personal drone that appears to be as safe as some of these self driving cars are on the way to becoming would get people over the fear factor.
As for the noise, at least it will be short lived, unlike the neighbor's lawn mower that I'm listening to now.
What brand of toilet paper Elon uses should make front page of Slashdot.
Business Insider is a crap site owned by Jeff Bezos, so yea.
The problem with flying cars is... well they are flying. Which means they are in the air over our heads all the time. When a normal car malfunctions it is only traveling in two dimensial space and on a designated road, which means the damage is minimal given the cirumstances. When a flying car malfunctions he will not only crash into other flying cars in the same two dimensial space he will also fall in the third dimension and on other flying cars below him creating a cascading disaster and they will fall onto buildings, bridges, schools, stadiums e.t.c.
The only way flying cars will be a reality is that if they are treated exactly like airplanes, with all the pilot training, monitoring and security measures that comes with that or they will have their own "sky roads" which they follow, but in that case the point of flying cars are greatly reduced.
It is easier to inspire a suicide attack if the means of attack are commonplace than if they are rarer.
Still, this is not a valid reason to dislike flying cars. For a bunch of reasons.
Nah. You're wrong. The same could be done with cars by simply driving them into a building. If they revolutionize travel like the automobile did, then nothing will stop progress. The damage done from a flying car with two to four passengers is probably mild compared to what a semi truck with a large payload can do.
Tangentially, it's also probably the big step we need to have to get to everyday space flight. I'm still hoping to be a space pirate.
The real reason Elon Musk wouldn't want flying cars is because his [SECRET!] boyfriend Jeff Bezos would actually have to fly the car due to FAA regulations.
The real reason is because Elon is boring.
....because there are too many idiots, distracted drivers, and self important speed demons that can't drive correctly in 2D. Imagine a drunken
idiot crashing into your 5th floor apartment.
I imagine this would be a complete nightmare from a security standpoint for places such as prisons, open lot storage facilities, etc and expensive too to upgrade these facilities.
I am a major skeptic about the whole flying-car idea. For many reasons, but not the same reasons as Musk.
Here, I am disagreeing with one of Musk's points out of technical nit-pickery, but I DO agree with his overall conclusion that flying cars are not the right answer to personal transportation.
I agree they will be noisy. That will never be fully solved. (And expensive and unsafe, but that's off topic.)
But, Musk's wind objection -- I just don't buy it.
Yes, aircraft generate lift by displacing air downwards. Some inclined plane (either the wings, or the rotor blades) deflects air downwards, creating an equal and opposite force upwards. So yes, all flying machines "create downward wind". Some do it highly efficiently (at optimum cruising speed, a typical fixed-wing plane or even to a lesser extent a helicopter). Some do it a little less efficiently (a fixed wing plane at very low airspeed), and some do it horribly inefficiently (a helicopter or drone hovering).
The efficiency is largely a function of the craft's forward speed through the air, for a very basic Newtonian reason. F = ma.
The upward FORCE (which must counterbalance the aircraft's weight) must be matched by downwards ACCELERATION of some MASS of air. Acceleration is not velocity, it is rate of change of velocity. Therefore, lift comes from the act of imparting new or increased downward velocity on some mass of air. Absolute velocity doesn't help, only increase in velocity. Hold that thought, we'll get back to it.
An aircraft moving forward horizontally encounters a steady supply of new air that does not yet have any vertical velocity. OTOH, once an aircraft that is hovering, has imparted downward velocity on a column of air, it remains within that accelerated column as it tries to accelerate more mass downwards. The established downward velocity of the air doesn't help, only the acceleration (increase) in downward velocity of some part of that air. To solidify this concept, think of "swimming up a waterfall".
Hopefully this illustrates why hovering is highly inefficient, and cruising is much more efficient.
