I have some thoughts on this but my brain is 90% fried today so I won't attempt to cobble something together. What I want to know is what part about this caught your eye? I'm not particularly convinced by the Trump angle, nor by the economic argument which has been made before, and the second order effects are fascinating but he only mentions one.
I saw it as a corollary to your piece, actually - the fact that a future with sparser single household drivership is going to be arrived at through a contentious and disadvantageous process. Unlike you, I can easily see the North American Dealership Association drumming up false outrage about Google in Arizona and managing to get Trump to turn it into a hotbutton issue the minute it gets mentioned on Fox and Friends. The fact that it won't be at all topical won't matter a lick - I mean, read it and weep. On a semi-related note, the New York Times Magazine dedicated an entire issue to the subject and I'll save you the read: it's 100% bullshit.
I can also see it becoming a contentious issue. And I can see it slowing down progress, but what I really don't see happening is political bickering like that causing the stagnation of progress. The (potential) utility is just too large, I think. I mean, Tesla is announcing their semi today. My pet theory is that Tesla wants to go into automated driving much harder than they are; that they wanted the 3 to be fully autonomous (but failed) and that they want have their semi automated ASAP. Trump can yell and scream all he want, but at the end of the day lowering transportation cost while also making an enormous dent in the 27% is not something that political bickering can fight against. edit: can you give me an idea of why the NYT is dumb so I can pretend to have read it? ;)
You can say that, but at the end of the day I have to hear about fucking coal miners every third day and there are fewer people working in the coal industry than there are working at Sears. The NYT is dumb because it's a bunch of people with no knowledge of the progress or issues at hand pulling shit out of their asses.
Driverless cars will be the death of an expression of culture. Drift machines and drag monsters, donks and lowriders, mudders and rock climbers, art cars, oddities, and everything in between. Driving is an activity that connects you to your car and by taking the activity away, you're taking away that personal aspect and with that, any desire to make your car personal. It'll become just another appliance. If that's what we're looking at, I say, just fuck self driving cars altogether and ramp up public transit and make cities public transit and pedestrian friendly again. It's probably the more environmentally friendly solution and honestly, if I'm forced to choose between buying a car I can't even drive and taking the bus, I'll take the fucking bus.
I think the push to self driving cars is to improve the level of public transit - or private mass transit. I mean, when the bus knows exactly where you need to be picked up and where you need to go. When it's not a man but a machine planning the routes. When we can build vehicles to hold 8 people that don't need to follow predestined routes, the need for cars owned by individuals will plummet. And most won't need to weigh this benefit against a culture of self expression, because it's such a small culture compared to the number of car owners. I guess I don't understand your argument - it's not a choice between those two things, it's an evolution that's meant to guide you to your fuck it conclusion.
I think you're high. I think the push to self-driving cars is to make it so that people don't have to interface with their fellow man or pay attention to the task of ignoring them. If you wanna see where the industry wants to go with self-driving cars, you need look no further than the back seat of a Maybach. No part of that is about vehicles holding 8 people.
This is all my gut talking but - While I agree that people will want their own vehicles for transport, but I think that will become a luxury item. The fact people want it means it'll come at a premium. My argument about the working poor needing rides was wonderfully eviscerated by the reminder of the coming robotics revolution, but I still have trouble imagining a world that provides this level of comfort at an affordable price. It's just too easy for marketers to sell a shitty option then upcharge for nothing more than prestige.
If I can sell one Maybach for $1m and make $800k on it, or I can sell 100 Hondas for $20k and make $1k each, which should I sell? I've been through this recently - I needed a new car. I literally drove my Dodge Stealth until I couldn't give it away - it rolled off to the car crusher about an hour ago. And part of the reason there is I spent four.goddamn.years. looking for a sporty car that didn't suck. In 1995 there were lots of options. In 2017 Mustangs have inline 4s and cost $25k. If you want a V8 mustang? That's $35k. If you want something that's actually sporty, that wasn't built by orangutans? Whelp, odds are good you're a rich mutherfucker because that world starts well north of $50k. So I traded a 22 year old Dodge for a 15 year old Porsche because the cars I want to drive aren't made for me anymore. And that's not cruelty, that's just economics. And it's coming for us all.
When I think mass transit, I think of something with a 20+ capacity minimum. Self driving or no, privately owned or publicly owned, I don't think having a bunch of smaller vehicles flittering about is a good use of resources. Multiple bus stops or trolley stops for every neighborhood or subways make much more sense to me. As for the whole argument that car enthusiast culture is a small sample size compared to the whole population that uses cars? Yeah, you have a point. To counter though, for people that enjoy that subculture, it matters and a lot of people are gonna be sad to lose that. I'd also argue that it's not a good idea to be dismissive of sub cultures just based on population size, as their influences tend to have ripple effects into society as a whole. But you already know that so theres no point in analyzing that aspect of the argument.
