Robocars As the Best Way Geeks Can Save the Planet 394
Brad Templeton writes "I (whom you may know as EFF Chairman, founder of early
dot-com Clari.Net and rec.humor.funny)
have just released a new series of futurist
essays on the amazing future
of robot cars, coming to us thanks to the DARPA Grand Challenges.
The computer driver is just the beginning — the
essays detail how robocars can
enable the cheap electric car, save millions of lives and trillions
of dollars, and are the most compelling thing
computer geeks can work on to save the planet. Because robocars can refuel, park
and deliver themselves, and not simply be chauffeurs, they end up changing
not just cars but cities, industries, energy, and — by removing
dependence on foreign oil — even wars. I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords."
(More below.)
Templeton continues: "The key realization is that while the safety and timesavings that
come from having computers as chauffeurs is very important and can
save a million lives every year, a number of interesting consequences
come from the ability of robocars to drive themselves while vacant.
This allows them to deliver themselves to us on demand, to park
themselves and to refuel/recharge themselves. On-demand delivery makes
car sharing pleasant and allows the use of "the right vehicle for
the trip" on most trips. Self-refueling means the people using
cars no longer need care about range or how common fueling stations
are, enabling all sorts of novel energy systems with minimal "chicken
and egg" problems. Because passengers don't care about the range
of their taxis, battery weight and cost are no longer issues in
electric cars and scooters."
Public transportation (Score:3, Insightful)
Because robocars can refuel, park and deliver themselves, and not simply be chauffeurs
Yes, I believe another name is, the bus.
And relax people, I know buses aren't completely oil-independant, however, our infrastructure isn't even close to what is need to support a billion electric cars.
Sounds like... (Score:5, Insightful)
In any case I think that people would be better employed saving the planet by working to prevent so many car journeys being made in the first place by trying to put an end to Single Use Zoning and fixing the silly way we build our so-called cities. It's not as geek-friendly or glamorous as rolling out a shiny new car that looks like something from an episode of Buck Rogers, but North American culture has too much faith in high-tech solutions to complex problems.
Prevention is always better than cure. Better to go back to building cities so that they can meet their original purpose of putting daily needs within walking distance. Better to fix the leak rather than put a bigger or more sophisticated bucket under it.
Infrastructure (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Wow, good job! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, but this also means... (Score:4, Insightful)
This really will be a glorious future. Think about it: no more "...was killed by a drunk driver" commercials! Now, we just need to worry about drunk programmers.
...potentially more "I learned it from watching you!" commercials.
Re:Public transportation (Score:4, Insightful)
Please read the article and then comment.
as a bicyclist, (Score:2, Insightful)
let me say, that the greatest thing that 'geeks' can do to save the environment, is to ignore moronic BS like this, stop having grand utopian visions, and f@#$ stop buying s@#$ they dont need.
Re:Wow, good job! (Score:3, Insightful)
Someone took a dump in my robotaxi (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, so it might not be as extreme as all that, but have you seen the inside of a taxi? It's thrashed, and I think the only reason it's not more thrashed is that there's an taxi driver who would beat you up if you did something stupid.
TFAuthor says that people might want to rent their robocars out while they're at work. Like hell I would! The last thing I need is some jackass with a spiked belt ripping a hole in my leather seats.
If robocars become practical, and energy costs rise, it's possible that the author's vision will be inevitable. Still, it's gonna suck to find that some bum puked in my robotaxi right when I'm late for work.
Maybe we can engineer robocops to sit in every robotaxi to prevent the vandals from ruining it for all of us.
Re:Public transportation (Score:5, Insightful)
our infrastructure isn't even close to what is need to support a billion electric cars.
This is a red herring that gets brought up over and over. Our infrastructure wasn't even close to what was needed to support a billion gasoline-powered cars in 1900 either. Luckily for us, not everyone immediately went out and got a car, and not everyone will immediately go out and buy an electric car either. We can expand the infrastructure over time as electric car adoption increases, just like we've done with basically every other technology that required infrastructure to work.
