Lyft Says Robots Will Drive Most Of Its Cars in Five Years (recode.net) 274
A week after its rival Uber began rolling out self-driving cars in Pittsburgh, Lyft has said it also expects to roll out its self-driving by next year. Its president John Zimmer outlined a "three-phase" plan for the company, noting that self-driving cars will be made available to Lyft users in the first phase. But in this phase, it only plans to roll out self-driving cars that can "drive along fixed routes" and that the "technology is guaranteed to be able to navigate." Recode adds: In the second phase, the self-driving cars in the fleet will navigate more than just the fixed routes, but will only drive up to 25 miles per hour. As the technology matures and the software encounters more complex environments, Zimmer wrote, cars will get faster. The third phase, expected to happen sometime in 2021 or 2022, will be when all Lyft rides will be completed by a fully autonomous car. Shortly after that phase begins, car ownership will see a steep drop-off, according to Zimmer. Zimmer, who has long been a vocal proponent of ending car ownership, set a date for the death of the personally owned car in major U.S. cities: 2025.
So a guy that runs a ride sharing company. (Score:5, Insightful)
Says that self driving cars will put an end to car ownership.
It could put a dent in it but unless this makes people so broke that they can't own their own car I think personal space will still win out.
Re:So a guy that runs a ride sharing company. (Score:5, Insightful)
Reason #1 it won't happen; families.
Here I have 4 kids, each requiring different car seats size / adjustments. We are bringing and keeping different stuff for the kids (Stroller, diapers, their favorite movies) which stay with us without needing to grab it at our Xth destination. Keeping our previous purchases safe while we go for our next stop, and the items we don't need at that stop (no stroller at the grocery store) is a major win that lyft rides won't provide.
It might definitely help reduce the percentage of ownership, but it certainly can't sign the death certificate.
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And can you imagine haling a 'cab' for every stop in your running around at around $10 a pop?
Re:So a guy that runs a ride sharing company. (Score:4, Insightful)
And can you imagine haling a 'cab' for every stop in your running around at around $10 a pop?
What you are missing is that it won't be $10 a pop. Today, the biggest expense is the driver. Once the driver is gone, the price will fall dramatically. Also, a typical Uber/Lyft driver today drives for about 4 hours a day. A self-driving-car can operate 24/7. So the increased supply will drive down the price, while the lower amortization cost per ride will drive down the cost even more.
Uber and Lyft will also face pricing pressure from improvements in mass transit. Even for a bus, the biggest cost is the driver. As big human-driven buses driving fixed routes, are replaced with small self-driving vans driving flex-routes, prices will go down and ridership will go up.
bald tires, upatched OS, questionable brakes (Score:2)
win-win
Re:bald tires, upatched OS, questionable brakes (Score:4, Informative)
Eliminating the driver also eliminates the person most likely to complain loudly about life-threatening deferred maintenance.
Almost all traffic accidents are because of human error or inattention. The second biggest reason is road conditions. Poor maintenance and mechanical failure account for about 3% of all accidents, but less than 1% of fatal or injury causing accidents.
An accident, or even a mechanical breakdown on the road, is much more expensive than routine maintenance. So a profit-maximizing company would ensure that routine maintenance is done. This is no different than rental car companies today.
Re: So a guy that runs a ride sharing company. (Score:4, Interesting)
You realize that the biggest cost is the driver because the driver is paying for the car right?
No. Do the math. A typical Uber driver grosses about $18/hour. If he buys a $30k car, keeps it for 10 years, and drives 4 hours per day, 5 days a week, then that is about $3 / hour. Much more is paying for the driver than the cost of the car.
For an SDC that drives 20 hr/day, 365 days per year, the cost per hour is about 50 cents.
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No, the price won't fall dramatically, indeed it will like increase so as to expand the revenue stream for Lyft/Uber/XYZ.
Nonsense. Companies can't just arbitrarily set prices. If they could make more money with higher prices THEY WOULD ALREADY BE DOING IT. If Uber and Lyft raise prices (or fail to lower them as their costs fall) then other companies will jump into the market. This is exactly what happened when they pulled out of Austin: Other ride sharing apps were up and running in a few weeks.
Also, think of all those drivers who will now be out of work
They could be paid to throw rocks at windows to create jobs for glaziers [wikipedia.org].