Yeah, I don't know why this article got under my skin - I just deleted another response which was much more dismissive, so I'll try to stay constructive here. While I think 20+ person capacity vehicles will exist in the world of automation, I think many <8 capacity vehicles will cut down on wait times and manage the load of local traffic - and I think that's ultimately a good thing. I've recently been doing work around food security and nutrition and a lot of issue crop up around families whose sole guardian spends 3+ hours a day commuting - limiting the time they have to find a prepare nutritious food. By coordinating smaller vehicles, a person can strike a balance between cost and efficiency - which I think that market is going to ask for. As for the culture aspect, I didn't mean to dismiss the culture - I meant more to say I don't think it'll be that big of a battleground as the numbers just aren't there. I don't think legislation will exist to completely remove non-autonomous vehicles in the next 20 years - there's too much infrastructure required for it not to have a substantial impact on the working poor and therefore the economy. But if it does, then I doubt those specialty hobbies will disappear, but instead be treated more like horses. Special autonomous vehicles will exist to transport your hobby car to a designated activity area. The pasttime will look different than it did 100 years ago, but most of the car hobbies we're talking about didn't exist in 1917 either.
Efficiency also looks different. If a 20-person vehicle needs service, that's a big hole in the service stream. If a 2-person vehicle needs service, the gap in service is much smaller and has far less impact on the flow of people from A to B. (And it is cheaper to dispatch another 2-person vehicle in its place.) Automated vehicles will also have much smaller following distances, because they will know what is happening up ahead, far in advance, and can maneuver safely in much smaller gaps. That means they have smaller bumper, less need for airbags and monster braking systems, skinny tires, and less of all the other shit associated with protecting soft meat-people from getting t-boned at 60 MPH by a delivery truck. Closer following distances also allow for less energy exertion to move forward, because the slipstream of the previous vehicle is occupied by the following vehicle. And finally, a chain with many small links is far more flexible and dynamic than a chain with huge links. It's rail cars vs glorified barco-loungers. Big massive heavy things that start, stop, and turn slowly, versus... well... basically, go-karts running on "rails" of high-speed data from multitudes of sensors. Honestly? The biggest problem will be the HUMANS inside the autonomous vehicles freaking out because they are following each other so closely. It will be perceived by the meat-person to be dangerously close following, because the meat-person is incapable of perceiving or processing the stream of data the autonomous vehicle is assessing to determine safe following speed and distance. Once again... people are the problem! :-) While I think 20+ person capacity vehicles will exist in the world of automation, I think many <8 capacity vehicles will cut down on wait times and manage the load of local traffic...
I don't know much about this issue and I expect someone like veen or kleinbl00 to come in here and fact check my ass straight to hell, but by gut instinct alone, I call bullshit. If a 2-person vehicle needs service, the gap in service is much smaller and has far less impact on the flow of people from A to B. (And it is cheaper to dispatch another 2-person vehicle in its place.) It's cheaper to build and maintain one vehicle that can hold 20 people than it would be to build 10 vehicles that can hold 2. Better for the environment, better for cost of use. Closer following distances also allow for less energy exertion to move forward, because the slipstream of the previous vehicle is occupied by the following vehicle. And finally, a chain with many small links is far more flexible and dynamic than a chain with huge links. It's rail cars vs glorified barco-loungers. Big massive heavy things that start, stop, and turn slowly, versus... well... basically, go-karts running on "rails" of high-speed data from multitudes of sensors. 100 vehicles on the road that can hold 20 people will take up less space than 1,000 vehicles on the road that can hold 2 people. There will be more space in between vehicles for reaction time and safety for the devices and traffic will be less congested. You don't have to worry about "tight" and "flexible" chains which points out to a flaw you brought up yourself. Once again... people are the problem! :-) Which will make it a hard sell. Perception of quality, safety, etc. are part of the whole customer experience. In the car world, they have an acronym called NVH, which stands for Noise, Vibration, and Harshness. Car designers literally spend hundreds of development hours to make sure cars are comfortable to their customers from everything from muffling road noise and engine sounds behind the firewalls to the closing of doors and trunks and how fucking seatbelts sound. Car companies are going as far as to pump engine noise in through speakers because modern engines are considered too quiet. People are particular as shit. I mean, with digital cell phones, we're actually able to have better call quality than we usually do, but our calls are literally degraded on purpose because people have an expectation for their phone calls to sound like they would if they come from a land line. Digital networks have been out for a decade and a half at this point. You'd figure people would get on the ball, but no, they won't, cause it's about consumer perception.If a 20-person vehicle needs service, that's a big hole in the service stream.
Automated vehicles will also have much smaller following distances, because they will know what is happening up ahead, far in advance, and can maneuver safely in much smaller gaps. That means they have smaller bumper, less need for airbags and monster braking systems, skinny tires, and less of all the other shit associated with protecting soft meat-people from getting t-boned at 60 MPH by a delivery truck.
Honestly? The biggest problem will be the HUMANS inside the autonomous vehicles freaking out because they are following each other so closely. It will be perceived by the meat-person to be dangerously close following, because the meat-person is incapable of perceiving or processing the stream of data the autonomous vehicle is assessing to determine safe following speed and distance.