It's a bit more than that (Score:3, Insightful)
Personal public transit is not quite like a bus. Instead of just getting on and showing your bus pass, you'll have to tell the robocar who you are and where you are going. This is a totalitarian government's wet dream. It would be able to track your every move and completely deny you movement if it so chose. Robocars will usher in the new era where transportation, not just long distance travel, is a privilege, to be granted or withheld on a whim.
Re:Public transportation (Score:3, Insightful)
Essentially what you will be building is a taxi fleet without the need (or cost) of drivers. I guess some people would see value in getting their own driverless car (myself included for weekend/afterhours use) but for the usual daily grind I think that this would be great.
This would be an adjunct to regular public transport - many commuters would still use the train etc, but a large fleet of really really cheap cabs would revolutionise city usage.
Even having a personal driverless car would be fantastic. Finished the shoping but have something else to do? Send the car home by itself for your partner to deal with. Can't make it back to the school in time to pick up the kids? Just send the car by itself.
This also opens up an interesting issue. If there is no actual driving involved, how old do you need to be to be in charge of one of these?
The author is correct - this would change the transportation arrangements of a city as well as removing the need for cab drivers, truck drivers, delivery drivers, many couriers etc.
Re:Retrofit? (Score:3, Insightful)
> you get all the freedom to stop and travel where you want to.
> The question isn't why Americans love cars, the question is why Europe doesn't.
Because in Europe the public transport infrastructure is much better, and the cities are denser. You can walk almost anywhere, and it is easy to take a bus or train to go further. It's much more convenient than worrying about parking.
Re:Sounds like... (Score:2, Insightful)
Building a public transportation is the real solution. A huge infrastructure investment on public transportation similar to the one last century to build the highway system makes perfect sense to generate the government investment needed to reactivate the economy.
Re:Public transportation (Score:3, Insightful)
there is something really important if we really do make 'robo' taxis.
Modular battery systems. why buy a $xx,000 dollar robo taxi, if it has to 'sit' while the battery pack charges? it can be electric, electricity is cheap, right now much cheaper than oil, and it would have been almost as cheap as oil even when gas was only a $1.
what makes the most sense it to have a 'repair shop/charging station' where the robo taxi's go to swap batteries, if you want them to waste less fuel driving back to get batteries, you might make deals to have remote charging blocks. you buy as many batteries as you need to keep the fleet in operation, and if you're really tight, set the chargers to only charge to 90% full (the last 10% uses more energy) and to come back for battery swaps, whenever they hit 20% capacity, so that if you have a fare you can finish it if needed, and maybe have a light on the cam that warns passengers it's going to the charging station next...
I think this tech will replace foreign human workers driving cabs eventually, after all a computer costs a lot less than even a month of salary... although cab drivers are tipped workers so they probably get the 'minimum' pay for a tipped wage earner...
when it finally becomes a standard feature on main stream cars, it will be very cool.
keep in mind an electronic cab system can communicate with the passenger via their cell phone/the internet to arrange pickup and just have a touch screen/GPS system for setting destination. and have credit/debit card for payment, maybe with a slot machine bill reader... but who pays with cash anyways..
Re:Public transportation (Score:3, Insightful)
Hello, welcome to rural and small urban America, which accounts for well over half the US's population. This 'bus' and concept of a thing you call 'public transportation' is foreign to us.
Unfortunatly, for many people, public transportation is not even a possibility. Small towns with fewer than ~30k people generally don't have any sort of public transportation at all (carpooling isn't usually an option either...often your nearest co-workers are more out of your way then actually going to work), and even larger ones can either not have them or they can be pretty inadequate compared to larger cities.
Re:Public transportation (Score:3, Insightful)
Not the same. The problem with America is that it is obsessive about its suburbs. Cars can deliver you right to your doorstep. To even be considered as a valid transportation provider, buses need to get you within a very short distance of your door. In a suburban environment this means a LOT of buses, most of which will be empty all the time.
Re:Retrofit? (Score:3, Insightful)
The question isn't why Americans love cars, the question is why Europe doesn't.