Look, pointless make-work activities are not "good for
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Re: So a guy that runs a ride sharing company. (Score:2)
All these kid requirements can easily be fixed in a self driving car. The only reason we don't have automatic seas that can scale down to the size of a child is that they're not economic. They will be in a self driving car that's used all day.
Re:So a guy that runs a ride sharing company. (Score:5, Interesting)
Says that self driving cars will put an end to car ownership.
Even the automakers are expecting ride sharing to put a major dent in auto sales. Their analysts have been talking about this for years and most of them are invested in ride sharing. They are definitely talking about self-driving cars being part of this equation, and again, have been for years.
People who can't really afford to own a car responsibly often own one anyway, because they can't function without one in a world so dependent on private transportation. Most nations fit that description; people using public transportation suffer badly compared to vehicle owners because of public transport's many deficiencies. Self-driving cars have the potential to eliminate virtually all of those deficiencies. You can get a car when you want one, you don't have to worry about whether the driver is fit to do his job because there isn't a driver, and the vehicles don't inherently cause traffic flow problems with other vehicles, decreasing the overall efficiency of the system.
Since the economy isn't exactly improving, you can reasonably expect vehicle ownership to continue to decrease. The age of the U.S. fleet in particular continues to increase to ever-higher record levels. People are buying less cars, that's a fact. They're buying less cars both because they can not afford as many cars because the economy is still in the toilet, and because they can better function on public transportation than in the past because some new options have opened up under the name of "ride sharing". Whether they are ride-sharing or not isn't really the point here (though they aren't) but that they now exist when they didn't before. Yes, those are private transportation systems, but anyone who does not abuse them can use them.
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If you can't afford a used car, you definitely can't afford to be spending way more in 'cab' fares at around $10 a 1-way trip.
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If you can't afford a used car, you definitely can't afford to be spending way more in 'cab' fares at around $10 a 1-way trip.
You are forgetting TCO, and that the 'cab' fares are going to decrease because no one is going to have to pay a driver, and the bar to entry into the market is diminishing as Uber and Lyft push legal changes that reduce it — the same regulations designed to keep them from entering the market are the only thing that keep potential competitors out. If these companies actually succeed in changing the legal landscape sufficiently for their business model to be seen as generally viable, they'll be drowning
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all of this points to a better public transport system even if it is automated cars.
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all of this points to a better public transport system even if it is automated cars.
If Uber/Lyft/etc can provide self-driving cars and vans that are faster, more convenient, and cost competitive with existing public buses, then maybe it is time to get the "public" out of transportation. At least in America, the government has done a horrible job of running public transit. Maybe the government should focus on other priorities, and leave transit to private companies that have an incentive to do a better job.
Re:So a guy that runs a ride sharing company. (Score:4, Interesting)
Totally autonomous cars will have to be part of this for it to succeed, otherwise there won't be enough car owners and drivers to drive around the people who don't own a car.
I feel like automakers have been talking about this like Elon Musk is talking about going to Mars. I don't doubt that self-driving cars will be a reality, but I'm really wondering if they will be a reality in my lifetime (I'm 50).
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Cheap taxis are dirty.
Uber and Lyft rides are cheaper than taxis, and every time I have used either the cars have been very clean.
The taxis are dirty because the owners aren't concerned about bad reviews. The Uber/Lyft drivers are.
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Because taxis are awful and primarily exist to shuttle people between hotels and airports, and convention centers. Being able to rate your driver as "poor/good/excellent" and then cull out the bottom third (and force people to act civil to push them in to the top third) makes the experience much like being driven to school by your mother. I lived in Dallas and it was cost effective (I actually saved about $3,000 a year after insurance, maintenance, wear and tear items, not to mention speeding tickets and pa
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... now here in SF where parking is $280/mo in a private garage, it makes perfect sense. My lady friend owns a car but we only use it for trips out of town. If we're going somewhere to dinner or a show we always take an uber -- parking is insane and effectively impossible. All the street parking is taken up 100% of the time by residents who don't want to pay for private parking. As more people move in to cities, private car ownership can't go up. Private ride share makes perfect sense.
The problem here is San Francisco. Massive development, poor freeways, high-density urban living in glorified dorms, zero parking, and eco-nuts who are trying to make a point.
Perhaps Uber/Lyft makes great sense there, like taxis in New York and the massive, mass public transit investment. In most of the rest of the country, the economics don't make sense unless you're going to try to force people to use them by making parking very inconvenient, and/or taxing the hell out of everything involved with having a
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Agreed; unless the service costs about the same as energy (fuel/electicity) + the standard vehicle deprecation per mile (looks to be ~$0.54/mile), it'll be a very hard sell.