Enter simple economics. Any economically VIABLE system of flying vehicles spends the minimum time hovering and the maximum time cruising. This is the reason helicopters are used only for specialized tasks or by rich people, while fixed wing planes are used for general transportation. While I don't personally believe that flying cars will take off (bad pun semi-intended), if they do, simple economics dictate that they won't spend much time milling around close to their terminals hovering. They will rapidly get a move on along their course. Once they are moving en-route, their "downward wind" is over such a dispersed area that is is essentially immeasurable.
I don't know what exact means they'll use to transition from takeoff to cruise -- rotors, fixed wings, adjustable wings, whatever -- but they won't be concentrating their "downward wind" in one small place for very long. If one's vision of personal air transportation involves any significant time hovering close to the terminal, then economics dictate that it won't succeed. And downward wind during cruise is simply not a problem.
There will be some localized wind right at the terminals, but if you've ever stood nearby when a helicopter takes off, you know that it is windy very strong but very localized, and does not persist long after the helicopter moves away.
>> because of the downward force required to keep them in the air
huh! Author must be living in alternate universe...
4wdloop
"You don't think to yourself 'Well, I feel better about today. You're thinking 'Is it going to come off and guillotine me as it comes flying past?'
You're right, Elon, I don't think that. It's just not one of my current fears.
Elon Musk is apparently channeling a Luddite, which is both hilarious and embarrassing. This is the same guy who wants to transplant our brains into robot vehicles to roam the surface of Europa mining valuable minerals, and he's pissing his panties because he might accidentally get his head chopped off by a flying car?
There are LOTS better reasons to fear flying cars, especially if they're being piloted by disembodied brains that are pissed off because they didn't get to go on vacation to Europa.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
The bigger question is why we have to move around so much. Why does ever journey in modern suburban life require driving? I live in a city, and can walk to restaurants, walk to work, walk to the supermarket. I accept this is not for everyone, but suburban life sits at the other end, where getting a pint of milk requires driving. Add in congestion and parking issues and it is like a real-life rube-goldberg machine for living.
Stop this obsession with single use planning zones, and the need for humans to turn up in person everywhere and much of these problems can be fixed. It's not like we fixed the time it takes to deliver mail by having a fleet of hypersonic aircraft that can deliver letters anywhere in the world in less than an hour. We just used different technological solutions instead and got far better results. Similarly, the solution to traffic congestion is to stop this ridiculous need for the inhabitants of a city to shuffle back and forth between two areas everyday. The original argument for single use planning was that it would improve quality of life. It evidently does not, because the highest real estate prices now are for quality housing in dense urban areas where people can walk around their local communities.
The fuel usage on a single person "flying car" needed to keep it off the ground is just absurd. Fighting gravity when there isn't any real need just doesn't make sense.
Alternating Current (AC) is a vile technology created by our competitor Westinghouse who has no moral compunction regarding its effects which everyone knows will curdle the milk in your cows, deflower your virgin daughters, make your polarized neutrons be little bitches and cause Furries to be less furrier. You have been warned (yay FUD).
Faith: Belief in Truth. Superstition: Belief in Falsehood.
I know of nothing on the horizon concerning anti gravity research so IMHO there is no real progress on a personal-fly-from-home. Noise, air disturbances, broken windows from flying objects, all this is what flying cars would be all about if they ever get built. Physics sometimes is a wet blanket.
What keeps a flying car out of the electrical lines?
Some people do not have good spatial awareness (where they are in relation to their surroundings, think parallel parking). What will they do in 3 dimensions?
Will this be tested for in a drivers exam?
Flying cars have been just about to happen since I was a little kid (age 78).
Ehm, how is a "flying car" - which, in the current incarnations that actually are able to fly, really means a roadable airplane, including the requirements to have a pilot license and flight training - different from renting/stealing a Cessna from the nearest general aviation airport and smashing it somewhere?
The entire point of the IS calling for use of cars was because *anyone* can drive one and they are trivial to obtain. Neither of which is true when it comes to anything flying.
I somehow don't see this happening again since 9/11 - could that be because it is simply too complex, costly, risky and inefficient at actually causing mayhem?