Its quite an assumption to think that Europeans don't love their cars. That is not true.
They just don't tend to like to commute in them. European cities are congested places; bicycles are often a faster means of travel within a city.
I would much rather take a 20 minute ride on busses and fast trains rather than an hour commute driving through traffic.
I had lived in Berlin for a while. When you are downtown, you are never further than 200 meters from a subway or fast train stop. The rest of the city was covered by extensive bus routes, even at night. Cars were for longer trips, and most longer trips could be taken by train or bus in any case.
Look at Manhattan. The subway and bus systems completely blanket the city and the subways run all night. You have more freedom if you don't bring a car and have to seek out parking (which may be many blocks from your destination).
Re:An excellent web site (Score:4, Insightful)
You are lying to your students.
The social and practical issues haven't even been looked at, much less solved.
OTOH, I don't really expect any practicality from a professor.
I ahve no doubt it will happen, but we are generations away. My son(now 10) might start to see real world use from these. If people like them, you still ahve another generation, at best, before they gin to approach critical mass. This is do to the fact that people like their freedom when driving, and/or already own cars.
Also, driving is fun.
The problem isn't fuel. It's the cities. (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem really is that US cities and suburbs were designed ONLY for cars, and not for pedestrians. To buy stuff there aren't local stores (except maybe in big cities like NY) where you can buy misc stuff for your house. No, you have to get in the car, drive for N minutes to the nearest Walmart, park, get your stuff, rinse, repeat.
Right now I just googled for "pedestrian unfriendly" and got to this blog:
http://nishantkashyap.blogspot.com/2007/07/pedestrian-and-poor-unfriendly-us.html [blogspot.com]
The first thing that strikes you about any US suburb is the landscaping - beautifully manicured patches of green all along the road and absolutely no sign of dust - perfect settings to take a stroll or if your office is close enough may be take a walk to the office. But lo and behold, where do you walk? There are absolutely no footpaths, no pedestrian crossings and as if that was not enough you have absolutely no public transport as well- a total anti-thesis of a city like NYC and that is true for all such places in US - a lesson for those who get mesmerized by cities likes NYC and Chicago and start cursing our poor cities. Any day I am happy taking a cycle-rick in hot and dusty Lucknow or Amritsar than risking my life walking on the side of the picturesque road here where traffic may be moving at 100 kmps minimum. Everyone here keeps a car and absolutely no one walks - there are some crossing which have a no pedestrian sign - something which I saw for the very first time in my life.
With absolutely no provisions for pedestrians or public transport - I wonder what do the poor do here. Everyone is forced to buy a car - no wonder US is the biggest contributor to greenhouse emissions and also leveraged 3 time over because you absolutely have to buy and maintain a car. Moreover, due to lack of basic exercise like walking US is also facing obesity crisis and has been forced to spend a good amount of funds on health care and low cal diets.
Then I googled for "car free cities" and got to this website:
http://www.carfree.com/cft/i003_qz.html [carfree.com]
After reading that, you'll begin to understand what really is wrong with car pollution in the U.S.
Re:It's a bit more than that (Score:3, Insightful)
"This is a totalitarian government's wet dream."
shut up.
also, nice use of a strawman fallacy.
Privacy issue (Score:3, Insightful)
This is discussed in the article. There is nothing that requires there be a "traffic control" or that you tell it where you are going, but there will be people who want to build such a system, and we must create the technology with care to discourage such architectures.
Re:An excellent web site (Score:4, Insightful)
(2) The authors discuss "sleeper cars", but they don't really consider all the ramifications. A huge chunk of overnight business travel (everything within a few hundred miles) will be taken over by robocars. People will go to bed in the sleeper car, open the door the next day, and find themselves at their destination. Consequently, hotels and motels will offer short-term rooms (for one or two hours) so that people can shower and dress on the road. A significant portion of the U.S. population will literally become nomadic, sleeping in robotic RVs every night, and waking up to a new destination every morning.