Even then, it would be a hard sell for my own daily commute: that works out to $7k/year for commute costs, which is 3-4x more than what I pay for over the life of a personally owned vehicle (including buying new cars, fuel, maintenance, insurance, registration, etc.)
Re:So a guy that runs a ride sharing company. (Score:4, Insightful)
Then maybe I'll consider the possibility that a robot car can safely discern a child running into the street from a abandoned shopping bag blown in the wind.
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The DEVIL's cybernetic jitney (Score:3)
Automatic elevators were first (Score:5, Funny)
How sad to see the nice, well-groomed and jovial men operating elevators replaced with the soulless automation [nytimes.com].
We are going to miss the nice, well-groomed and jovial cab-drivers too...
When was the last time you were in a cab? (Score:2)
I don't think I've ever had a cab driver that could be described as "nice, well-groomed and jovial".
Maybe Angry, slovenly (with the overwhelming scent of B.O.) and Anti-social would be a better description of the cab drivers I've had throughout North America.
Personally, I welcome our Johnny Cab overlords: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re:When was the last time you were in a cab? (Score:4, Interesting)
In the last 2 weeks I have taken licensed taxis in the Netherlands, UK, and USA. In all cases the drivers were reasonably competent, at least as well groomed as me, and either quiet and polite or jovial and talkative.
In the USA, the main problem with taxis is in the places with a limited number of licenses for taxis, possessed by rentiers who have no incentive to improve service and whose employee drivers have no autonomy and earn very little. Un-limit the taxi number and give them autonomy and quality would greatly improve.
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An elevator goes up and down in a finite space and that's ALL it does,
Not any more they don't: Next-gen elevator goes sideways as well as up and down [digitaltrends.com]
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Which is why were able to automate them first — decades before coming for automobile drivers.
Some trains [vice.com] were also automated decades ago [wikipedia.org], though wider adoption is still met with fierce opposition from organized labor and their idiotic sympathizers. Even replacing the "conductors" with video-cameras was deemed to violate labor-agreements in NYC [canarsiecourier.com], getting rid of the nice, well-groomed and jovial motormen would've been a non-starter.
Welcome to Johnny Cab! (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Picard meme "Not this shit again" (Score:4, Interesting)
The third phase, which according to the graph the company expects to be sometime in 2021 or 2022, will be when all Lyft rides will be completed by a fully autonomous car. Shortly after that phase begins, car ownership will see a steep drop-off, according to Zimmer. Zimmer, who has long been a vocal proponent of ending car ownership, set a date for the death of the personally owned car in major U.S. cities: 2025.
So he wants to totally rewrite the entire legal basis for cars, road rules and insurance in the US within the next 9 years? And expect that in a country where people almost idolize their cars that they are suddenly going to say "hell yes .. I'm selling my car tomorrow!"
Where can I get some of what he's smoking?
Alternatively its purely a BS reaction to Uber to try and remind people that Lyft exists and is relevant.
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Hmm, no market for used cars since everyone is just giving them up. No market for new cars either, except the self driving ones that few individuals will own.
I don't see automakers adopting this business model any time soon. Same for the finance industry that exists to loan people money for cars.
I'd be careful to avoid what he is smoking, you don't want your mind altered that much.
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Automakers and finance can campaign against it, to try to control the public mind and maybe get laws passed to impede the change (rent-seeking behavior). They can't stop it forever. The public mind won't hold up as you change over through a new generation; and, two generations later, congress starts filling with people who won't buy your bullshit. Somewhere along the way, the public mind starts pressing old politicians, so you don't necessarily need to wait 40 years for everything to kick in; the media
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GM invested $2 billion in Lyft; car ownership is down, drivers licences are down, not as a percentage but as a whole. The CEO of Ford said as much last week in an interview with the WSJ. Wages are down and savings are down. People can't afford to drive and maintain cars, and people are moving towards cities. Ford, Volvo and others are already designing and marketing their next generation of driverless cars and vans. Finally, cities are full. There's no more room to build freeways in urban cores, and even if
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Let me handle these in reverse order.
Alternatively its purely a BS reaction to Uber to try and remind people that Lyft exists and is relevant.
This is almost certainly the truth.
Where can I get some of what he's smoking?
Probably pretty much anywhere.
