In a Self-Driving Future, We May Not Even Want To Own Cars 454
HughPickens.com writes: Jerry Hirsch writes in the LA Times that personal transportation is on the cusp of its greatest transformation since the advent of the internal combustion engine. For a century, cars have been symbols of freedom and status. But according to Hirsch, passengers of the future may well view vehicles as just another form of public transportation, to be purchased by the trip or in a subscription. Buying sexy, fast cars for garages could evolve into buying seat-miles in appliance-like pods, piloted by robots, parked in public stalls. "There will come a time when driving the car is like riding the horse," says futurist Peter Schwartz. "Some people will still like to do it, but most of us won't." People still will want to own vehicles for various needs, says James Lentz, chief executive of Toyota's North American operations. They might live in a rural area and travel long distances daily. They might have a big family to haul around. They might own a business that requires transporting supplies. "You will still have people who have the passion for driving the cars and feeling the road," says Lentz. "There may be times when they want the cars to drive them, but they won't be buying autonomous-only cars."
One vision of the future is already playing out in Grenoble, France, where residents can rent from a fleet of 70 pod-like Toyota i-Road and Coms electric cars for short city trips. "It is a sharing program like what you see in Portland with bicycles," says Lentz. Drivers can check out and return the cars at various charging points. Through a subscription, they pay the equivalent of $3.75 for 30 minutes. Because the vehicles are so small, its easy to build out their parking and charging infrastructure. Skeptics should consider the cynicism that greeted the horseless carriage more than a century ago, says Adam Jonas. He adds that fully autonomous vehicles will be here far sooner than the market thinks (PDF). Then, Jonas says, skeptics asked: "Why would any rational person want to replace the assuredness of that hot horse body trustily pulling your comfortable carriage with an unreliable, oil-spurting heap of gears, belts and chains?"
One vision of the future is already playing out in Grenoble, France, where residents can rent from a fleet of 70 pod-like Toyota i-Road and Coms electric cars for short city trips. "It is a sharing program like what you see in Portland with bicycles," says Lentz. Drivers can check out and return the cars at various charging points. Through a subscription, they pay the equivalent of $3.75 for 30 minutes. Because the vehicles are so small, its easy to build out their parking and charging infrastructure. Skeptics should consider the cynicism that greeted the horseless carriage more than a century ago, says Adam Jonas. He adds that fully autonomous vehicles will be here far sooner than the market thinks (PDF). Then, Jonas says, skeptics asked: "Why would any rational person want to replace the assuredness of that hot horse body trustily pulling your comfortable carriage with an unreliable, oil-spurting heap of gears, belts and chains?"
In a Self-Driving Future--- (Score:3)
Since I live in a city with decent mass transit, I don't own a car in the present, nor do I especially want or need to.
I also note that some cities, such as Copenhagen, have had self-driving subway trains [wikipedia.org] for years.
Re:In a Self-Driving Future--- (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, same here. If I actually need a car journey I rent. There's even a Zipcar bay very close to me though I've not had reason to use it yet. I save myself the expense and trouble of owning, insuring and maintaining a car. I also have a much cheaper house from not having to pay for parking space nor even being right next to a road; I may have saved as much as £100k on my house purchase in fact, which on top of not paying for a car all that time seems like a huge bargain.
Rgds
Damon
Re:In a Self-Driving Future--- (Score:4, Insightful)
In suburban-heavy US metropolitan regions, Zipcars haven't made inroads yet because the sources and destinations of people are not close to each other. Suburbs are all houses (sources of people) but have no shops, factories, or businesses (no destinations). If my neighborhood was to have a successful zipcar garage that served everyone, it would have to contain as many cars as there are nearby residents, and it would still be emptied quite early in the mornings. The urban centers have few residents who would commute away from the city to work, and would not provide a demand for the tens of thousands of cars that would arrive every morning.
If the cars were self-driving, they'd be able to return to the suburbs to provide many trips per day. More trips per car means fewer cars are needed.
But Car2Go has (Score:3)
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whats cool about car2go is you only pay for driving time. in zipcar you pay for the total rental time. so if you get a zipcar to go to walmart, you have to pay for all the time that it sits out in the lot.
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Suburbs are about homes, choice, privacy, and self determination. They have plenty of shops, I work in a manufacturing facility, and a great indoor Mall.
Your idea of the suburbs is inaccurate and probably colored by your life of living in densely packed people containers in urban environments.