It is not at all clear cut, in my opinion, which one of those vehicle sizes is better. Even if efficiency will be the driving force (which I doubt as well) you have to look at the whole picture. Sure, a large bus is more efficient per passenger-mile driven in terms of fuel...but how are you going to get all 20 people in there? Because the concept of specific stop locations might evaporate when confronted with AVs. Transfers are systematically loathed by passengers - people would rather sit 15 minutes in a vehicle than have a 5 minute transfer. I'm certain people will pick 'Uber but personless' over 'PT but personless' any time of day. And that kind of service is much more efficient when you have lots of smaller vehicles. Besides, when deciding on fleet size and characteristics, the kind of service provided is usually the focus of the decision making. Environmental and maintenance concerns come in once it's decided what kind of service will be provided, because those two depend so much on the service. For example, 90% of all maintenance on Dutch trains is done between 11pm and 6am purely to keep as much rolling stock going as possible. Cleaning the trains is done in small bursts throughout the day when trains are waiting on the platform anyways. Something similar goes for aircraft IIRC. I think AV adoption will start out as a fringe thing, but I'm guessing that it will be adopted faster than smartphones were. At some point the majority of people will realize the utility and it will go mainstream, NVH be damned. I mean, did the customer experience really hold air travel back? Does the misery of Economy class do that now?
For the majority of your points, I'll say "I disagree." Not all mass transit is loathed, if it's done comfortably and successfully. I hear Japan's subway mass transit is pretty fucking nifty, for example. If mass transit is adopted as a major solution, customer demand for positive experiences will probably be enough for people to figure out how to do things well. I think price point will also be a sticking point as well. I further my argument with my response to goobster here . . . To which I'll also add that in answer to part of the reason buses are so expensive for cities to purchase as well as your complaint about airlines and economy class, that's a drawback of captive markets. Once again, if there's more competition, there will be better options for the consumers. All of that fucking said, today on my drive home, I realized there's a good chance we might all end up right because who's to say that the automated transportation market won't be tiered just like the transportation market today is tiered. Bougie trust fund kiddies will have their private cars while the ditch digging plebians will have to learn to make do with mass transit.
You're not really making great counterarguments when you are pointing to Wikipedia articles and saying "hey so Japan is kinda lewd so you're wrong" - it borders on insulting. What makes you think I don't know that already? I've been studying transportation for the past few years, and that includes the transport economics that you're only scratching the surface of. I spent 59.5 hours in the best PT system outside of Japan this month alone. By all means disagree or challenge my assumptions - I don't know everything - but don't misinterpret my argument and then point me to Wikipedia when you're on my turf. I wasn't saying mass transit was loathed by everyone (although there is plenty of evidence that people prefer driving most of the time). I was talking about transfers. Grouped transportation (PT, airlines) offer little to no door-to-door routes because there are incredible economies of scale when you group people that sorta go in the same direction. Look at the airline industry: what routes don't they fly? Well, there's no route from Amsterdam to, say, Huntsville Alamaba. But there are plenty of planes going across the Atlantic and already planes going from Huntsville to Atlanta, so with a stop in Atlanta you can just join the crowd and get there for a reasonable price. Hub-and-spoke is incredibly efficient, because it can reduce the number of routes you service by more than an order of magnitude while still serving everyone. And this hub-and-spoke model increases the number of passengers on the links you do serve, which means you have enough people to not lose all your money flying planes. BUT it entails transfers, which are systematically disliked by everyone (yes, even in Japan). And the routes are almost always indirect and meandering. My internship is south from where I live. But instead of going south, I bike 10 minutes west to the train station, take a train that goes south but also to the east, and then take a subway that goes southwest to end up at my destination. If I would drive directly I'd always be faster, simply because it would be a more direct route. Which is what I was trying to argue: a taxi-service is small scale and direct and will beat out a fixed-line PT system from a service point of view, AV or not. We're not all in taxis and Ubers though, because as you point out, the cost also matters. Here's a fun fact: on average, owning a car in the US costs $0.40 per kilometer, including taxes and maintenance but excluding parking. AV's, when they aren't owned by individuals but can be summoned like an Uber, are expected to cost one-fifth of that. Yes, in no small part because of large scale vehicle production and maintenance. But even if that is only achieved partially, the business case for AV-based taxi service is enormous because the largest expense (the humans) gets thrown out of the window. Imagine if you can get anywhere in your city for a dollar or two, faster and with more comfort than public transportation or driving. That is what efficiency is really about: reductions in cost, labor, energy and time that add up to such a significant change from what we have now that it's worth looking out for. Maybe it will pick up a few people along the way, maybe you pay extra to be left alone, who knows. A lot of the talking points in here are clouded by uncertainties, including what I just said. For example, it is very likely that automated driving in complex urban environments (as opposed to the much easier problem of highway driving) is decades away. If that's the case, fixed long-distance highway drives might be the largest benefit in the short term: automated freight trucking and automated Greyhound / Flixbus instead of automated Uber. As I said to wasoxygen earlier this week...it depends. It all depends on a lot of factors.