But the terrorism bogeyman is so convenient for getting eyeballs and clicks ...
the point of of transportation is to move people or goods around at a reasonable rate of speed, with reasonable entrance and exit points, at a low cost per unit of weight, and with a minimal cost to move the actual device. if you do the math (which i havent, but i can guesstimate), flying cars will come out as an order of magnitude less efficiant than groundcars, just to lift the weight off the ground. if you make a flying car really light, you will lose vertical lift, and it becomes a toy. any weight savings could also be done for a ground car. its like thinking space travel will come down in cost. it wont, much, as you still have to lift all your fuel to orbit. the best idea would be a lightweight Hypercar, per hunter and amory lovins. strip a car down to minimal weight, with carbon fiber (if it can be made cheap enough). jetpacks and flying cars will never replace ground travel, as you dont need that energy expenditure to go to the supermarket. so dont even worry about 3d traffic nightmares.
Flying cars won't be allowed to reach "Terrorist Threat" levels, public safety concerns will shut this down hard long before then. People trying to land on the highway during rush hour, people trying to land at their house and getting the address wrong, drunk flyers, kids joyriding past your house windows at 120, people flying 10 feet off the ground at highway speeds because it's the only way they remember the route.
How much time did he end up doing? I never heard, just that he crash landed and got busted.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Now that you mention it, these flying cars are sounding better and better. I'm starting to reconsider.
I bet you could put the turbine/gensets, batteries, controllers and motors from a large one into a little one. Build custom 5 blade 3d printed titanium impellers, start pulling some Gs.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Everybody seems to think energy is free. Flying cars use so much more energy it is amazing that it never comes up; instead there is nothing but talk of other problems involved. Those problems are nothing, getting past the physics and cost are the insurmountable problems. Just look how people deal with gas going up in price and their car's millage... that is just pushing you along the surface, it doesn't lift you. Then there is the waste energy given off as HEAT-- when you consume massive amounts of "free" energy the waste heat for everybody who now can have a normal car would be enough to boil the oceans.
Airplanes now cram as much as possible in to get a return on operating costs and do it over long distances.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Flying cars aren't going to become more practical. Cars, with all those amenities cannot fly. You want an air conditioner? Too bad. It will make the flying car too heavy. A flying car isn't really a flying car at all. It doesn't make sense because your optimizing the vehicle for two different things. Honestly the noise and wind issue is the least of my concerns.
By that, I assume you mean that his investment in his new Boring Company means he has a vested interest in preventing flying cars: they're never going to use his tunnels.
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The tunnel is actually plausible. Tunnel boring can be done for about $10,000 per foot. So a 20 mile stretch from San Jose to Palo Alto, with a tube in each direction, would cost roughly $2B, which is affordable. For a 10% ROI, it would need to generate about $600k per day in tolls. If the toll was $10 each way, that would be 30,000 round trips. Since it could draw traffic from both US-101 and I-280, that is plausible.
Flying cars for mass transportation, with existing tech, are a fantasy.
No way that a practical ATC can or will be installed to accommodate myriad flying cars. So flying cars are destined to remain a niche product able to travel on the road and subject to the ATC system already in place. That ATC capacity will limit the numbers of flying cars even if the price and questionable efficiency in terms of cost itself of this niche product won't.
The allure of the flying car revolves entirely around the idea that you have one, and nobody else does. So while they're all stuck down in gridlocked traffic, bumper to bumper, suffering in the sweltering heat of a traffic jam, you're soaring over their heads in complete freedom. Make flying cars common and that allure is gone.
If flying cars ever became the defacto form of transportation, ground-based vehicles would likely become the new hip thing. And then we'd be seeing articles like this about what a nuisance they are, leaving their tire marks everywhere, and that all that engine noise...
so we've had prop and jet propelled flying cars, buses and trucks for over a century. Also spacecraft, which are even scarier when they crash on land
They tend to be things like silly-looking airplanes with folding wings, strap-on mini-helicopters, and oversized drone-like craft. Flying cars are what we see in Blade Runner, Back to the Future, The Fifth Element, etc. I.e., devices that meet the following requirements:
1) Almost completely quiet; at worst, a humming sound.