You've got to be kidding. Unless you dose up all these travelers with Ambien, many of them are going to sleep very poorly. Even the best luxury cars aren't noise-free and vibration-free enough to provide a decent level of comfort rivaling a standard bed in a quiet room. Coming close is going to require a really massive vehicle, which even with electric drive would require a lot of energy to move around.
(1) Mass transit as we think of it will largely vanish within 20 years. Cities will find it far easier to maintain fleets of robocars, and dispatch them right to the doors of residents, rather than maintain traditional subway and bus lines. The "last half-mile" problem of getting from the door of your home to the door of your destination will be solved.
Even this sounds pretty silly. While robocars would certainly make sense in suburban areas, there are lots of high-density cities (esp in Europe) where subways make more sense. Even with automated control, cars simply consume too much space to efficiently move millions of people around quickly, as subways do every day.
Finally, when do you really think these automated vehicles will ever be viable? We still don't have computers that don't crash frequently, or have various other software problems. ATMs with blue screens are a common occurrence. One computer glitch in a robocar could cause many fatalities. Even though human error certainly causes problems, you're not going to get people to accept and trust robocars until computers and software have a better reputation for reliability, and I'm guessing that that won't happen until Microsoft has been out of business for at least a century.
Unless Aubrey de Grey figures out how to stop aging, I don't expect to see anything like this in my lifetime, no matter how technically possible it may be.
Re:Sounds like... (Score:5, Insightful)
Better to fix the leak rather than put a bigger or more sophisticated bucket under it.
Cars that drive themselves are a way of fixing the leak... what you're proposing is fixing the leak by tearing out all of the pipes and starting from scratch. Cities have already been built. It will be VERY time consuming and EXTREMELY costly to rebuild them to be more efficient with everything within walking distance. Cars are constantly changing, new models come out every year and nowadays have a 10 year shelf life. We could update pretty much our whole society into self-driving cars within 20 years and at the expense of the driver. Can the same be said about rebuilding cities?
Re:Wow, good job! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wow, good job! (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, there's one major unaddressed concern. Two, really. No, three. Four? Where to begin....
The first is that a lot of people use a car not just as a means of getting somewhere, but as a place to store stuff when they get there. For example, if I take a day trip somewhere (fairly common), I don't necessarily have any place wherever I'm going to store all the stuff I might need. Heaven help me if I'm going to a musical gig with two or three instruments, a clothing change, binders full of music, etc. Most of that stuff stays in the car unless and until I need it. That simply isn't practical with non-personal vehicles. This was mentioned briefly, but dismissed with the suggestion of a portable "locker". I can't think of any situation I've been in where this would be sufficient other than commuting to work.... It certainly wouldn't work on the beach. Let's say I'm going to the beach, followed by going to someone's house. I might want to have a laptop with me at the house but not at the beach. I sure as heck wouldn't want to store it in a portable locker that someone could walk off with while I took a walk on the beach, nor is carrying it with me particularly practical. These problems happen almost constantly, at least in my life.
If you go shopping for groceries at two different stores, it would be a huge waste of time and energy if you had to go home and drop off the grocery shopping, call a robotic cab to pick you up again, and go to the second store, but the prospect of hauling that merchandise into a second store is equally unacceptable. The "DeliverBot" idea is cute, but highly impractical. For one thing, the stores will immediately do what they do best: charge you a fee for the cost of the delivery and packing on top of the cost of your food. This means everybody pays more for everything. Worse, for smaller purchases, that would end up being a significant percentage of your total bill. Even a $5 delivery charge is huge if all you needed was a $4.00 carton of half-and-half.
Even if you could get around that problem, you still have the issue of it arriving, finding out that it isn't what you ordered, and having to send it back, plus the extra latency of having to go out, shop, then wait for somebody to pack it somewhere and deliver it to you. That might work for large purchases, but it reduces spec buying to absolutely zero, so stores will fight it with every fiber of their being and will en masse refuse to participate in such a program in any useful way, so the result would be that such services would have to be run by third parties who would have to charge money for the service. Because people generally aren't willing to spend even a couple of bucks for delivery, such a service would almost inevitably die just like countless grocery delivery services before it.