I can't believe you'd say that! Quite frankly, I'm insulted that you're insulted! I kid of course. Don't be insulted man, seriously. If anything, I'm tickled pink to be talking to you about this because you know so much. Fucking ask kleinbl00 about me and him and economics and shit. I've probably annoyed the crap out of him with our discussions a dozen times over but I enjoy them because they are insightful, his words help me explore things, and I enjoy his feedback. In all honesty, if this is bugging you, just say "You know, this isn't really the discussion I wanna have with you, so let's cut it" and I'm fine with that. But you're frustrated now and I don't want you to be frustrated, so let's just table this conversation and maybe down the road, when the subject comes up again (cause we both know it will), we can talk about it some more. For what it's worth, my disagreeing with you isn't me being dismissive of your experience, my disagreeing with you is my seeing things differently and wanting to talk to you to get your perspective. Which you've offered and I appreciate. But once again, you're frustrated and I don't want that, so let's just cut it here for now. Edit: Also, I use Wikipedia a lot. It's a crutch of mine. Sorry.it borders on insulting.
I'm not insulted or frustrated! Mildly bugged at most. It's just that it comes off as disrespectful when I carefully build my argument and then you say "Nope!" without saying why you disagree. A discussion is a two way street, IMO. Not that that should stop you from buggin' me, but it might make more sense to ask more, like what you want me to opine about. :) Protip: read more nonfiction! Makes you sound smart as hell.my disagreeing with you isn't me being dismissive of your experience, my disagreeing with you is my seeing things differently and wanting to talk to you to get your perspective.
Edit: Also, I use Wikipedia a lot. It's a crutch of mine. Sorry.
Want a bit of a different discussion? You're gonna love this, cause it's meta as shit. In order for me to explain why I disagree I'd first have to know why I disagree myself and that's just not how I roll bro. Firstly, I'm not a very smart man. Like, at all. Which is fine by me because A) that makes absolutely everything I expose myself to the most fascinating shit in the world and B) when I do figure shit out, it's exciting as balls. Secondly, you gotta understand that my discussion style compared you, kleinbl00, and pretty much half the people on Hubski is very different. When you guys all talk, it's all FACTS! FIGURES! CHARTS! CITATION! CROSS REFERENCES! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Stick that shit in your debate pipe and smoke it! Which, don't get me wrong, is awesome as shit. You guys have the memory retention of lore masters and the Google-Fu of fucking cyber ninjas and that's amazing. My discussion style? It's nothing like that. It's all, personal experiences, emotional recollection, anecdotes, general observation, inquiry. I'm less facts, facts, facts, and more general idea. I'm not stepping up to the debate podium and throwing down with you guys, cause unless we're debating philosophics, I'm not gonna have a leg to stand on because I don't even know where the legs are let alone what foundation is beneath them. (And on the occasions when I do step up to the podium, I'm all like "Mother fuckers, come fact check me.") Not that I'd want that anyway because that's contentious and disharmonious and honestly, more often than not, the more people actually debate shit the more people tend to not get along. Which, don't get me wrong, cause it's fun in the short term, but honestly? My relationship with some users gets strained from time to time because we debate shit. So don't think of me as a debate opponent, think of me as the guy who invites you to sit on my back patio to listen to the summer cicadas with me while I ask you to talk about what you find fascinating. That said, when I say "I disagree blah blah blah blah" what I'm actually doing is saying "please, continue" but just responding "please continue" is A) rude and B) doesn't give you much to go on. Where if I throw anything that I think is remotely relevent out there, you can be all "I'm glad you brought that up cause check the magic shit I'm about to tell you now!" Wikipedia is my non-fiction. I'm literally addicted. :(Mildly bugged at most. It's just that it comes off as disrespectful when I carefully build my argument and then you say "Nope!" without saying why you disagree.
Protip: read more nonfiction! Makes you sound smart as hell.
That's fine 'n'all and it's duly noted. All I want to say is that when you want to achieve this: that there is a better way that doesn't raise anyone's ruffles. If you say 'well I disagree because X', then my only response can be to rebut your X or agree with your X. It puts me or goob in a defensive position: we'll put our shields up and rebut. My point is: it doesn't leave a lot of room to talk about anything else. But if instead you were to ask questions or to build upon what goobster or kleinbl00 or I write in our wall'o'texts, the conversation can go all different places! You can get a lot more and different responses if you go "hey, what do you mean by this part?", "how does X and Y relate?", "oh! that reminds me of the time I...", etc., etc. Think of it this way: "please continue!" is never rude if it's formulated as a question. Does that make sense? :)My discussion style? It's nothing like that.
what I'm actually doing is saying "please, continue" but just responding "please continue" is A) rude and B) doesn't give you much to go on. Where if I throw anything that I think is remotely relevent out there, you can be all "I'm glad you brought that up cause check the magic shit I'm about to tell you now!"
