Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Self driving cars and beyond

a16z.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 120 posts

Re: Self driving cars and beyond

#91

Post by ghaff »

adrianN wrote: post #23
rimliu wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How? We already have means to get from point a to point b without driving ourselves. Sure, technology would be amazing, but besides that?

Autocars have the potential to reduce the price of this kind of transportation by an order of magnitude.

The IRS reimbursement rate for auto expenses for business is about $0.50/mi. Uber rates (likely subsidized) are in the $1 - $1.50 range. You can argue about the details but your floor for self-driving cars is around what the cost to operate a vehicle is. Fleet operations have some economies of scale but they also have management and staffing costs.

Electric vehicles may someday bring down costs across the board.

Bottom line is that autonomous driving isn't a path to "too cheap to meter" transportation especially as it increases congestion in various ways.

Re: Self driving cars and beyond

#92

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

letscavort22 wrote: post #2

It’s great to explore this topic. You can have a lot of fun in picking a random industry and imagining the effect that self driving will have. Health - beyond the obvious effects on the emergency room, what else? Ambulances willl quite clearly be affected. Why would someone wait minutes for one to arrive when they can just hop in an autocar to go the hospital? Or would the entire emergency room itself be on wheels? (…

>> It’s great to explore this topic. You can have a lot of fun in picking a random industry and imagining the effect that self driving will have.

Yes, it will be interesting to see the public's reaction in a few years, when the promised revolution fails to materialise.

______________

[1] I say this with some insight borrowed from people in the automotive industry. A commenter in another thread has recommended the following Medium post:

We’re still very much in the early days of making self-driving cars a reality. Those who think fully self-driving vehicles will be ubiquitous on city streets months from now or even in a few years are not well connected to the state of the art or committed to the safe deployment of the technology. For those of us who have been working on the technology for a long time, we’re going to tell you the issue is still really hard, as the systems are as complex as ever.

https://medium.com/self-driven/a-decade-after-darpa-our-view...

Re: Self driving cars and beyond

#93

Post by dmix »

Animats wrote: post #90

We'll probably see self-driving before widespread electric car use. Self-driving is an auto accessory. It's going to come from companies like Continental and Delco, which make auto parts for manufacturers. The big players are targeting 2020 as the year self-driving becomes a more or less standard option. That may slip; Volvo's big Level 4 demo with 100 real users has been pushed back to 2021. But it's getting close.…

True, this (great) video series doesn't make a clear distinction between electric/AI. But the key evolutionary shift in the next 10yrs is the massive shift towards fleet-based cars, delivery drones, and the post-car-ownership era... it's not just about plugging sensors+AI into today's cars:

- self-driving fleet cars can drop you off and go automatically pick up next person OR recharge at base stations eliminating need for most parking spots (currently 14% of city real estate)

- reduction in average car size, as cars with single occupants no longer need 4-5 seats + cars can drive very close together + synchronized higher speeds... meaning less roads per car & less cars per road

- cars automatically linking up like trains on highways to conserve energy

- repurpose above unused lanes for dedicated high speed delivery drone lanes + drop-off/pick-up zones replacing of parking spots

- removal of traffic barriers in the middle of all multi-lane roads (so middle lanes can automatically be shifted to the opposite direction depending on traffic load) ala SF Golden Gate Bridge https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hMkLcAstxgA/maxresdefault.jpg

..but with software, and not just for rush hour

- redesigns of car interiors to support leisure time and work activity (swivel chairs, tables, screens, etc)

- eventual elimination of traffic signs/lights

Both electric/AI requires completely rethinking how traffic, infrastructure, and cars are designed, and both often compliment each other...so why not do it simultaneously?

Re: Self driving cars and beyond

#94

Post by brudgers »

jahewson wrote: post #43
brudgers wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every and each of the proposed benefits of vast public policy initiatives supported by a generous public purse in support of autonomous cars could be as easily derived from a similar public policy initiative to create public transit infrastructure.

Sure, in a city. But I really question that in places likes Southern California with its endless, winding suburbs. The place is built for cars.

The A16Z utopia proposes strong public policies based conclusions drawn from Denmark (about the size of Rhode Island) and the Netherlands (smaller than Delaware). Anywhere a car can go, a bus can go.

To put it another way, a premise that autonomous cars will work in places like Southern California is that an autonomous car will be at your doorstep whenever you need to leave. The ideal fleet to achieve this is one car dedicated to only serving your schedule. Anything else has all the drawbacks of party line telephone service.