The notion that people adapt to not having cars is about like saying that people adapt to not having feet. Yeah, sure, but that doesn't mean I'm interested in having surgery to remove mine unless it would save my life. It would be possible to adapt, but every instance of that adaptation involves having to either build lots of additional facilities and pay extra money to use them (e.g. public lockers at the beach) or go a significant extra distance (driving back to your hotel/home/office) for no good reason. The former is expensive. The latter increases driving, which in part negates the environmental improvement these were designed to solve.
The second is that people tend to want to personalize their automobiles for comfort, particularly on long vacations. Whether it's a vibrating seat or a DVD player for the kids or whatever. Either all of those sorts of comforts have to be built in or you'll have to have a way of specifying that you require those, at which point you've greatly increased the complexity of fleet management.
Third, an eight hour road trip will, in fact, still require stopping to fill up at least once, and if the suggestion is changing automobiles, I suspect the author hasn't eve
Re:Wow, good job! (Score:4, Insightful)
Not much benefit? Saving a million lives a year, globally? Saving 50 billion hours of human time every year in the USA? Cutting U.S. transportation energy needs in half? Reducing dependence on foreign oil and halting middle east imports with the wars that causes?
Just what is your idea of a project with a lot of benefit?
Re:Wow, good job! (Score:5, Insightful)
You will find many of your issues addressed in the article. In fact, I have a large section on the question of how people like to store stuff in their cars, as I am one of those people. At the same time, in cities like NYC, where nobody owns cars, people seem to have managed to get past this "insurmountable" problem.
Suggest you read the article for more on your concerns. If you wish to shop personally, by the way, you would load the deliverbot, not the store. Deliverbots should cost around 5 cents/mile, I predict, for small one suitable for typical cargo.
People who want to own cars will still own cars, but they can own different cars, and hire specialized cars for specialized trips.
The sleeper car does not need to refuel, if it's going slow. My example is a trip to Lake Tahoe that's 4 hours at 75mph but 7 hours at 40mph. Cars actually get *better* MPG at slower speeds, so it would have to refuel *less* often.
As for renting durable goods. It costs more because there is a large overhead in renting today. Picture a world where delivery is quick and cheap, and thus the durable goods are also rented a far larger percentage of their time. This is a side-issue, but I think the potential here is very large for much cheaper rental, always beating the cost of owning something you use 2 hours/month.
I am adding a section to the deliverbot concept about a room for the deliverbot. That's where the bed arrives, and stays if you like. I'm also wondering if we don't see better in-house robotic tech for moving furniture but I don't want to depend on it. Guest beds are worth paying extra for (to cover disinfect, inspection and work of moving in a house) because the real cost of a permanent guest bed is not the cost of the bed -- it's the space in the house an infrequent guest room takes.
But I agree the deliverbot/renting speculation is a sideline to the real message of the article, so tell me what else you don't think is credible there.
Re:An excellent web site (Score:5, Insightful)
So you're saying that in 50 years (two generations), autonomous vehicles won't be possible? You are seriously underestimating what will be accomplished in that time frame. I think we'll start seeing prototypes on the road within 20 years at the outside. About 10% of the U.S. auto fleet is replaced every year, so yes, add 30 more years and practically every car on the road will be autonomous. Everything else will be clunkers and antiques.
And please note, no one will be taking away your freedom to drive when you want, where you want. The only difference is that you won't need to be behind the wheel.
Here we get to the crux of your argument. You enjoy driving, and can't imagine anyone taking away something that represents maturity and independence to you. You're still thinking like a teenager. Clearly you're not sitting in rush hour traffic an hour every day. Driving is pure drudgery 95% of the time for most people. I think the overwhelming majority of drivers will embrace robocars. They may occasionally choose to take manual control for a spin in the open country, but most of the time they'll be perfectly content to let the computer handle the grunt work.
