Why you have (probably) already bought your last car

As a layman, I think this title is way off, even if the internal concepts of the piece are reasonable. We're a long way from fleets of autonomous vehicles being ubiquitous enough that I can expect a vehicle of the specs I require to be available in the same amount of time as I could start one in my driveway. Maybe this isn't fully informed, but my impression is that even an early automobile was strictly better than a horse, for the riders in the moment.

That said, the average person may have bought their second-to-last car. But I bet you we end up owning passenger/cargo modules that dock at our houses for transport platforms to pick us up in.

I'm increasingly starting to wonder if the autonomous cars will get the chance to "win" before being replaced by "flying cars". There's half a dozen companies at least that are aiming for first flight in the next 2-3 years, and Uber-like services in the 2025 timeframe. Some, like Lilium have demonstrated flying prototypes.

Companies like Lilium are claiming they'll be able to compete with and eventually beat Ubers current pricing, and fly you at speeds of 300km/h....

If that comes through, it will have a vastly more disruptive effect than autonomous cars. E.g. I live about 10 miles from the centre of London, and that's about a 1 hour commute. A one hour flight at 300km/h would make most of England viable to live and work in and still have commuting distances similar to what Londoners consider perfectly viable commuting time today...

It has the potential to change the dynamics of both the housing and labour market dramatically. And who knows what it will do to e.g. downtowns when most of the country suddenly is within 20-30 minutes or less of one of the half a dozen or so largest city centres.

To a European used to seeing American sprawl as an example of emphasising the car over public transport the prospect of something that can multiple acceptable travel distances by a large factor over the car is a bit scary...

So frustrating to me that otherwise smart people keep buying into this narrative, including software developers and tech people who should know better.

Here's the actual status quo: after a decade of research into autonomous cars specifically (not to mention the decades of AI and systems research before that), we are barely at the point where a car can function safely with Level 2 autonomy, in good conditions.

These prognostications about eliminating traditional cars are assuming reliable Level 5 autonomy in all conditions. And unlike most software, you can't just get 99% of the way there and call it done. If you want to remove the steering wheel, it has to work ALL the time (or close enough to make no difference.) They say that 80% of the work is in the final 20% of the project? We haven't even finished the first 30% of the work yet.

Even more than that, nobody seems to be talking about the fact that to get this to work reliably, you basically need full general intelligence (unless you can manage to turn the road system into a closed system, like rail is). For example: following verbal or gestured instructions from a police officer or construction worker. We don't even have _theories_ on how to build intelligence like that, yet.

Will it happen eventually? Sure, probably, eventually. Will we get a lot of use out of Level 2 and Level 3 autonomy in the mean time? Already happening. Will we be taking robotic taxis in the next 20 years? No way, not with current approaches absent a breakthrough in general AI.

Honestly, I bought my last car a decade ago.

Cars aren't that great for a lot of reasons (my stress level, my city's livability, the environment), and getting rid of the idea of car ownership was one of those huge life decisions that I made that I've never, ever regretted.

I don't use car sharing services - that whole industry is toxic for the drivers, I sometimes take public transportation, and every few years, I take a flight.

Everything else is done by bike. I'm happy, I'm healthy, and I'm looking forward to the rest of my life without owning another car.

Do these requirements for the levels you mention anticipate the changes in traffic patterns that will occur? What I mean is, if we could save all the space that the author is noting, could we relegate entire lanes of bikers into completely separate streets? If bikers were gone, for example, could we get away with not needing cars to go to level 5? I'm speaking hypothetically about one hazard but has anyone modeled what would be the environment for cars if everything changes? If your train travels in an enclosed tube, it would require fewer safeguards against obstacles, and could we put autonomous vehicles in a similar kind of enclosed environmental tube?