Re: Self driving cars and beyond

#95

Post by semi-extrinsic »

JohanByttner wrote: post #48
crwalker wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened to 3D printing (ran and sold a small startup in this space): We realized that the vision of a 3D printer in every house was absurd. Consumer ≠ designer. Amazon is cheaper, faster, easier, higher quality unless I am putting on my design/engineering hat and doing R&D/NPI. We realized that 3D printers are just manufacturing tools, albeit really interesting ones. They belong in places where you might find C…

I second this. I'm part of an university team building a racecar and we mostly use additive manufacturing for carbon fibre parts that are difficult to lay by hands, such as the intake and certain wings. For this we just need basic polymers. It's a cost issue. However, this year we are starting to build functional components. We are looking at printing the brake cooling ducts - they need to survive 200 C and 400 bar.…

> 400 bar

Say what now? Unless it's a misprint, that restrictive a cooling system sounds like it flows basically no air?

Re: Self driving cars and beyond

#96

Post by prklmn »

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #79
rimliu wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I imagine using shared self-driving cars would be as fun as using public toilets.

Lyft cars do not feel like public toilets.

That’s because they’re not Lyft’s cars. They’re personally owned vehicles with the owner in the vehicle monitoring its condition at all times.

Re: Self driving cars and beyond

#97

Post by dmix »

chubot wrote: post #25
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #4

A couple of years ago there was a new article on the front page pretty much every day about the great new thing that will change our lives--3D printing. I'm worried that whatever happened to 3D printing is about to happen to self driving. What did happen to 3D printing?

Yes, I agree that you shouldn't take the premise for granted (that self-driving cars will be here soon). A high-profile Uber investor has said that level 4 self-driving won't be in the U.S. for 25 years: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/06/bill-gurley-uber-investor-se... That means they can service people without driver's licenses and people who can't drive -- the old and the young. Also, Chris Urmson said the transition…

> because I would be the first one to buy a self-driving car where I could fall asleep behind the wheel. I would love to take a trip from SF to Portland or LA like this.

You likely wouldn't be buying a car anymore when this becomes possible... this entire video series is about the replacement of individual car ownership with fleet based systems.

This is the big thing people don't factor in:

- the AI "problem" gets easier and easier the more cars talk to each other

- the average person won't need to 'afford' self-driving cars or buy add-ons for their cars, they'll just use Uber/Waymo and save money

- mass produced smaller fleet cars designed specifically for the job reduce costs per car

- fleet subscription prices to become cheaper and cheaper than owning a car (via competition, technical progress, etc), further increasing adoption

- 10x more developers/designers/traffic engineers start focusing on the problem (with real life/death consequences)

- 100x more real-time data is shared, thousands of new unexpected events become optimized each day

- AI cars get safer and safer, creating great social and altruistic pressure to not drive non-AI cars

- creating public health incentives as less traffic fatalities and law enforcement reduce expenditures

- countless businesses get wealthy off it (Waymo/Amazon/etc) and reinvest in the industry and R&D

- hundreds of billions in capital gets poured in rather than tens of billions

- traffic/infrastructure begins to be designed around them, dedicated lanes are built, further increasing the utility of using fleets/self-driving > manual

Once it hits a certain inflection point of adoption and utility it will be explosively exponential rate of adoption, just like smartphones.

Re: Self driving cars and beyond

#98

Post by skywhopper »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #4

A couple of years ago there was a new article on the front page pretty much every day about the great new thing that will change our lives--3D printing. I'm worried that whatever happened to 3D printing is about to happen to self driving. What did happen to 3D printing?

3D printing is a real technology that just doesn't make sense for a consumer product. Autonomous vehicles make a little more sense as a consumer product, but aren't anywhere close to being a real technology.

In particular, I'm always confused about how autonomous vehicles are supposed to solve congestion. There wouldn't be fewer cars on the road. Actually there would be more, because some percentage of the fleet would be en route to pick someone up rather than in use. And I see no chance of them reducing total trips.

But it's impossible to respond to a string of videos, so I don't know if this is relevant to the posted "article", which, it should be noted, is from a VC group that's _heavily_ invested in this tech and benefits from prolonging the hype.

Re: Self driving cars and beyond

#99

Post by taneq »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #95
JohanByttner wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I second this. I'm part of an university team building a racecar and we mostly use additive manufacturing for carbon fibre parts that are difficult to lay by hands, such as the intake and certain wings. For this we just need basic polymers. It's a cost issue. However, this year we are starting to build functional components. We are looking at printing the brake cooling ducts - they need to survive 200 C and 400 bar.…

> 400 bar Say what now? Unless it's a misprint, that restrictive a cooling system sounds like it flows basically no air?

That'd gave to be 400psi, or maybe kPa. 400 bar is more than most hydraulics run at.

Re: Self driving cars and beyond

#100

Post by userbinator »

visarga wrote: post #87
userbinator wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but it's more than just that --- self-driving cars will take more control away from individuals and put that in the hands of corporations and governments, who will have a much easier time tracking --- and even controlling --- the large-scale movement of the population. When they decide to outlaw non-self-driving cars almost completely, "the frog will have been thoroughly boiled." Of course, it's all done und…

You already got one or more GPS wireless tracking devices in your car, though.

I have a GPS but I can turn it off when I don't want it, and I'm pretty sure it's off because it ceases to function when it's unplugged.
Post reply on HN