That said, I will never give up my car. I will be driving it until they take away my license, cussing and honking at the morons who no longer know how to drive in their fancy self driving cars. I work in the computer i
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Why exactly are you so proud of living in a traffic jam?
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10 minutes to work...12 miles, including lights. Twenty minutes if I decide to stop for breakfast.
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I grew up in the suburbs and in my experience, suburbs combine the worst aspects of rural and urban living.
Row homes are built right next to each other, usually an eighth of an acre or less in the newer suburbs. Suburban apartments tend to be located on bigger plots that may have pools and gardens. On the whole though, there is the exact same lack of privacy as in the cities. In the city, single-family homes might have the walls built into each other and in the suburbs, they might have a small ally-way b
Re: In a Self-Driving Future--- (Score:2)
Third hand smoke and farts are legitimate concerns, but until manufacturers stop putting toxic fragrance chemicals in personal care and laundry products I will be keeping my own private, personal vehicle for health reasons. Any time I take public transit I get sick for days. In the future, maybe people will wake up and stop drenching themselves in poison.
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I'm quite willing to believe that self driving cars on an expressway that is not undergoing maintenance and in weather that isn't too appalling are significantly safer than human drivers. The worst human drivers are really atrocious. The barrier isn't high.
But I think it is likely to be a long, long time before current map based driving systems are able to navigate suburban or rural roads, deal with detours, pets, or kids, or livestock, or wildlife, or pedestrians with or without strollers, or utility cre
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How many times to you have to reboot Windows in a week?
In case you missed Comp Sci 101, computers are programmed by the very same people who cause over 99.999% of accidents through human error.
All you are talking about is coding in that unreliability. And did you ever notice that the cockpits still have yolks for the pilots?
The solution is infill. . . (Score:2)
The US, especially certain "cities" like Houston, have been endlessly expanding outward, creating an unsustainable mess and taking away precious natural resources such as parks and agricultural lands. This simply cannot continue.
Suburbs in major urban areas like New York, LA, and San Francisco have already been experiencing population density increases, to the point where the vast majority of the big ones are higher in population density than many actual cities (like Houston and Atlanta).
The solution is to
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Re:In a Self-Driving Future--- (Score:4, Insightful)
I dont see a future where no one ever wants to drive, I would not like such a future
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horses on the roads
Wow! And I thought the roadkill here was bad!
Tip the veal, try the waitress . . .
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Compared to a computer, a human is utterly incompetent to operate any heavy machinery. The reaction times and accuracy just aren't there, and never will be. That makes you comparatively dangerous, no matter how 'law abiding' you might be. And the damn law can distract you from actually driving the car. You're too busy looking in the mirror for the cops, talking on the phone while shaving [go.com], when you rear end the guy stopped at the light.
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Roads are already dedicated tracks. If your self-driving cars can't handle law abiding, human drivers on the same road, then they aren't worth the bother in the first place.
SDCs can drive much closer together. Most estimates are that lane capacity will go up by a factor of five. If we are still going to have human drivers, then we will need more road capacity, more safety features, heavier and more expensive cars to withstand accidents, etc. I doubt many people will accept those higher taxes and costs to subsidize your hobby. If you want to drive, go to a privately owned track.
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I figure you could still drive on dedicated tracks, much like people can still ride horses.
Which doesn't help much if you need to tow things like boats, jetskis, trailers, etc.
The people who think that self-driving cars and not owning cars are a good idea tend to be people who live in dense urban areas and know little to nothing about the rest of the world. What they fail to understand are all of the circumstances where a generic rental and/or self-driving just will not cut it. Like it or not, any self-driving highway is going to have to make accommodations for human guided vehicles.
In addition
Re:In a Self-Driving Future--- (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but there are those who love horses as well, yet now most people rarely even see a live horse, let alone own one.
I think two things will 'drive' the adaption to driverless cars, parking and driving. People already spend a good deal of time trying to find a parking spot. With a driverless care you'd have your own 'valet parking' everywhere and the storage location for the car isn't limited to the local area, a car could easily be sent back home (yours or its). At first parking will get cheaper and more abundant, but eventually, 'Downtown parking' will not only become almost unneeded, but it will also largely disappear and I think even suburban parking will become rare. Also, thanks to digital reflexes and networking driverless cars will be able to tailgate not only to save gas, but to keep the traffic flowing at higher volumes. I suspect that 'manual drivers' will find themselves 'locked out' of the fast lane by cars on autodrive. Sure frustrated drivers will force their way into the fast lane and jam up traffic (as they do now), but the cars will record the reckless driving, likely by a few 'angles', eventually, it'll become a citation to do it.