An observation, since I've been shouted out like three times here: goobster, rd95, veen but directed entirely at rd95: - You may be fascinated by all this and use it as a means to knowledge, but if your counterpart isn't enjoying it, you lose. When your style of discussion revolves around "here's a counterargument to what you just said" the conversation will necessarily focus on shutting down, not opening up. - You may browse Wikipedia to find answers but the people you're talking to just know shit. So while you getting an argument countermanded reads as "I guess I didn't understand the argument" to you, to your counterparts it reads as "you don't know shit, here let me pull something tangential off of Wikipedia to shut you down." - You may think that "please continue" is rude but "I'm going to attempt to close off other avenues of discussion" is ruder. This discussion is likely relevant to your interests. Veen and I get along really well and damn near came to blows over the concept of "mapping." This is due because he's neck-deep into the theory of mapping and my experience has been with the practice of mapping and we were talking across each other for entirely too long. Here's a great highlight: NASA scientist sick of debunking Planet X doomsday theories Word to the wise: when you start to suspect that you're talking to an expert, start to respect the expert's expertise. It isn't just you and Wikipedia making conversation, it's "how can I continue this discussion without being one of those assholes that drives expertise off the internet." Wanna see what it looks like when a skunk raises its tail? I work for Continental Corporation, and Daimler Trucks North America. That's a cat with it's hair up, a pufferfish puffed, a dog growling around a hambone. The Internet think that it's the "appeal to authority fallacy" because Reddit et. al. have created a world where having expertise is somehow a losing proposition but in the non-internet world, knowing shit still counts for something. And I know you didn't mean to discount the knowledge of the people you were talking to. That's totally not you. But it doesn't take much. Everybody I know who knows audio avoids the shit out of gearslutz... and they'd perish the thought of visiting Reddit. I among them. It's no fun being told you're full of shit by someone who is clearly, plainly, demonstrably full of shit. And if you're the expert and they're not, they know you're full of shit long before you do.The "arrogant" engineers are the ones that know they know more than you and are sick of having to explain it. They're the ones whose knowledge is called into question because somebody just did a study somewhere. They're the ones being forced to (temporarily) rewrite their entire code of behavior because some expert somewhere in another unrelated field has better PR.
This is not true at any scale.
goobster, veen, for some reason I let myself get dogged on this and I chose the worse time to be dogged on something because my head is fuzzy and it obviously shows and while that's a reason it's not a good excuse because this all turned into a big mess and I can't help but feel guilty for making you guys angry and so I'm really, really sorry. kleinbl00, sorry for shouting out to you if you thought I was trying to drag you into this. I wasn't. I just always use the "@" symbol when mentioning a specific user on here because I don't want people to think I'm talking about them behind their back. I really and truly feel bad about getting out of hand and I feel really childish and I'm incredibly embarrassed and I respect the hell out of the three of you and I'm honestly so truly sorry and if there's anything I can do to make it up to any of you just let me know and I'll see what I can figure. Edit: And sorry to Hubski as a whole for making a shit show to witness to begin with.
Hey man... THANK YOU. That's a truly generous thing to say, and I appreciate it. I haven't logged into Hubski all weekend because I was fully expecting to be either blocked (again), or have some real nastiness to address when I got here. I didn't want to argue any more, and didn't know how to unwind where we had gotten to... Thanks for getting BOTH of us out of this unpleasantness, with grace and style. I really appreciate it.
The tiered point is the one I want to make. I think there will be 2 seaters for most of the middle class and very nice two seaters for higher levels of society. But the current technical changes don't address social issues like stratification - and so some lesser option will exist. Even if it's for no other reason than to make the two seater seem better, some kind of mass people mover will be the affordable option. It feels like that aspect of purchasing status is deeply sowed in our system and won't be solved by automation.
This is not true at any scale. I work for Continental Corporation, and Daimler Trucks North America. It's cheaper to build and maintain one vehicle that can hold 20 people than it would be to build 10 vehicles that can hold 2. Better for the environment, better for cost of use.
Man, you're gonna have to convince that one to me. Exhibit A The more busses, trolleys, whatever is built, the cheaper each on is gonna be which means they can go for lower prices. The reason they're so expensive now, is partially because they're so big, but also because so much fewer are made that companies have to charge more for each one to break even let alone make a profit. Exhibit B As demands for busses, trolleys, whatever increases and demands for individual cars decreases, companies are gonna wanna transition into the new dominant market to get themselves a piece of the pie. That means, as these companies compete with each other, they're gonna find more efficient ways to build the vehicles and save themselves money, passing some of that efficient savings onto the customer AND they're gonna be incentivized to try and sell for as low as possible because Volkswagen Buses Of The Future sure as shit doesn't want to lose their New York City Contract to Toyota Trolleys of the Future. Exhibit C is a fucking meaningless pie chart but it's the best way that I can say that if I'm not driving my own damn car, I'd rather pay $100 a month to take public transportation than $400 a month for a private car I don't really get to enjoy and I'm sure I'm not the only one who's alone in that math. All of which leads to Exhibit D because if my emotional math is right, then that means that there will be more demands for public transport, which means more supply, which means there will be a point where it reaches an equilibrium where it's cheaper than some lame ass fucking car that can't compare to shit to a drivable car and UGH! The future sucks!