Re:Wow, good job! (Score:3, Insightful)
and this also relates back to my prior comment, we have other things that need to be done, other problems we should solve. right now, AIDS is the number one killer of black women. maybe we should devote more resources to that. or cancer. even the obesity and diabetes epidemic seems like a bigger problem to me at the moment. it's not that i think robocars are necessarily a bad idea, i'm just not convinced they're worth the expense.
Re:Wow, good job! (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and also your concern about store hopping -- just reserve the car until the trip is concluded, nothing I read would stop you doing that. Same for gigs, beach outings, etc.
The only really big legitimate objections I can see many people having are that
(1) the scenario he envisions would probably result in privately owned vehicles dedicated only to their owners' convenience becoming quite a bit more expensive than they are now (though I would actually call that a good thing, as IMO it should be more expensive to be wasteful), and
(2) individual privacy could be affected. But then really, personal privacy is quickly becoming a thing of the past anyway, and may well be unavoidable. But that's a whole other can of worms...
Re:Wow, good job! (Score:3, Insightful)
Battery Problem (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think he does a good job because he doesn't cite good workable examples of the technology in use. He just says "they've done that in DARPA" or some other high tech example. But things like DARPA are bleeding edge or pushing our technology to the limit. Those projects may not be feasible in actual mass production use. You can't simply say mass production will reduce the costs because if that was the solution to everything we would just 'mass produce' everything.
Now on to the battery problem which he glosses over. From the site:
People worry about the battery problem in electric cars. You need lots of batteries to get any kind of decent range, and at the end of your range you must spend hours recharging.
...
An electric robocar need not have this problem. All you care is whether it has the range for the trip you're doing now. In fact, having more range just adds needless weight. When it drops you off, it can go somewhere to charge itself. Perhaps it even goes to a special station where other robots exchange the battery cartridge with a fresh one, charged at night when power was cheap. Or perhaps to a super high-current charging station. You don't care, as you aren't waiting.
Ok, there's a bunch of contradictions here. If we reduce the range on the vehicle to just the necessary range for the trip plus the range to get to the charging station, then we have a car that is charging itself during daytime when rates are high. If we only charge the car at night then we are basically using the car once rather than multiple times which would be no better than a standard driver car of today. If we get even smarter and say we just need to replace the batteries then we still have battery overhead of basically one battery per a trip per a day! Also since the car will only have just enough range, we will keep driving to the nearest station with an empty vehicle (waste of energy) just to refill. Even if you dismissed all those things, found the optimal weight to battery ratio, the optimal charging station distribution station arrangement, optimal timing of charging batteries, optimal battery distribution management system, and the optimal vehicle, now you're still stuck footing the bill for what effectively amounts to a complete infrastructure change and implementation (battery production, vehicle production, charging station building and management, and finally distribution of all of those things).
So no, I don't think he did a good job. Try again.
Very good article, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wow, good job! (Score:4, Insightful)
The notion that people adapt to not having cars is about like saying that people adapt to not having feet.
Lots of people in large cities don't have cars. They cope far better than you think, and miss it less than you would expect.
The second is that people tend to want to personalize their automobiles for comfort...
Really? Have you been on a bus, train, subway, ferry, cruise ship, taxi cab, or airplane? Have you rented a car before?
If people don't own it, they don't tend to personalize them. People personalize their cars because they own them, not because they have an innate need to personalize the things they travel in. The kids can bring a portable DVD player.
While I'm pointing out flaws in the articles, I'd like to point out a flaw in the suggestion of renting infrequently used durable goods: it generally costs more... a lot more. We did the math for a power washer and concluded that buying a low-end power washer would pay for itself in three or four years worth of rentals even if I only used it once a year. Why? Simple.
You apparently have a lot more space than I do, and space is part of the equation. If I bought a pressure washer, a tile saw, a large ladder, car ramps, and a other large durable goods that I have only occasional need for I would have have to rent an additional storage locker, and that would almost immediately nullify the economics of owning them.
Indeed, a car itself is subject to this space cost. In a large city, a parking spot adds significantly enough to the cost of maining a vehicle that it can push the economics in favor of renting a vehicle when you actually need one.
