Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can still do that with Uber. Why own a car today?
You have to pay a human to take you. Humans are expensive.
and smelly, and talk too much, and the biggest one of all: suck at driving.
Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF
41–50 of 183 posts
Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF
#42Self-driving cars will slowly (or quickly) make car ownership redundant. Why own a car (pay taxes, insurance, parking), when you can have one at your door in a couple of minutes ? When you arrive at the destination, just exit the car - no need to look for parking or anything like that, let the car figure it out. If technology can do that, then owning a car becomes more of a hobby than necessity. I hope GM's strategy…
I used to think this, and I still think it'll happen in urban centers, but there are pretty big swaths of rural or just low density areas that wouldn't be well served by this, so it'd take a while (a couple decades extra maybe) to get local rideshare hubs going, and in some more remote places it maybe would never happen.
Once they are safe and reliable, autonomous vehicles will quickly replace the subsidized demand response bus services that run in rural areas.
(drivers are a big expense for such services)
Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF
#43Self-driving cars will slowly (or quickly) make car ownership redundant. Why own a car (pay taxes, insurance, parking), when you can have one at your door in a couple of minutes ? When you arrive at the destination, just exit the car - no need to look for parking or anything like that, let the car figure it out. If technology can do that, then owning a car becomes more of a hobby than necessity. I hope GM's strategy…
You can still do that with Uber. Why own a car today?
Because Humans quickly change your rider review from 5 stars to one when you do not tip.
Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF
#44Self-driving cars will slowly (or quickly) make car ownership redundant. Why own a car (pay taxes, insurance, parking), when you can have one at your door in a couple of minutes ? When you arrive at the destination, just exit the car - no need to look for parking or anything like that, let the car figure it out. If technology can do that, then owning a car becomes more of a hobby than necessity. I hope GM's strategy…
> Why own a car (pay taxes, insurance, parking), when you can have one at your door in a couple of minutes ? Because when I want to use one to go to the mountains or the beach on a holiday weekend there will be none available or surge pricing? This is already the case to some extent with rentals and car sharing services. I own a car in NYC that is only used on the weekends. Financially this is a somewhat dubious prop…
This is a pretty solvable problem from a car service's POV: overprovision your fleet to account for people who want to take a car for a full day or even a week, and then charge significantly less than ZipCar but more than a local ride-hop (you could even change pricing plans so you pay by the hour/day instead of by the mile). Because your fixed vehicle costs are amortized over a much larger number of customers than ZipCar and your car can get itself from where there's supply to where there's demand, you can eliminate the reservation aspect and charge significantly less.
On an economic level, the occasional person who wants to reserve a car for a weekend uses up a much smaller fraction of a car than one who owns one outright.
Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF
#45> Still, Cruise says those drivers have had to take over manual control of vehicles engaged in Cruise Anywhere service only on a few occasions Not trying to pour cold water on this but.. it's all about those "few occasions". The difference between level 2 and level 4/5 autonomy is vast. Those "few occasions" would presumably be accidents without the intervention of the safety driver. A small corporate shuttle service…
I'm not sure what those "few occasions" were, but I think there's another category of problem that these could fall into other than would-be accidents: If the car over-cautiously decided it didn't know what to do, came to a safe stop, and threw on the 4-ways while it waited for human input, that's not as terrible.
I was driving home a few months ago in the rain on Division in SF. Cars were stopped, and I immediately couldn't figure out why. When I passed the stopped vehicles I got my answer: there was seemingly a wall of water coming down from the freeway overhead and an autonomous car was stopped as it apparently didn't know how to handle the situation.
Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF
#46Self-driving cars will slowly (or quickly) make car ownership redundant. Why own a car (pay taxes, insurance, parking), when you can have one at your door in a couple of minutes ? When you arrive at the destination, just exit the car - no need to look for parking or anything like that, let the car figure it out. If technology can do that, then owning a car becomes more of a hobby than necessity. I hope GM's strategy…
> Why own a car (pay taxes, insurance, parking), when you can have one at your door in a couple of minutes ? Because when I want to use one to go to the mountains or the beach on a holiday weekend there will be none available or surge pricing? This is already the case to some extent with rentals and car sharing services. I own a car in NYC that is only used on the weekends. Financially this is a somewhat dubious prop…
But the economics will certainly change in the future. Self driving cars can be used around the clock and probably be used to deliver packages and food overnight. Maybe even empty your garbage or deliver batteries as an cheaper(?) alternative to your power company. Also scale and competition could get much bigger.
Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure what those "few occasions" were, but I think there's another category of problem that these could fall into other than would-be accidents: If the car over-cautiously decided it didn't know what to do, came to a safe stop, and threw on the 4-ways while it waited for human input, that's not as terrible.
I was driving home a few months ago in the rain on Division in SF. Cars were stopped, and I immediately couldn't figure out why. When I passed the stopped vehicles I got my answer: there was seemingly a wall of water coming down from the freeway overhead and an autonomous car was stopped as it apparently didn't know how to handle the situation.
In other words, the autonomous car was smart enough to not drive into a waterfall, whereas you were not.
Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF
#48Why does the photo show a lady getting in the back seat? There is no driver(?), and the front seat has an airbag...
Back seat behind the driver is statistically the safest. In case of a collision a driver will instinctively try to save himself and therefore crash with the passenger side. Being behind the driver therefore puts you at less risk
Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF
#49Sounds like the tech itself is in pretty good shape, but was surprised at the haphazard looking way it's grafted onto the car. Pretty sure I'm seeing zip ties and generic aluminum t-slot, with the front sensors sticking quite a ways out from the overall profile of the car. Pretty sure that's hitting someone's shin/knee as they exit the car at some point. Not trying to make too big a deal of that, but now that they ar…
They stick out about the same amount as the side mirrors, which I assume is not a coincidence. I suspect that molded body parts to hide the extra hardware won't make much of a difference to the majority of consumers. Do you want a ride in the cheap, safe, ugly car or the expensive, glitchy, sexy car?
Re: Cruise is running an autonomous ride hailing service for employees in SF
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure what those "few occasions" were, but I think there's another category of problem that these could fall into other than would-be accidents: If the car over-cautiously decided it didn't know what to do, came to a safe stop, and threw on the 4-ways while it waited for human input, that's not as terrible.
I was driving home a few months ago in the rain on Division in SF. Cars were stopped, and I immediately couldn't figure out why. When I passed the stopped vehicles I got my answer: there was seemingly a wall of water coming down from the freeway overhead and an autonomous car was stopped as it apparently didn't know how to handle the situation.
Couldn't they have something like a real Human remote driver. That can intervene, but also can oversee multiple cars.