Exhibit A/B - Regulation is far more lax when you have two people in a vehicle. So if you are building a prototype AV network, you build small ones, and only get to the bigger vehicles later when the economies of scale pencil out. Because when you transport a bunch of people, regulation changes significantly, and drives prices into the sky. There are also practical concerns... it takes less metal, ABS, wiring, and physical space to build a 2-seater than a 20-seater. Today, there are hundreds of thousands of buses sold every single year (many sold by my parent company DTNA, under the name Thomas-Built Buses) by a variety of manufacturers, and the prices are stable. There is rich competition in the market, and prices for these vehicles are established. (True for municipal buses, school buses, and even tour buses.) Finally, large vehicles can only drive on specific roads, and through specific intersections. There are physical and regulatory barriers to the bus getting close to most houses where people live. But an autonomous SmartCar can even drive down my private street; legally, and practically. The bus drops people off 5 blocks away. And I don't know about you, but I'm not walking 5 blocks with bags of groceries, to ride in an overheated vehicle with non-opening windows, to sit next to insane/smelly/wonderful/tired/happy/unhappy people. Exhibit C - Pick up at 6:30 at my house, and take me 10.6 miles to work. Pick me up at work at 3:45 and take me back home. I'd pay $30/day for that. Does it pencil out, financially speaking? Maybe? Car payment, insurance, depreciation, APR, tires, oil changes, windshield wipers, door dings, bumper scrapes, car wash/wax/detail once a month, etc. Honestly, I don't care. If I do not have to deal with the assholes on the road every day, then I am HAPPY to pay $30/day for that service. And in the summer I'll ride my motorcycle, and will have FEWER shitheads driving badly to worry about. In fact, I'll pay $15/month for the little broadcasting device that reaches out to the AVs around me to alert them to my presence, so they are SURE to see me with their LiDAR, and let me in when I need to change lanes, and not freakout when I share a lane with them at the traffic light. And ya know what? I get a credit of $15/mo on my AV membership fees because I now have a parking place in front of my house that I am not using, so I let AVs stage themselves there overnight. But all this is irrelevant, in the end. The simple fact is that the technology is already here, just not widely dispersed. There are oodles of ways to make money in AV services, and - in the big picture - fewer people die. By the time I am 70 (20 years), we will laugh about how we used to own utility vehicles. The only vehicles people will own will be motorcycles, RVs, and sports cars, because they WANT a toy to play with. Will AVs be prominent in rural areas? No. They are not work vehicles. They are people-movers. People don't move in rural areas, STUFF moves. That's why they have tractors and trucks and gators... to move STUFF. But the 600,000 people "commuting" into a city at 8:AM and out at 5:PM? The only ones driving will be the ones driving for fun.
A, cars here in the U.S. are already pretty damn strictly regulated compared to cars in countries like India, Brazil, etc. Higher impact standards. Higher emissions standards. So on and so forth. B, the faster mass transit is adopted, the faster the economies of scale will pencil out. Per vehicle, yes. Per person? Probably not. The vehicles might be bigger and need more material, but if they hold more people, you get more for your resources. In a very simple way, a miata that gets thirty miles per gallon and seats two people is effectively less efficient than an SUV that can seat six people and gets fifteen miles per gallon. There comes a point in the resource scale where bigger is better. Cities are not static. They're built by stone, but they're not etched in stone. Part of the whole process of infrastructure upkeep is that when it comes time to repair roads, intersections, etc., cities look at whether or not the roads to be updated to accommodate for changes. Sidewalks are added or removed, drains are rerouted, roads are widened or narrowed, and on and on. It's a normal thing. It's so normal, these kinds of projects are constantly talked about in my local newspapers. Hell, I can think of four projects that have happened near where I lived in the past decade. Furthermore, most cities already have buses and bus routes. To service a lot of the new demand, it's as simple as adding more buses. Shit, it seems like the hardest part about expanding bus routes has nothing to do with infrastructure or finances, but politics. Buses are seen as a sign of poverty and if a bus route is coming to your neighborhood, there goes the neighborhood. I've literally seen people fight back against bus route expansions just because they don't want poor people in their neighborhood. Which is the argument, that before you even made I thought of, that made me say to veen that chances are autonomous transportation is gonna be tiered just like regular transportation is tiered today. And all of that shit will become more expensive and no one but the rich and leisurely will own them. See "supply and demand." See also "horseback riding." The rich.Regulation is far more lax when you have two people in a vehicle. So if you are building a prototype AV network, you build small ones, and only get to the bigger vehicles later when the economies of scale pencil out.
There are also practical concerns... it takes less metal, ABS, wiring, and physical space to build a 2-seater than a 20-seater.
Finally, large vehicles can only drive on specific roads, and through specific intersections.
Response to Exhibit C
By the time I am 70 (20 years), we will laugh about how we used to own utility vehicles. The only vehicles people will own will be motorcycles, RVs, and sports cars, because they WANT a toy to play with.