I know people paying $2500/year for a parking spot. Plus $2500/year for insurance. Plus maintenance. $6000+ per year will cover a lot more rentals, couriers, and delivery trucks than you might think. Sure public transit has a cost too, but that's less than they would be paying for gas... and that was at last years prices.
Re:Wow, good job! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, a great deal less, and almost all private money. That's because we already replace all the cars with amazing rapidity. The average car is owned 5 years I think.
I can't predict how much money it will take for the research (all earned back in sales though) but look at what's been done for paltry $1M and $2M prizes.
The effective cost of this is so close to zero you can't see it on the scale of national budgets. Negative really, considering the $230 billion dollar annual cost of accidents in the USA according to the NTSB.
Re:Sounds like... (Score:1, Insightful)
Since when is farming menial? I think it's sad that we've been so disconnected from our own means of support in this country that we've lost respect for the farmer.
Re:Wow, good job! (Score:3, Insightful)
Five years. Say, $10,000 each. There are about 250,000,000 cars in the USA, so replace 50,000,000 per year. That's $500 billion per year.
Not counting infrastructure, development cost, replacement cost of the whiz-bang robocars, etc.
Assuming we can build them for $10,000 and still meet all those legal requirements. Or were you assuming these things weren't going to be required to meet Federal Safety Requirements?
Thing is, we're already paying for all those things. New cars, research, infrastructure, replacement costs etc; those costs all apply to our current system too.
TFA is talking about reducing those costs through increased efficiency (and less accidents), not eliminating them altogether.
And assuming that people will buy them, if you make them available. That's a pretty big assumption.
The more costs like petrol go up, the more attractive a safe, ultralight electric gets. There's millions of people who commute daily or who take taxis daily who would already appreciate a lower-cost alternative.
the average five year old car is just going to be traded
I don't think he claimed all cars would be replaced in 5 years, or indeed ever. That was simply an indicator of how often the average car is upgraded.
Oh, and how had you planned on handling the first class-action lawsuit against the makers of these cars after the first 250 car pileup?
Same way 250 car pileups are handled now - insurance.
Liability fears are certainly a short-term obstacle, and insurance premiums will reflect that, but I don't think anyone doubts that robo-cars can and eventually will be significantly safer than the average fallible/inattentive/elderly/drunk human driver - and insurance premiums will reflect that too.
Re:Public transportation (Score:3, Insightful)
You're missing the best point about a driverless personal car: I can point it in a direction, go to sleep, and wake up when it gets somewhere. Or have lunch. Or shoot some emails. Or play halo. Traveling won't be the complete waste of time it is now.
Re:Public transportation (Score:3, Insightful)
I have to agree with Kamokazi on this one. The environmental impact and cost of high population densities cannot be easily compared with the rural life - there are pros and cons to each and the net result is probably a wash. However, there are vastly different interests and problems associated with both - hence the observation about the differences between "liberal" and "conservative". My biggest problem is with your statement:
You do realize that food is produced in the "middle of nowhwere", right? I would posit that if the entire population was rural and farming, food distribution costs would decrease vastly because everyone would always live near food. However, distribution costs for other goods would increase because the population would be spread out. Thus my assertion that the net result will probably be a wash.
What I think is really missing from the discussion in general, which applies to most discussions, is the realization that a single technology, political stance, etc. is a solution for all situations. This "robocar" proposal is a phenomenal idea for dense urban areas assuming cleanliness of vehicles, availability, etc. can be managed. It is a terrible solution for low population density areas. Remember, there is a real economic loss associated with waiting for transportation (or other commodity) to arrive when needed which must be balanced against the cost of excess unused capacity. (I'm personally economically conservative in that I think excess unused capacity is always the more desirable alternative).
Re:An excellent web site (Score:3, Insightful)
No, you mean you don't see computers that don't crash frequently, because people prefer cutting-edge to stable, for the machines they actually have to deal with. How the hell do you think air travel works without thousands of fatalities a day?
Re:Wow, good job! (Score:3, Insightful)