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It's already against the law to do this (in most places in the U.S., anyway), and I see the police ignore it all the time even when it's happening right in front of them. If they spent half the time on enforcing left-lane and improper turn laws as they do on speeding, they'd have full co
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Re:In a Self-Driving Future--- (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is, that the dumb rules are enforced and the good rules are routinely ignored.
Illegal turns, failure to yield the right-of-way, improper merging, passing on the right, and puttering along in the passing lane (which provokes people to pass on the right), and various other forms of careless driving are all more dangerous than speeding. Single occupancy cars in the HOV lane or cars in general in the bus/rail lanes muck up the flow of traffic a lot more than speeding does. And then there are those pricks who drive into an intersection when there isn't room for them on the other side and stop in the crosswalk, or even in a crossing traffic lane; turning a traffic slowdown into a traffic jam.
But much of the above is routinely ignored and unpunished, while the vast bulk of traffic enforcement is based on catching speeders; often on the freeways, where the potential for them to harm themselves or others or to disrupt the flow of traffic is at the minimum. It's ludicrous.
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True, but there are those who love horses as well, yet now most people rarely even see a live horse, let alone own one.
Another point relevant to this piece, a lot people who ride horses for enjoyment do not actually own them. Owners generally do not have the time to exercise their horses every day, so part of stabling is other people ride them on days when the owner can not.
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Also, you don't have to have a license or insurance to ride a horse. When and if the day comes that most people own automated cars, no one's going to bother learning to drive anymore... which kinda takes the wind out of the whole "you could rent a car when you need one" concept.
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No one is saying self driven cars are going to be gone immediately after autonomous cars are common. It will take decades before most of them are off the roads. Your old beater probably won't make it another 30 years, and if it does it will be the exception. If the predictions made in the article start coming true, you will start to find it hard to even find a house with a garage. Regulations stopping you from parking a car on the street will become as common as regulations stopping you from stabling your h
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So basically, then, the notion is that people won't learn to drive because they don't have to, but they'll still be able to rent a Uhaul truck when it's time to move?
Color me skeptical.
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Actually, I don't see the problem. It is still legal to ride horses and bicycles in the streets. I imagine that in the future, you might add human-operated cars to that list. There might be more restrictions, like human-operated cars must stick to the right-hand lanes. The enforcement standards might also be much higher. Automated cars could auto-report any self-driven car that violates someone's right of way or commits another infraction, ensuring that only the best, most competent drivers are allowe
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Actually they do take that into account, if you RTFS: "You will still have people who have the passion for driving the cars and feeling the road," says Lentz. "There may be times when they want the cars to drive them, but they won't be buying autonomous-only cars."
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I did the same in NYC when I lived there. ZipCar all over the place and excellent public transit.
I didn't save any money, though. My larger suburban apartment and two cars combined were cheaper than just my Manhattan apartment.
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That's Manhattan Real Estate prices for ya. In many areas of the country getting rid of the car, and moving to an urban apartment, would be a lot cheaper then living in the 'burbs, if public transit wasn't shitty.
For example when Detroit went bankrupt lots of righties claimed that "of course that happened their tax rates are ridiculous, nobody could afford to live there" but if you read page 11 of the bankruptcy report, you'll note that car insurance costs were two to three times taxes in Detroit and all th
Scheduled downtime 58 days of the year (Score:2)
Since I live in a city with decent mass transit, I don't own a car in the present, nor do I especially want or need to.
Until your employer happens to relocate you to a city whose buses don't run at all on Saturday evenings, Sundays, or six major holidays.
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I don't own a car in the present, nor do I especially want or need to.
I've always found the smugness in this statement interesting.
Vehicles and the "free" (as in freedom to move around) national highway transportation system are one of the greatest achievements in the history of mankind. The places I am able to take myself everyday represent a massive freedom for me, and I don't want to live my entire life within a city radius unless I rent someone else's property. A wonderfully comfortable vehicle, with music streaming from a satellite, and traveling all over my country
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I've always found the smugness in this statement interesting.
There's nothing smug about it. You do however exhibit something I've noticed about "car people". You seem unable to grasp the concept that a preson has no particular desire to own a motor vehicle.
