The Electric Car • Hacker News Board

Re: The Electric Car

#111

Post by danieltillett » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 11:51 PM UTC

bsder wrote: post #96

mbreese wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the weather is nice 99% of the time. I'd like to see a Google self driving car work in the rain or snow.

You say this like people are good at driving in rain or snow. They are not. There is a reason for all of those pileup pictures whenever there is severe weather in the US. Self-driving cars are going to be WAY better in bad weather than any human could ever be. They will be able to "see" in conditions that humans couldn't dream of. They will be able to control steering far better on slick surfaces. They will be able t…

I tend to agree on the insurance front, but I suspect that it won't be a ban, just a higher rate if you choose to drive manually.

Re: The Electric Car

#112

Post by protomyth » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 11:51 PM UTC

hackuser wrote: post #20

The real story my be that car sales may decline, gas or electric: * People drive less; I saw a study showing that significantly fewer millenials are licensed to drive than their predecessors. * More people live in cities, where the cost of cars is higher (insurance and parking) and the demand for them is less due to the proximity of destinations and the availability of alternatives (public transport, taxis, ride-shar…

if you go to https://www.nada.org/nadadata/ and look at the table "New-vehicle sales and market share, by manufacturer", it gives the following stats:

  Year         Total
  2005    16,945,000
  2006    16,502,700
  2007    16,089,300
  2008    13,194,600
  2009    10,401,700
  2010    11,554,100
  2011    12,734,200
  2012    14,440,060
  2013    15,524,800
  2014    16,437,000

So, I'm not sure that car sales will really decline. It should be noted that the data presented was the source data for the U.S. Census Bureau Statistical Abstract which was discontinued in 2012 because of budget cuts.

Re: The Electric Car

#113

Post by CountSessine » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 11:52 PM UTC

bsder wrote: post #96

mbreese wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the weather is nice 99% of the time. I'd like to see a Google self driving car work in the rain or snow.

You say this like people are good at driving in rain or snow. They are not. There is a reason for all of those pileup pictures whenever there is severe weather in the US. Self-driving cars are going to be WAY better in bad weather than any human could ever be. They will be able to "see" in conditions that humans couldn't dream of. They will be able to control steering far better on slick surfaces. They will be able t…

You say this like people are good at driving in rain or snow. They are not.

I've driven in 42 winters on icy roads with thick snow and limited visibility, without the aid of GPS which has a funny way of disappearing in inclement weather. Google's cars have been demonstrated driving in exactly 0 winters under those conditions. Because they know it would be a disaster.

There is a reason for all of those pileup pictures whenever there is severe weather in the US.

They're driving too fast. But they knew that. They just decided to do it anyways. But they didn't drive that fast thinking that the snow was actually falling leaves or that the windshield was dirty or that the car was suddenly moving backwards, or any of the other ridiculous things that an AI will begin thinking when it falls out of a switch statement, encounters a case it wasn't trained on, or loses its GPS signal.

Self-driving cars are going to be WAY better in bad weather than any human could ever be

I have said this before but it bears repeating, once we get self-driving cars, the insurance companies won't actually let you drive anymore.

I completely agree. One day they will be completely superior to human drivers. But that isn't today and won't be for years. Many years. Like decades.

Re: The Electric Car

#114

Post by sgustard » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 11:55 PM UTC

An excellent but longer and more detailed piece in the same vein is "How Tesla Will Change The World" at

http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/how-tesla-will-change-your-lif...

Re: The Electric Car

#115

Post by erikpukinskis » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 11:58 PM UTC

powera wrote: post #88

erikpukinskis wrote: post #24

I don't think people full comprehend the price drop that is imminent. The total cost of ownership per mile for a car in the U.S. right now is about $0.60. I was watching a panel the other day where someone calculated the cost per mile of a fleet of self-driving on-demand electric cars at $0.08. That an 86% reduction. People might have their misgivings about any of this stuff... electric, self-driving, carshare, and o…

If a Tesla Model S costs $70000, even if electricity and maintenance are free (and there's no premium for self-driving) you would have to drive it 875000 miles for it to cost $0.08/mile. This seems like the type of thing that is literally unbelievable without more evidence than "I heard somebody on a panel say this".