The only ones driving will be the ones driving for fun.
Man, I love ya, but your lack of intellectual precision in your arguments is just exhausting to have to rebut every single time, and these diversions do nothing to move our conversation forward. How can you, with any intellectual honesty, conflate those two completely different resource streams into one measure of value?! The manufacturer pays for the metal, plastic, wiring, FMCSA testing, and designs the vehicle to meet the regulations appropriate to the vehicle in question. They sell the vehicle, and recoup their expenditures, plus profit. The buyer pays for fuel, oil, maintenance, expendables, all the other operating expenses, and the depreciation in value of the vehicle itself as it gets used. And yet, you devise a completely fictional "resource scale" that takes ALL of the expenditures by the company AND the owner - while still ignoring the environmental cost of the vehicle and its use - and try to measure the vehicle's value against this "resource scale". That doesn't exist. That drives neither the manufacturer or the owner, and never enters into their thinking or balance sheets. Am I supposed to read this, walk-back my previous post, and say, "Oh! Yes, rd95! You are right! This completely arbitrarily-sized yardstick proves that my experience in the fleet vehicle industry, that I work in every single day, and have to know inside-out is entirely wrong! My day job is in the telematics industry, dealing specifically with how to maintain and track the value of fleets of vehicles. I know the industry inside and out. And no, there is never a point where a large vehicle is less expensive than a small one. It may SEEM like it pencils out, but it doesn't. However, I get where you are going with your thinking. It's called the "triple bottom line", and we tried to get companies to adopt these principles back in the 1980's. It failed. Companies only look at raw material costs. They do not measure the cost of mitigating the shit that comes out of their smokestacks, or they they pour into streams. This is just wrong. This is not how buses, schedules, or routes work. At all. Is there a stigma against buses? Maybe there still is. But that's only because promotion of that viewpoint is funded by those who would lose from transportation infrastructure improvements. Public transit works. Period. Europe. South America. Asia. Parts of Africa. England. Everywhere you go outside of America, public transit works, and is used heavily by people of every class and social standing. Americans are not genetically different, so it can work here, too. The problem we face that is fairly unique to us, is SPACE. We are really widely spread out. Lack of density over the majority of the US makes it REALLY HARD for any public transportation infrastructure to get funding from the Government. It needs to be funded using local funds. And once you build public transit? Well you now have less money coming in from the government for roads and highways. So yeah. What WILL happen, and is already happening, and has happened thousands of times before with any new technology, is that the rich will get it first. Then it will expand to accommodate more and more people. My dad had a phone in his car in the 1970's. My friend's 9-year old now has more power in the iPhone in her pocket, than all of NASA possessed throughout the organization when they sent men to walk on the Moon. That's 40 years. You REALLY think we won't be making most of our utility trips in automated vehicles in under 20 years? "...The vehicles might be bigger and need more material, but if they hold more people, you get more for your resources. In a very simple way, a miata that gets thirty miles per gallon and seats two people is effectively less efficient than an SUV that can seat six people and gets fifteen miles per gallon. There comes a point in the resource scale where bigger is better..."
"...most cities already have buses and bus routes. To service a lot of the new demand, it's as simple as adding more buses..."
Deep down, you know you love it. ;) Nowhere in our entire conversation have I contested that we won't. In fact, we've been talking as if it's a given. We're just arguing over whether it's gonna be small personalized vehicles or mass transit and the merits of both. The manufacturer pays for the metal, plastic, wiring, FMCSA testing, and designs the vehicle to meet the regulations appropriate to the vehicle in question. They sell the vehicle, and recoup their expenditures, plus profit. The buyer pays for fuel, oil, maintenance, expendables, all the other operating expenses, and the depreciation in value of the vehicle itself as it gets used. And yet, you devise a completely fictional "resource scale" that takes ALL of the expenditures by the company AND the owner - while still ignoring the environmental cost of the vehicle and its use - and try to measure the vehicle's value against this "resource scale". That doesn't exist. That drives neither the manufacturer or the owner, and never enters into their thinking or balance sheets. I was trying to oversimplify using MPG as an example. What I'm trying to say is that if we look at mass transit vehicles like buses, in all seriousness, to the best of my understanding per person less metal, rubber, etc. will be needed to produce and maintain the vehicles. I mean, at this point, since you stated it twice, I'll take your word for it. There's totally a stigma against buses. In your own words . . . The dirty, crazy, impoverished bus riding customer is like a fucking trope at this point and it's kind of crazy to me that that's a thing since I see tons of business people and college kids at bus stops all the time. Totally does. That's why I keep bringing it up. Mass transit. In the city. Where we're gonna see automation. You already agree with me. Once again, in your own words . . . Which means, you and I are both talking about cities. Cities. Cities. Where there are already bus routes. That can be expanded by adding more buses, more bus stops, designated bus lanes, altering traffic lights to accommodate for traffic, and so on and so forth. This is a regular fucking debate for our county because we need to expand our bus lines and I've read the arguments about how it's very doable and won't cost much but people are against it. Here's where it gets crazy, not because of cost, but heaven forbid bus lines go to the suburbs, cause poor people. Which, we're in agreement, in a way, because I'd argue that cities are probably more willing and able to pay for automated vehicles than individuals. The computers and technology and testing is gonna make them hella fucking expensive at first, which is why Tesla's first three vehicles were all in the premium car price range. A city is probably more likely to spend $600,000 on an automated bus than an individual is willing to spend $150,000 for an automated car (both prices pulled out of my ass but I know regular buses are about $450,000 already). There's a buying efficiency there.Man, I love ya, but your lack of intellectual precision in your arguments is just exhausting to have to rebut every single time, and these diversions do nothing to move our conversation forward.