2) Able to hover and maneuver effortlessly.
3) Able to take off and land anywhere effortlessly.
4) Affordable.
I would add a fifth requirement:
5) Fully computer-controlled - most people do not have what it takes to pilot ships in three dimensions.
The problem is that we do not have the technology to meet these requirements. The first three, in particular, require access to energy densities well beyond anything that we can muster these days. Either that, or antigravity technology. We are not going to have flying cars any time soon, if ever. We are going to have expensive, noisy and generally stupid-looking contraptions that will, at the very best, occupy a very small niche. If the Segway was obviously ridiculous and stupid when it came out, such devices will be only more so.
He's an arrogant ass who thinks he knows what's best for everyone else.
Flying cars aren't going to become more practical...
Yeah, but flying-car projects are attracting investors, which flies even if their cars don't. That said, there is a niche for fuel efficient flying vehicles that can take off and land vertically. Lithium Aviation's all electric prototype suggests they might fill that niche profitably. And there may be others who can do the same, or even carve out their own niche. Capitalism doesn't have to make sense, just money.
The tunnel is actually plausible. Tunnel boring can be done for about $10,000 per foot. So a 20 mile stretch from San Jose to Palo Alto, with a tube in each direction, would cost roughly $2B, which is affordable. For a 10% ROI, it would need to generate about $600k per day in tolls. If the toll was $10 each way, that would be 30,000 round trips. Since it could draw traffic from both US-101 and I-280, that is plausible.
Flying cars for mass transportation, with existing tech, are a fantasy.
Talk about knowing your facts! Impressed. I too think flying cars for the masses are a fantasy. They do attract investors, though. There's probably a niche market for flying cars in a tax bracket higher than I'll ever see.
Second of all, he's lying. The reason he doesn't like flying cars is just one. That is, the FAA. There's no way anything that flies and carries ugly bags of mostly water is going to get off a showroom floor for less than $150K, due mostly to FAA regulations. And, the FAA is not going to budge, not one micron, on those regulations.
A flying anything can't be made economical for the masses. I had to buy a new gas cap for my Cherokee Six last month, and it was $100.
At least he understands that one of his unreliable bolt buckets would never pass muster. Failure is simply not an option when designing something that flies. If a car motor dies you just coast to the side of the road. If the fan stops turning, you better pray that there's something long and flat somewhere within your glide distance, or you're fucked.
*insert boring finger quip*
I remember, quite a while ago, reading in Popular Science magazine about the "Moller Air Car", which was another experimental project that claimed to be on the way to selling people personal flying machines, easy enough to pilot so you basically just used a joystick to tell it which direction to go.
That idea seems to have crashed and burned, so to speak.
I think the big challenge with any of these things is going to be getting the FAA to approve their use by the general public. I mean, let's face it. They couldn't even let people fly little drones as a hobby for very long before deciding they needed regulation, and set up a system to register them.
The air traffic controllers have a pretty full plate keeping tracking of all the commercial aircraft in the air and which flight patterns all of them are supposed to be on. I don't think they're looking forward to having to do the same job, on a much larger scale, for all the people operating personal air cars at lower altitudes.
It would be great to have flying cars that pretty much fly themselves safely and efficiently. But we're not there yet, and I think they'd require a more "hands off" type of government than we've got in place today.
It would take a pretty sophisticated computer system managing everyone's vehicle to avoid destroying cities.
Yeah? Start a DJI phantom drone in your office. I did. It fucked it up real nice from the massive wind. And that's from a small drone carrying nothing. All papers gone. Coffee blown all the fuck over my MacBook. Plants and dirt everywhere. I was a fucking idiot.
quad (or more) rotors are not going to be at all feasible for mass commercialization and use in cities.
Musk uses Scott toilet paper so it must be the best because he is obviously a genius although I have no idea why.
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
For a 10% ROI, it would need to generate about $600k per day in tolls.
