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Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

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Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#41

Post by gist »

djsumdog wrote: post #15

I think a lot of people in this field did see this coming. I knew a few people in this space about a year ago and I pretty much hear: "realistically, 15 years out at the earliest." I really really hate the concept of a driverless car. It's an incredibly difficult problem space; and for the same cost, America could build up municipal rail and bus infrastructure to where they were in the 1940s/1950s. We need more citie…

> but all the people who are barely making it who's lives fall apart if something on their car breaks.

Maybe people need to take personal responsibility and not spend money as if the government will make things easier for them and solve all problems. I am not claiming this is possible for everyone there are truly people who need help. But the vast majority of people can try to live in a way that they can have personal transportation (which has been around how long now?) and is reasonably enough priced currently.

Separately back before autos wouldn't people have had the same issue with horses or with even machines that they needed to run their lives or their business? Isn't it part of being human to plan for breakdowns of various things that you need that you can plan around failure?

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#42

Post by landryraccoon »

expertentipp wrote: post #20

Automotive industries never had problems with attracting taxpayer’s money. Graduating the car from break-clutch-engine machine to airliner level of complexity vehicle is a perfect money sink.

> Automotive industries never had problems with attracting taxpayer’s money.

I wasn't aware that the government is funding self driving car development. Do you have a source?

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#43

Post by adrianN »

petre wrote: post #37
lemoncucumber wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Driverless trains are a solved problem, so why don't we just build some of those?

The ECA has recently made an assesment of high speed rail and they found out things are not as rosy as they seem: https://www.eca.europa.eu/en/Pages/DocItem.aspx?did=46398

I think the competition for cars are not high speed lines, but normal, everyday commuter trains.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#44

Post by stephengillie »

save_ferris wrote: post #21
djsumdog wrote: post #15

I think a lot of people in this field did see this coming. I knew a few people in this space about a year ago and I pretty much hear: "realistically, 15 years out at the earliest." I really really hate the concept of a driverless car. It's an incredibly difficult problem space; and for the same cost, America could build up municipal rail and bus infrastructure to where they were in the 1940s/1950s. We need more citie…

> But in most of America we need to get back to the point where cars are no longer a necessity While I completely agree with you, the cultural barriers to this are petty much a non-starter in much of the country. I love not owning a car and being able to rely on mass transit where I live (Austin, TX), but Texas is so culturally opposed to anything like this. A lot of people think that mass transit is for the poor, an…

I'd like to join in on the bikeshedding mass transit into solar-powered self-driving car-apartments that can always drive anywhere with no congestion for free, need no maintenance, and aren't controlled by a monolithic entity with an abysmal reputation for profit over users.

Mass transit is expensive, boring, and thankless. How many bus companies have ever applied to YC?

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#45

Post by briatx »

Generalized self driving cars seems like such a hard problem, laced with a huge amount of hard to handle edge cases and a huge amount of hard to enumerate possible scenarios.

I think it will still happen, but they need to simplify the problem. The way to simplify it is to create automated driving lanes, similar to the current HOV lanes, that have standardized markers that are easy for computers to read, and then eventually extend it to automated driving routes.

That will take some amount of buy-in by the government to install, but I have faith in our well paid lobbyists.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#46

Post by [deleted] »

djsumdog wrote: post #15

I think a lot of people in this field did see this coming. I knew a few people in this space about a year ago and I pretty much hear: "realistically, 15 years out at the earliest." I really really hate the concept of a driverless car. It's an incredibly difficult problem space; and for the same cost, America could build up municipal rail and bus infrastructure to where they were in the 1940s/1950s. We need more citie…

[deleted]

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#47

Post by lemoncucumber »

petre wrote: post #37
lemoncucumber wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Driverless trains are a solved problem, so why don't we just build some of those?

The ECA has recently made an assesment of high speed rail and they found out things are not as rosy as they seem: https://www.eca.europa.eu/en/Pages/DocItem.aspx?did=46398

That link requires HTTP basic auth.

But my understanding is that at least as far things like subways go, driverless trains aren't a difficult problem.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#48

Post by adrianN »

piyh wrote: post #33
bytematic wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds preferable in both cases to me What is the non tech solution for automobiles, better designed cities?

Sounds to me like driverless cars are easier than redesigning existing cities.

Redesigning cities to be less reliant on cars is pretty much a solved problem. It just needs a few decades of focused policies. Check out for example how the Netherlands became bike friendly by relentless improvement since the seventies.

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#49

Post by [deleted] »

adrianN wrote: post #43
petre wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ECA has recently made an assesment of high speed rail and they found out things are not as rosy as they seem: https://www.eca.europa.eu/en/Pages/DocItem.aspx?did=46398

I think the competition for cars are not high speed lines, but normal, everyday commuter trains.

[deleted]

Re: Driverless Hype Collides with Merciless Reality

#50

Post by camjohnson26 »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #23
djsumdog wrote: post #15

I think a lot of people in this field did see this coming. I knew a few people in this space about a year ago and I pretty much hear: "realistically, 15 years out at the earliest." I really really hate the concept of a driverless car. It's an incredibly difficult problem space; and for the same cost, America could build up municipal rail and bus infrastructure to where they were in the 1940s/1950s. We need more citie…

This is the part that drives me crazy - America HAD electric railroads all over the place. Or at least Illinois (my homestate) did. You can look up 'Illinois InterUrban' and see maps of rails connecting every rural city. Many of the carriages were used as scrap metal for WWII, and once cars took off the demand wasn't there to rehabilitate them. But it would be so much cheaper to build out than even just replacing the…

Unfortunately Illinois borrowed from future generations and horribly mismanaged the economy. Now they're struggling just to avoid bankruptcy, let alone building out huge public transit projects.

Not to mention a multibillion dollar, unnecessary tunnel linking O'Hare with downtown which will almost certainly cost multiples higher than Elon Musk and Rahm Emanuel claim. We'd rather spend money on vaporware than build something that would actually help.

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