So he wants to totally rewrite the entire legal basis for cars, road rules and insurance in the US within the next 9 years?
I don't think it's going to change changes that massive.
And expect that in a country where people almost idolize their cars that they are suddenly going to say "hell yes .. I'm selling my car tomorrow!"
The US fleet continues to age to record levels [dot.gov], year on year. People are buying less cars. Unfortunately, sales of hybrids are flat and sales of EVs are way down. These vehicles have a higher energy cost of production, so it's beneficial for the environment when people keep them longer. But when people keep ordinary gasoline-powered vehicles longer, th
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It's been 20 years since OBD2. Any reasonably new and maintained car puts out about the same emissions.
Classics are driven so few miles they aren't worth counting.
Average age going up 2 years is just a rational (albeit slow) response to improved metallurgy. Mostly hard chromed piston rings.
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It's been 20 years since OBD2. Any reasonably new and maintained car puts out about the same emissions.
O2 sensors and catalysts both wear out. If a vehicle is driven regularly you should replace the O2 sensors at about five years. If you don't do that, you substantially increase the risk of catalyst damage, and then your emissions most definitely increase. People don't replace things like that until lights go on.
Average age going up 2 years is just a rational (albeit slow) response to improved metallurgy. Mostly hard chromed piston rings.
The rest of the vehicle still degrades at about the same rate as ever, especially here in America where most interior is still hot garbage. People want to replace these vehicles sooner, they just can
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You don't need to do preventive maintenance on O2 sensors or cats. When the check engine light goes on, you replace the broken part. OBD2 is a rolling smog check, if the light is off, the part is doing it's job. (Don't even suggest a preventative O2 sensor change to V8 Volvo drivers...those pieces of shit have 16 O2 sensors and 8 cats, all overpriced.)
New car people do replace their cars before the first bit of plastic breaks, but that's not what we are talking about. Average age is fleet average, not ag
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You don't need to do preventive maintenance on O2 sensors or cats. When the check engine light goes on, you replace the broken part. OBD2 is a rolling smog check,
...which lights the MIL when the sensors detect that the vehicle is producing 2.5 times the federally allowable standard.
(Don't even suggest a preventative O2 sensor change to V8 Volvo drivers...those pieces of shit have 16 O2 sensors and 8 cats, all overpriced.)
My A8s have four sensors and two cats, but the downstream sensors only monitor the cats so you can safely ignore them until you get a MIL (as you say) so long as you don't ignore the upstream ones on the down pipes.
New car people do replace their cars before the first bit of plastic breaks, but that's not what we are talking about. Average age is fleet average, not age at first resale.
You're right, but most people don't want a beat down used car, either. They want it to still have all the buttons and knobs and for everything to work.
With the onset of throttle by wire, old cars are looking better and better. The last rental car I had overruled my throttle stomp as it thought the steering was too far turned for any power.
If I can just figure out
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The major defect in his argument is generational: we're all used to driving, to owning, and otherwise to just having our own private car. There's a familiarity in this which is in many ways romantic, filling us with a sense of security as we remain surrounded in our own territory and firmly in control during every commute.
A new generation will have to introduce itself to that familiarity, and to the classical concept of car ownership and of driving. Those of this new generation will spend their lives
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The major defect in his argument is generational: we're all used to driving, to owning, and otherwise to just having our own private car.
Perhaps that explains my perspective, since I grew up raised by a single parent who never owned a car. I've been driving since I was sixteen, though.
That generation will likely abandon the costs, risks, and inconvenience of driving in favor of chartering self-driving cars.
I agree. However...
Why spend $28,000 every 5 years
Every 11 years [dot.gov].
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The used car market is fed by people who bought new cars and are buying a new car. Those 11-year-old trucks were once new trucks, then 5-year-old trucks that got sold, then bought for cheap by people who might keep them 3, 5, or 8 years.
People aren't buying brand new cars and keeping them on the road for an average of 11 years; and the people buying used cars *definitely* aren't averaging 11 years holding them, because otherwise the average age of the car would be higher.
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Legal issues: this is mostly about liability. Has to be worked out but this does not have to take absurdly long.
Road rules: no need to rewrite those, autopilots are built to work within the existing rules. At first there may be some additional rules (and traffic signs) about where you may and may not engage the autopilot. Again, very little keeping us from a
Laws and other stuff will take longer then 5 years (Score:2)
Laws and other stuff will take longer then 5 years
http://worksnewage.blogspot.co... [blogspot.com]
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us secret service with not use auto drive car any (Score:2)
us secret service with not use auto drive car any time soon and if they do that may need a rule over ride mode that may need to go as far as running people over to get away.