It would need to generate $600k per day in profit, so you have to account for operating and maintenance costs on top of that.
without a new and ingenious method for lift, flying cars just aren't going to be practical. So far they need wings or helicopter style propellers. Yes, there are some clever ideas here but these 'cars' are likely only to appeal to people who already fly their own small aircraft or helecopters.
It does not matter, cars are involved in hundreds of thousands of minor accidents every year. Once you put the word flying into anything so the word minor disappears from the accident, no such thing as a minor flying accident, just how many died and how many survived and do that over a metropolitan area and add how many innocent bystanders died. The more flying vehicles the greater the number of accidents, done and finished.
Underground automated transport corridor, makes by far the most sense and is bound to be the future model. Most people wont ever bother with ownership, just call up a service via mobile at it comes right to your location and takes you were you want to go and the goes off to pick up some one else, all available 24/7, no drivers, secured in a control space underground (the hugely reduced number of private vehicles will drive up their price, the impact of hugely reduced production levels carrying large development costs).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
BIg waste of energy vs driving unless you have no alternative it uses more than twice the power. maybe four times the power if not more.
If the toll was $10 each way,
Holy crap! Who the F would pay $10 each way on a toll? It costs me $20 to fill my little Honda up with fuel, your proposed toll would cost me an entire week's would of fuel in one day's worth of tolls.
$10 a trip toll would never fly, no one would pay that much to commute one way to work each day.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
People who don't want to spend an extra hour+ in stop and go traffic would be my guess.
I think you still have it the wrong way around. Neither hydrogen powered cars nor flying cars are new ideas.
No they aren't new ideas but they also aren't feasible ideas. Particularly flying cars.
When Elon Musk decided to get into the car business, he was already against hydrogen powered and flying cars and went the electric way.
That's because both hydrogen cars and flying cars have (so far) irreducible problems limiting their market potential. Hydrogen cars has a fueling infrastructure problem we are in no danger of solving as well as some fuel storage problems that are similarly challenging. Flying cars aren't a thing because we lack A) a power source with an adequate power/weight ratio, B) the control systems to use them safely, C) the infrastructure to make them practical. It's not that we can't make either one but that we can't make one with sufficient economic utility to make it worth the bother.
By comparison electric cars are now good enough that they are selling in meaningful numbers. EVs have some technical hurdles yet to overcome but there is reasonable grounds to believe these will be conquered in the near future and the vehicles are already good enough for many people in their current form. The same cannot be said of hydrogen power and flying cars.
Musk makes a very good point when he says that to get a 3 dimensional traffic system it is a lot more practical to dig than to try to fly, particularly in large cities where there would be the most need for a 3 dimensional traffic system. That's why we have subways. We know how to build tunnels and there is no science fiction technology required to make it happen. Like the other problems Musk has been working on at Tesla and SpaceX it's really more of a cost reduction problem than one of inventing new technology.
Like 9-11 and Peal Harbor, that might work. Once.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
We haven't figured out how to properly drive cars on the ground yet, adding another dimension to that is just going to make things worse. What they are calling flying cars nowadays are really just airplanes or helicopters. We don't have the tech yet to make the flying cars we see in the movies.
Does that ring any bells?
Need coffee...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Like 9-11 and Peal Harbor, that might work. Once.
Once per airfield, for several repetitions, before anything substantive is done — if history is any indication.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
LOL I did something similar but in my kitchen. I had to buy the biggest co-axial toy helicopter in the store... This thing had rotors two feet across. I started it up in the kitchen and everything went flying except the helicopter; even the paper towel roll unrolled itself on the counter!
...would be beyond most drivers. Let's face it. Very few of us would take the time to go to flight mechanic school to learn how to maintain a flying car, and to understand the necessary checks to ensure that they are flight-worthy. With on-board computers you'd also have to invest in a bunch of expensive diagnostic equipment to the job. Frankly, all the work needed to keep a flying car from falling out of the air like a brick would cut too far into most people's daily lives.