You REALLY think we won't be making most of our utility trips in automated vehicles in under 20 years?
How can you, with any intellectual honesty, conflate those two completely different resource streams into one measure of value?!
My day job is in the telematics industry, dealing specifically with how to maintain and track the value of fleets of vehicles. I know the industry inside and out. And no, there is never a point where a large vehicle is less expensive than a small one. It may SEEM like it pencils out, but it doesn't.
Is there a stigma against buses? Maybe there still is. But that's only because promotion of that viewpoint is funded by those who would lose from transportation infrastructure improvements.
And I don't know about you, but I'm not walking 5 blocks with bags of groceries, to ride in an overheated vehicle with non-opening windows, to sit next to insane/smelly/wonderful/tired/happy/unhappy people.
Public transit works.
Will AVs be prominent in rural areas? No.
So yeah. What WILL happen, and is already happening, and has happened thousands of times before with any new technology, is that the rich will get it first. Then it will expand to accommodate more and more people.
The line hum thing is like a pilot light - you need to hear a little something or else you think you've been disconnected. It's not there out of familiarity it's there out of necessity. As far as the rest of it, I think we're going to see a future shaped by economics and politics, not efficiency.
I thought they'd both die because none of the players involved want to deal with physical media ever again. the fact that Apple backed Blu Ray but never released a single part, component or upgrade that worked with BluRay says rather a lot, I think.
You're human? ;) And I'd argue that we need to be more frugal with our natural resources and people are either gonna go all (personal transport) or nothing (true mass transit) and that trying to have a middle ground of the two is gonna leave people disappointed. Personally, I'm all for the latter. The people who have to worry about food security, nutrition, and the frustrations of mass transit now are probably gonna be the ones who will be fucked job-wise 20 years from now. If the future of transportation is gonna be tiered just like it is today, they're still probably gonna be screwed cause chances are they can't afford the more personalized, expedient services. Actually, people in the car world are pretty active politically when it comes to protecting their hobby, industry, jobs, etc. I don't think I've said it before on Hubski, but I'm kind of curious as to see what kind of position SEMA will take when autonomous cars become more prevelant. As long as cars have been around, there have been tinkerers. That's kind of a moot point though, in my opinion, because the cultures are here now and they have an impact on society and will probably leave a lasting impression well after they're gone. I'm not saying ban autonomous cars because of a few car enthusiasts, but I am saying that car enthusiasts have a right to feel threatened by autonomous cars because they have something special they enjoy and cherish and they know they're gonna lose it eventually fear and trepidation is a natural response to losing something that's special to you. Edit: Had to edit the plus signs in your text to eliminate bolding. Sorry about that.Yeah, I don't know why this article got under my skin
While I think 20(plus) person capacity vehicles will exist in the world of automation, I think many <8 capacity vehicles will cut down on wait times and manage the load of local traffic - and I think that's ultimately a good thing.
I've recently been doing work around food security and nutrition and a lot of issue crop up around families whose sole guardian spends 3(plus) hours a day commuting - limiting the time they have to find a prepare nutritious food. By coordinating smaller vehicles, a person can strike a balance between cost and efficiency - which I think that market is going to ask for.
As for the culture aspect, I didn't mean to dismiss the culture - I meant more to say I don't think it'll be that big of a battleground as the numbers just aren't there.
The pasttime will look different than it did 100 years ago, but most of the car hobbies we're talking about didn't exist in 1917 either.
Fox hunting and NASCAR, my friend. Two things you never thought had anything in common. _____________________________________________________________________ Realistically speaking: The red line will probably be happy to get rid of their car for the most part. The gray mass is going to hang onto them for a whole lot longer because rideshare of any kind makes a lot more sense in Orange County, CA than it does in Otero County, NM. There are a lot more cowboy boots than there are cowboys and if you could trade not driving to get to work every day for autocrossing twice monthly in your vintage Scion, I think you'd jump at the chance to go autocrossing. The Amish get to ride their horse-drawn buggies on highways, just not on freeways and a non-autonomous vehicle is a perfectly reasonable hazard to expect an autonomous network to deal with. but you're not gonna get behind the wheel and think away your problems for two hours unless you can afford to keep a car you don't need... and if you measure the percentage of your income given over to cars and ponder if you'd take that back if you could, I'll bet the answer is "yes."