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Since when do these freedom restricting technologies ever apply to the ruling class?
technical judgment (Score:2)
Well, with this kind of stellar background, how could anybody doubt his judgment on the capabilities of technology, or even his honesty when making pronouncements about what his company will or will not accomplish?
HOW are they NOT a TAXI service at this point? (Score:4, Interesting)
Lyft and Uber can no longer maintain that they are a "ride sharing service" where independent contractors own and operate their own vehicles.
In the autonomous cars case, Lyft and Uber CLEARLY own the vehicles!!!! They are a TAXI service and need to be regulated as such.
How the hell have state and local prosecutors allowed them to get away with this??
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The way Uber gets away with this is by being faster and more widespread than regulators. This doesn't happen in countries where the regulator covers the whole economy, like in most European countries. US-wide companies against individual State regulators means the regulators are rarely effective and can rarely keep up.
Yet Americans widely oppose "The Feds" regulating anything - so they get the companies they want, because they oppose regulation of them. They get the country they want.
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In the autonomous cars case, Lyft and Uber CLEARLY own the vehicles!!!! They are a TAXI service and need to be regulated as such.
Obviously the regulation will have to be different, because there are no drivers.
How the hell have state and local prosecutors allowed them to get away with this??
It hasn't happened yet. Calm down.
Try 20 years and no it won't. (Score:2)
They don't even have have the laws changed yet so driverless cars can even operate. Good luck on that one within 5 years. And once it happens and these things start having accidents (which will happen, they will be on the road with human drivers who will always blame the machine which we see already in Tesla accidents) and lawyers get involved it will stretch the time-frame out even further. But on to when they eventually do...
So everyone is going to hail a 'cab' whenever they want to go somewhere? Is that
Get out of your city more often (Score:4, Insightful)
The tech industry would be much less hilarious if so-called visionaries left the Bay Area or the East Coast Boston/Phil/NY/DC metropolitan areas more often.
If you get out into the other 98% of America, you'd realize that a) we like cars and b) we like ownership of property and things like cars.
Stop trying to solve problems that only exist in San Francisco. Thanks.
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This. If only I had mod points you'd get them all.
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Stop trying to solve problems that only exist in San Francisco. Thanks.
(Full disclosure: I've lived in the Bay Area for 25+ years and work in the tech industry.)
I've never really wanted a car when I lived in Boston. I don't want one when I visit NYC (especially Manhattan). Didn't particularly want one on London, Paris, or Rome either. I can't imagine I'd want one in Beijing or Tokyo. I'm seeing a trend here.
I find as I grow older (I'm in my 50s), the romance of owning a car is really diminishing. I no longer identify as powerful and free because I have a car. My kids are the s
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Here in Europe, private ownership of cars could go the way of the Dodo bird and many people would welcome it.
The main differences:
One - our cities are older and streets smaller, the insanity that is hundreds of thousands of people each driving in a huge metal box that is mostly empty becomes visible very fast under such conditions. Parking in most European cities is a nightmare.
Two - we actually have working public transport.
I would be more than happy to use self-driving taxis in the city, and keep my car o
Lyft (and Uber) good for the drivers? Hah. (Score:2)
So Lyft (and Uber) are good for the drivers, eh? All the claims of offering people flexible work, improving earning chances of people without firm employment, etc, turn out to be complete rubbish.
Lyft and Uber are after the money, not helping anyone, not creating jobs, just the money. I feel sorry for anyone tricked into expecting Uber (especially) would be a long lasting way to work for money; they were just a disposable tool on the way to more money for the investors and executives of Lyft and Uber.
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I feel sorry for anyone tricked into expecting Uber (especially) would be a long lasting way to work for money
I feel sorry for anyone tricked into believing in long-lasting ways to work for money. There are some, like booze and candy. People buy those even in recessions and they're easy enough to make that automation hasn't eliminated humans.
They should be banned. (Score:2)
>> but will only drive up to 25 miles per hour.
Can you imagine how pissed off people will rightfully get when stuck in a giant tailback of traffic behind one of these f***ing things.
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You will get an obstructing traffic ticket for going the speed limit in California.
The rule is simple, if you have 3 cars backed up behind you, pull over.