Think of the time investment too. Who is going to want to get up even earlier in the morning to do a maintenance check before winging off to work? Most of us would rather hop out of bed at the last minute, guzzle enough coffee to get jump started, and slide into the office more or less on time. It would be an even bigger challenge for a parent trying to heard a passel of kids off to their various obligations. Would you have to do a maintenance check after every stop? Would you have to clear your flight plan with the FAA? Would a full traffic pattern mean you're grounded until airspace opens up?
What about the cost of aviation fuel? Would it be even more ridiculously priced in California like gas already is, and would the smog emissions requirements make the vehicle to heavy to fly? No wonder Musk thinks it's anxiety inducing.
"Let's just say if something is flying over your head...that is not an anxiety-reducing situation,"
However, riding in a narrow, sealed, and windowless capsule inside a sealed steel tunnel whizzing around under ground at nearly the speed of sound is nothing but relaxing, eh Elon?
Show me on the 1st Amendment bobblehead where the moderator touched you...
Holy crap! Who the F would pay $10 each way on a toll?
It depends. How far does this tunnel take me? If it will get me not just down the same route as the 280 but also get me under the mountains so I don't have to take the 17, I would probably pay even more.
It's not really that simple, though. You could put any old highway in the tunnel, but nobody wants to actually drive themselves in a tunnel for that long. If you're going to be in a tunnel, you're definitely going to want to watch TV, or read a book, or take a nap, or screw... or do any of the other number of things which you might like to do in a car that you don't have to drive for that long. And expecting people to maintain their vehicles in a state which will permit them to safely travel at high speeds is not realistic, hence TBC's concept video showing cars riding on sleds — theoretically, at speeds of around 120 MPH. If the tunnel is exceptionally straight and has few defining features, then there will be very little sensation of speed. It should be much easier to keep the roadway flat and smooth without the influence of weather. I'd still prefer that the vehicle ride on some kind of rail, because even at their best (tweels?) tires are kind of lame, but they seem to be implying something under the road surface which drives the vehicles, like trolley cars.
If you accept this vision as a given, and if you're building the whole tunnel to begin with then it's really not that unreasonable, the question is not "who would pay a ten dollar toll" but "who would pay for a self-driving journey whose total cost included a ten dollar toll". So let's say my car gets around 25 MPG on the highway, because it's oldish and has a V8. And let's say I can get into this tunnel around Millbrae, and my route comes out in Scotts Valley. That 57 mile trip might only be an hour, if I'm magically doing it at the low-traffic time. In that case, I'll drive it. Or it might be two hours, if I'm doing it anywhere near commute time. In that case, I might take the tunnel. Or it might be four hours, if the commute traffic is backed up over the hill really badly, like maybe there is an accident. In that case, having the trip cut down to 45 or even 30 minutes in a tunnel while I watch a video on my phone would be worth some money to me, since I'm not a commuter. But this is a trip I take semi-regularly, so I'm using it as an example. I'd pay much more if I could just get into the system in Cloverdale, which is now a major bedroom community and a logical place to begin the system on the North end of the 101.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Not until *your* EXPENSIVE insurance pays for a computer-controlled, RADAR-guided anti-aircraft gun to be mounted on my roof, to shoot down the teens, the drunks, the "lost control of my vehicle" seniors, and YOU SLASHDOTTERS who are texting while flying, before you crash into my second floor bedroom.
Tunnel boring can be done for about $10,000 per foot.
I'm not sure where you are getting this number from. Tunnel boring cost is highly dependent on the size of the tunnel (approximately proportional to area or radius, I forget which). It is also extremely prone to cost overruns, as in the Big Dig. For a car tunnel you also need to provide ventilation, emergency exit systems, signalling, and other costly additions.
Instead of building a tunnel from San Jose to Palo Alto, you could build an elevated highway for a much lower cost. Alternatively, you could build a subway for a similar cost, which would carry many times the number of people. Either way, a tunnel for cars is almost always the least cost-effective solution.