Interesting for two reasons: 1. It is a self driving car, it is so clearly the future, I wish it existed now, it is going to be awesome (in my opinion). 2. Despite knowing about and following news about driverless cars for a while, there was something surprisingly (to me) compelling about watching the video. It's like you get a little taste of the full A to B that it can give you (door to door). Who wants to speculat…
Even now, several years into the current news/development arc of self-driving cars, I still can't believe this is going to be the future.
We're really never going to european (or japanese) style train networks ? We're really going to keep binging on roads ? We, as a nation of fat slobs[1] are really not ever going to return to a culture of walking ?
I always thought of car culture (and we absolutely live in a car culture) as some kind of 20th century aberration ... eventually, LA would get their streetcars and subways[2] back ... eventually Minneapolis and Denver would have 20, not 2 light rail lines ... eventually we'd graduate from shitty bus networks operated badly, for poor people.
Tesla cars are awesome. Successful self driving car software would be an incredible achievement. I worry that there is an arc of societal and urban development that has gone very badly awry and that this will further keep us from fixing it.
[1] That is not hyperbole.
[2] Yes, I know there is currently a tiny, minor subway in LA.