Less true in school zones than divided highways.
Only applicable in urban hipster neighborhoods (Score:3)
Outside of cities, I can't see the economics of this working. Telephone service in rural areas had to be subsidized by a universal service fee. Why? Because the for-profit telephone company, even with a monopoly, didn't want to extend the network for a small number of customers unless there was an incentive. Imagine Uber/Lyft having to guarantee that one of their self-driving cars would be available to take you wherever you wanted to go, 24/7, with 30 minutes' notice regardless of where you live.
The other reason why I don't think personal cars are completely doomed is families. If you have kids, you know that the car becomes another room of the house if you live in the suburbs and have to drive everywhere. Imagine having to haul all your crap out of your self-driving Uber cab when you reach your destination, then put it back into another car when you want to go back.
I think some of this stuff is really cool, but the business model seems exactly like a myopic view of the entire world being a dense city filled with well-to-do hipster singles or married people who don't have kids. It's the same model as Blue Apron and all those other delivery services...Ironic mustache and goatee Swift developer and his marketing liaison coordinator wife arrive home from another 12-hour shift at the unicorn startups they work at. Rather than call an Uber to take them to the trendy new Ethiopian-Thai fusion place again, or hang out with the LUDDITES at the grocery store, Blue Apron has a box delivered to their front door with meals in it! It's brilliant! Everyone will love it! Give us $100 million!!!
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What Would Brian Boitano Do? (Score:2)
The future of automobiles? Govt fleets (Score:2)
The future of automobiles will be autonomous fleets run by your government entity.
Why?
Because it's safer and more cost effective. You need a car because you need to go from point A to point B. What if you had the convenience of a cab without the cost? What if you could it whenever you wanted, and didn't have to wait for a scheduled pickup like a bus?
And what if the roadways were reserved for these cars and "manual drivers" only had one lane of road?
Why wouldn't you use the car service?
Instead of spending mo
Predicting the future, is rather stupid. (Score:2)
"...Zimmer, who has long been a vocal proponent of ending car ownership, set a date for the death of the personally owned car in major U.S. cities: 2025."
Hey Zimmer, here's an eye-opening revelation for you; the overwhelming majority of car owners today have never used your product, and never intend to.
Given that fact, kindly STFU about the death of car ownership. You could at least wait until you handle your first wrongful death lawsuit due to your premature AI deployment schedule before making such asinine predictions.
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Well I do agree with the 20 years part, but not so much with the AI part. Google has a VERY impressive system, I highly recommend watching this video (very cool stuff too): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj-rK8V-rik
But I still think it's a long way off even with how good it is.
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They need to be able to determine the difference between a rabbit hopping across the street and a bouncing ball.. because a child may be running after the ball. A human would stop and so should AI.
They don't need to do that because they can just slow down anyplace the view is obscured, so that if someone comes out from between parked cars they don't hit them. They can also simply assume that any object crossing the road rapidly might be followed by another; that's true whether we're discussing a child following a ball or one in which there's two rabbits... or more likely, multiple deer. A small fawn is about the same size as a large ball...
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Any object? A blowing leaf? A plastic bag?
Kids will throw balls into highway traffic just to watch the fun.
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Kids will throw balls into highway traffic just to watch the fun.
There is already a mechanism in place to handle that problem, which will no doubt be aided by the addition of a bunch of high-resolution imagery of the event; even moreso if the number of vehicles capturing such data is increased. Taxi V2V could well include a request to other vehicles to help capture photographic evidence.
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Kids already do this, and throw rocks from overpasses.
Fortunately, most humans, even children, aren't horrible people, and it's rare.
Do you really think a kickball thrown onto a busy highway won't cause an accident already?
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Well that's wrong (Score:3)
many things are a 'judgement call' and that requires a conscious, sentient, self-aware brain to decide what to do.
That's not at all true. Anything directing the car, no matter how dumb, can make a choice.
In fact on average a computer will have much better visibility to the full surroundings than a human driver could, so even if "dumber" the computer is better informed and so statistically will probably make better choices.
I also disagree with your assumption that all drivers can be classed as "conscious"
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How will that field of view work for it if the ball is visible but the child is in the process of running out from between two parked cars?
We've covered this argument extensively. The answer is the same to the question "will my car run over a pair of nuns to save my life", and it's that the car will slow down and not get into the situation in the first place. If the sensors can't see what's by the side of the roadway, the vehicle is going to detect that and slow down. The vehicles will learn routes which tend to have less obstructions, so that this is minimally inconvenient.