The thing is none of the things you say make the slightest bit of sense. I too own no car and I too have no strong desire to own one. When I live in places where a car is useful, I own one, when I don't I don't. But I have no desire to own a car when I h
Thank You Jerry (Score:5, Insightful)
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Your wild guess about the future is as good as any.
So... you don't have any any rebuttal to his reasoning?
The interesting part of such prognostications isn't the conclusions, it's the rationale.
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The trucks and vans can be self driving too.
He didn't say they wouldn't be self driving, he said the people in them would want to own them.
If self driving cars become a thing, I'll still own a car. I don't live downtown, parking is not a problem, and there isn't ever going to be a zip car depot within 5 minutes of me.
So I'll own my car. I'll probably drive it some because i like driving, but sure if I go downtown, I might have it drop me off someplace convenience and then send it off to find a place to park
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He didn't say they wouldn't be self driving, he said the people in them would want to own them.
Actually, he commented both on the owning as well as the driving part. And, as a matter of fact, most business vehicles are owned by the company the driver works for, and not the driver itself.
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Self-driving trucks will entail a *far* more comprehensive level of automation than cars. Just getting a tractor-trailer to make a successful turn at a tight, busy intersection will be an interesting problem to solve.
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wow (Score:3)
The real story here is that this guy just figured this out now.
Why own a vehicle you don't control anyway?
I think this was clear to most people the second self driving cars became a "thing"
Also assume the car will be filled with TV's blaring ads at you while you're on your way. You'll be able to pay $5 for your seat to heat up and vibrate. If it's a long trip there will be a $20 per passenger in-cabin movie from 1982. Pickup and delivery schedules will vary by over an hour unless you pay a "premium trip fee" etc...
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What people want... (Score:2)
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On a large scale what you are describing is an arcology. We have the technology to build them and they would give a better quality of life at a tiny fraction of the cost that a city does while giving much better services. Mostly humans are pretty stupid and they refuse to change until forced. Humans have to be dragged into the future kicking and screaming the whole way.
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Probably would cut out a lot of time off too - "Dave, I know it's your day off, but can you come upstairs real quick to look at this server issue?"
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How about buses, trains, boats, and airplanes?
What part of "affordable, on-demand, point to point, weather-resistant transportation" did you not understand?
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Right (Score:2)
(2) on demand -- I demand you stand there and wait for the bus to travel on its schedule.
(3) weather-resistant -- bus shelters will keep your head dry, while your clothes get plastered with slush when the bus you don't want drives by.
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Citilink buses do not operate on Sundays (Score:2)
public transport can be affordable, on-demand and weather-resistant.
Can be but isn't in practice. Fort Wayne's bus system [fwcitilink.com] isn't quite "on-demand" because it has at least one 36-hour downtime each week: from Saturday evening through early Monday morning.
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try taking the subway in NYC on the weekend from the bronx to the brooklyn or queens to brooklyn and maybe living far away from a station. 2-3 hours EACH WAY
parked in public stalls... (Score:2)
Why would the autos be "parked in public stalls?"
I own a garage. I live near lots of other people. If I didn't own a car, why wouldn't I lease this space to the owner of a self-driving car? After all, it's near lots of people, and I could use the dough.
It's true, the number of self-driving cars will certainly be fewer than the number of cars now, but you'll still need capacity for commuting, for Thanksgiving family trips, etc.
Why would a company spend money to build auto storage in public spaces when they c
Flawed, 'cos... (Score:5, Insightful)
(I work for an auto manufacturer, but my opinions are my own. And my lifestyle is my own, and doesn't reflect 100% of slashdot).
1. Peak demand. In car-culture areas there's a peak demand. *Someone* has to own the rush hour fleet. But no business is going to want to invest in a fleet that has 21 hours of downtime during non-peak loads.
2. Consumers want reliability and 100% availability. Consider Uber and Lyft that promise this, except during surge pricing periods. People hate this. It's economically correct in the case of Uber and Lyft, and an obvious idea, but surge pricing during rush hour isn't going to work. People will still own their own cars.
3. Personalization and customization. Hey, I like my cars stock, but I still have my stuff in the center console, my presets on the stereo (yes, 760 am in the morning, I'm a dying breed), and my iPhone paired to Sync. A different car every day isn't going to cut it. And think about comfort, especially on a commute. If it's hit or miss as far as comfort, people are willing to pay for 100% access to a Fusion versus an Elantra (or choose an Elantra versus a smaller B-sized car).
4. Toy haulers. You're not going to call Uber or Lyft to tow your trailer to a state park or tow your boat to a launch. And this isn't 99%'er speaking, this is blue collar worker in my part of the country.
Will annual sales go down? Yeah, probably. Maybe undoubtably (how's that for hedging?). But families in most areas are still going to continue to own their own cars. Maybe not two or three cars -- supplemented by autonomous vehicles or ride sharing -- but the private market most definitely won't dry up, even amongst the 99%.
I'm limiting my projections here to about 50 years. Beyond that, who knows. Most of us will be dead then, so it's good enough.
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not even rush hour. what happens in the summer time when everyone wants to go to the beach? NYC it's like $30 a person per trip to go to a nice beach outside NYC. $120 per day for a family of 4. and you have to drag all your crap around with you on the trains and busses and be packed like sardines with your kids. zipcars and others will probably be all rented up and would cost you $150 a day or so for this.
so the choice is buy a car for weekend driving and have freedom or pay the same amount of money for a
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Yes, but rush hour might be reduced if the pod vehicles could hold a dozen people with optimised routes to pick up people that live within a few hundred metres of you and are going to the same location. Rush hour might be reduced to a trickle and the pods might get recycled a lot quicker than you think. Nobody knows how this could play out.
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Don't buy in to 'peak' anything if you can avoid it; nicer for you and nicer for (and cheaper for) infrastructure.
I pick my work hours (when I have a day job) so that I avoid peaks since I loathe them even more than getting up early which I then do instead.
And now I'm full time on my start-up I need not generally join the peaks either (nor travel nearly so much nor so regularly).
I disagree similarly with the rest of your assertions as being necessary at all. You assume them to be so, but they are clearly n
Revolutionary (Score:2)
This could definitely be revolutionary, and governments on the cusp of spending large amounts of money on conventional transport like rail, should be cautious, because they could end up buying a white elephant. I know a lot of people think this is alarmist, but anybody who underestimates the significance of this revolution, should not be making decisions in government.
Will not have a Choice (Score:2)
right to repair laws make it so 3rd party shops (Score:2)
right to repair laws make it so 3rd party shops / yourself can't not be locked out of the car so they can't force you to use the dealer for all repairs.
If you don't know how to drive... (Score:2)
Driving is a lot less fun already (Score:3)
I can definitely see merit to the idea of not owning a car. The only reason why I currently own one now is because I live too far off the bus line to walk there easily in the morning. If I lived in the city instead I would almost certainly not own a car at all.
And don't get me started on the Ponzi scheme that we are all required to contribute to in order to hold a valid driver license.
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Taxis - The Self Driving Car of Today (Score:2)
We have a "self driving" car technology, it's called a "taxi", and millions of people use them and avoid buying a car already.
Most of us avoid these due to a thing I like to call "being rich enough not to have to put up with that shit".
I own a car because I don't want to share.
That's not going to change if the car can drive itself.
city-centric view (Score:2)
Within cities, car sharing works great. Outside of cities and for trips that are several hours long, a "car" becomes a kind of living room, something people like to customize and feel comfortable in for long periods of time. Car sharing doesn't work so well in that environment. And I see much more potential for self-driving cars on long distance trips than for city driving.
A Lot Less Freedom (Score:3)
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There is no link between autonomously driving cars and car sharing.
Sure there is. With existing car sharing systems or rentals, you either need to go to where the car is via some other means, or someone needs to drive it to you, then drive back to the office, before you can go where you're wanting to go.
With autonomously driving cars, the car can drive itself to you and then you go directly from where you are to where you want to go. It makes it far more practical.
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Although I agree with you, technically autonomously driving vehicles can take away some of the logistic issues in car sharing and car rental services. Being able to drive anywhere, then get out and have the car return to the place the renting agency needs it to be would greatly increase the attractiveness of occasionally renting a car.
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First of all, cost is a big driver of user behavior. As a result anything which makes something cheaper will likely change user behavior. I suspect that a big part of the cost of existing car sharing programs is the logistics of keeping a lot of cars near where people live. If you could instead keep most in cheap industrial areas and move around to meet demand on their own then you'd save a lot of cost. That in turn can be passed onto customers.
Convenience is another big driver, if you make something more c
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Your implied premise couldn't be more wrong. There is no link between autonomously driving cars and car sharing. Autonomous driving is just another feature a new car will have. Like cruise control and self parking. These features contributed nothing to peoples desire to give up car ownership. Autonomous driving will not either.