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You haven't answered how this would work in terms of the scenario I presented.
That's because you presented a stupid scenario.
Road is slippery,
Car detects the slip from its ESP system (mandatory in the US since 2010) and slows down.
ball bounces out from between two cars,
Ball bounces out, car slows down just in case, just as a human driver should. Cars are parked along the roadway such that you can't see what's behind them, car slows down just in case, just as a human driver should. So yes, I very much did answer this question, in two ways, which I will recap for you now. The car will prepare for the situation by being cautious, and it will
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The question is, how MUCH does the car slow down as a result of detecting the road is slippery... let's look at it this way, what stopping distance is the car to target? It won't be a stopping distance of two feet, because then it will be driving at walking speed everywhere. Stopping distance for an average vehicle on ice at 40mph is
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Is it a stupid scenario? You propose that children never run out from between parked cars?
No, and this is the last time I'm going to repeat myself: the car is going to slow down before it gets to the parked cars because it's going to detect that there is a hazard there, in the form of poor visibility. The average human driver will just blow that hazard off, which is why they're at risk of hitting the child in the first place.
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Not just decision making, but understanding.
Thank you! That's a way of putting things that hadn't occurred to me. There are more dimensions to the issue of operating a motor vehicle on a public road than just sensory_input->decision_output.
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third world market beta testing
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In fact on average a computer will have much better visibility to the full surroundings than a human driver could, ...
I disagree with this part. Why? It has nothing to do with a computer, but it is depended on Sensors & how the information is converted in a form that a computer can understand. Computer vision is NOT the same as human vision by the way. And you over value on "on average" cases. Who cares for average cases because there is no significant damages and/or life hazard issues (trivia). The focus is all about extreme cases which lead to dangers and damages. So I'm not sure how you can compare a computer with h
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many things are a 'judgement call' and that requires a conscious, sentient, self-aware brain to decide what to do.
That's not at all true. Anything directing the car, no matter how dumb, can make a choice.
There's also a huge gap between the smartest thing to do and the minimum required by law. If I see a crazy drunk driver that's about to ram me in an intersection I might want to slam the brakes, but it's not like I'll get charged for not avoiding it. If I come across a hill and get blinded by the low sun I could brake hard. I might also be rear ended by the next guy coming over the hill, but technically that's his fault. Even if a semi has lost its brakes and is barrelling down the hill towards me I legally
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Our computers fuck up all the time because of bad sofrware. So do your phones. So will so-called 'autonomous cars', and the more complex the software, the harder it is to find the bugs in it, and in this case the bugs WILL GET PEOPLE KILLED
Bugs in the human brain killed 38,300 people in 2015 and injured another 4.4 million. And these bugs are far harder to find and fix than autonomous driving cars would be. Yes, it's very likely each year self-driving cars will kill thousands of people and injure hundreds of thousands more. But even if this is true they would still be an order of magnitude safer than human drivers.
I'm not saying it is an absolute that self-driving cars will be safer than humans in the next 10 years, but it is certainly not no
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Again? Really?
Once again. Tesla is full of shit. They compare 'autopilot' accident rates to all human driving. They should compare autopilot rates to human driving on divided highways. They don't because that would make them look bad.
If you haven't already done so, read 'How to Lie with Statistics'.
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Once again. Tesla is full of shit. They compare 'autopilot' accident rates to all human driving. They should compare autopilot rates to human driving on divided highways. They don't because that would make them look bad.
So, have you done that? Has anyone? And if so, where's that comparison? I've looked up some related statistics but none of them speak directly to this point. Over one-third of collisions are on divided highways, for example; that suggests that in fact the comparison would not make them look bad, but I honestly don't know.
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Yes I did. IIRC divided highway accident rates are about 1/4 the average for all driving. (You can Google for yourself, it's not hard to find. You want the accidents/mile not accidents/hour to compare to Tesla stats.) By far the safest mode.
Tesla's in autopilot are (by current data) much more dangerous than regular cars in similar situations.
This has been beat to death in the last three Tesla threads. But the fanbois keep bullshitting/parroting.
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1 word: parking.
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It's not a cost saving, its far more expensive in fact. Can you imagine paying around $10 for every 1-way trip you do? I'm guessing I do 50 1-way rides a week all the running around to work, kids events, shopping, etc. $500 a week is not what I call saving money.