The overhead we accept because we have to store, maintain, and insure our own vehicles is enormous. Likewise with parking them at our destination. Imagine an Uber-like app which allows you to request a car, which comes to your doorstep, takes you where you want to go, and then leaves. No parking fees, no speeding tickets, no insurance costs. Why would anybody want to own a car if they don't have to?
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Why would anybody want to own a car if they don't have to?
Because they want to. A lot of people "want" and own things that they don't "need" by somebody else's definition. Why do you think car ownership is going to be a realm where your opinions strictly hold sway?
Second, it doesn't take that much of a usage scenario to pay for a car. For example, I use my car to store stuff, meaning the thing is in use even when I'm not driving it. I also move (due to having a seasonal job at Yellowstone National Park) numerous times a year. My current cost of ownership is rou
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Autonomous cars will probably cost considerably more than 'manual' cars, but will last longer, for the same reasons that automatic transmissions last longer than manual trannies. This will drive more users to ditch the cost of ownership in favor of the rental model.
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but will last longer, for the same reasons that automatic transmissions last longer than manual trannies
And last shorter for the same reasons that an automatic transmission lasts shorter than a manual. And I imagine there are different reasons why a self-driving car would last shorter or longer than a "manual" car. It's not much of a statement.
The "missing" link is a very short chain. (Score:2)
How long does it take for people to realize that their car could be making them money whenever they are not driving it?
Like Uber but without actually having to drive people around by yourself.
How long after that do they realize that the most profitable solution is to get many cars and have them driving people around 24/7?
How long after that until the people realize that they don't actually need the car - after all, how many of them are renting their living space already without owning it?
Where it won't work
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...isn't this just the equivalent of taxicabs? Why do so many futurists seem obsessed with pushing a taxi-based future?
If they actually called them taxis, we probably wouldn't even give it a discussion. But combine words like "personal" and "public transportation"...
Probably because we've all seen Fifth Element.
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Besides, peop
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Because the cost of a taxi is mostly the cost of the driver. Cut that out and taxis become an economically viable replacement for more people.
No one can deny that there are a number of circumstances where taxis are more convenient that having to deal with your own car. Cost and other factors get in the way.
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Don't you mean
True Scotsmen love to blip their throttle, shift gears manually, control the clutch, smell the petrol fumes, feel the acceletration (sic), control the cornering, and at the end of the drive, be totally satisfied that the driver alone was able to control the car with skill and experience.
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Human drivers will probably exist on the same roads as autonomous cars for many decades, perhaps even forever. Cars started becoming common at about 1900, and by the early 1910s cars outnumbered horse buggies, but horse buggies were still being used in the 1930s. It will likely be the same with autonomous cars. Even after driverless cars are common, it will probably take at least a couple decades for the majority of cars to not require drivers.
I am on the side of people who just enjoy driving. I miss the mu
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In The Future, regardless of whether the car is autonomus or not, it will of course always report its travels to the manufacturer, and to the government. For Your safety, citizen. And because terrorists.
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Because you want to use a socially-provided asset, ie the road network, so please respect your co-users and co-funders of it.
What you do on your own land may be a different matter, but is not part of this discussion.
Rgds
Damon
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Or you could be like me, and take a train to work every day because it's only somewhat slower than driving and lets me work/read Slashdot for the duration of the ride.
I'm not a metrosexual. Trust me, I wear socks with sandals. :)
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That explains everything! The guy in the riced up Honda whose engine sounds like he's doing 90 while he's in the next lane doing 10 alongside me is just trying to retain some tiny piece of freedom and power in the face of the soul crushing workday commute where he's truly as powerless and ineffectual as the rest of us.
Every morning when I get in my car, my psychology says I'd rather be doing anything else.
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Needing a crutch to feel power and freedom is heterosexual... how exactly? In fact, walking is much more awesome than driving because when you walk, it is your own legs which enable you to do that. Guys who define their manliness by driving are the same people who buy penis enlargement pills so they can destroy the environment and help spammers to survive at the same time.
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That sounds awesome. If it ever happens though, it sure as hell wont be in the US. Liability issues of what happens if there's an accident (all your expensive stuff in your private compartment that broke!") or the dick that let his kid run around in his compartment, hitting its head and suing the driver, would make this tricky at best.