Ya, those are good numbers to point out. I was too lazy to link the discussion, but here it is:

https://youtu.be/HnQs1k_0Yys?t=29m36s

The speaker is Stefan Heck from the Precourt Instute for Energy at Stanford. No citation, so I guess it's just math he did.

I assume they're factoring in some reasonable price drop. I would expect the vast majority of self-driving cab rides will be in two-seaters like the Smart Car, which starts at $12,000. You'd buy them wholesale, so it should be even less than that. Not to mention you can get rid of the entire steering column, etc. At $10,000 per vehicle, you only need to drive 125,000 miles to break even.

Re: The Electric Car

#116

Post by krapp » Mon, Jul 13, 2015, 11:58 PM UTC

bsder wrote: post #96

mbreese wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the weather is nice 99% of the time. I'd like to see a Google self driving car work in the rain or snow.

You say this like people are good at driving in rain or snow. They are not. There is a reason for all of those pileup pictures whenever there is severe weather in the US. Self-driving cars are going to be WAY better in bad weather than any human could ever be. They will be able to "see" in conditions that humans couldn't dream of. They will be able to control steering far better on slick surfaces. They will be able t…

Human beings do manage to drive through even severe weather without serious incident more often than not. Meanwhile, i'm not aware that Google's autonomous cars can even handle mildly inclement weather.

The fact remains that autonomous cars are still far worse than humans in this regard.

Re: The Electric Car

#117

Post by CountSessine » Tue, Jul 14, 2015, 12:02 AM UTC

CountSessine wrote: post #103

roel_v wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That other company of which there was an article here a few months ago drove a car autonomously from LA to NYC. Volvo drives cars around Stockholm. BMW has self driving cars on the road. There are self driving trucks right now at work on oil fields in Alaska and in mines in Australia. It's true that we're not really there yet. And yes there are hurdles like regulation, what about heavy rain etc. But the pace at which…

No carmaker has a city-driving autonomous vehicle that doesn't require super-precise, cm-scale, unrealistically always-up-to-date maps for the AI. The autonomous super-size dump trucks drive along carefully pre-programmed routes using GPS. We're still a long ways away from practical and safe self-driving cars. AI and computer vision just isn't there yet.

Think in terms of exponential progress, and we're about 5 years from the majority of trips being done by self-driving car, IMHO

5 years is a fantasy.

Continued exponential increases in device computing power is by no means guaranteed now that chips are at the 14nm feature size.

And the recent progress in AI can only be partially attributed to improved computing power - much of it was from improved approaches to training neural networks. We could stumble into another AI winter and have to wait another 30 years for the next round of big algorithmic AI breakthroughs.

I guarantee you that self-driving cars will not be the mainstream even in 15 years. Probably more.

Re: The Electric Car

#118

Post by mschuster91 » Tue, Jul 14, 2015, 12:04 AM UTC

While I agree with the author that electric vehicles will in not long time dominate the car market, I strongly disagree with point #3:

> Gas stations will start to go out of business as many more electric cars are sold, making gasoline powered vehicles even more inconvenient.

Gas stations even today don't make money with gas, it's next to a loss leader to get customers into the store and spend money on snacks and car parts that won't go away with e-cars (windshield wipers, wiper fluid) - and in many regions gas stations are exempt from normal store opening hours and serve as 24h-supermarket. The convenience of a readily available store, even with a hefty markup, simply is too good to avoid it.

Re: The Electric Car

#119

Post by gorgak » Tue, Jul 14, 2015, 12:07 AM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #118

While I agree with the author that electric vehicles will in not long time dominate the car market, I strongly disagree with point #3: > Gas stations will start to go out of business as many more electric cars are sold, making gasoline powered vehicles even more inconvenient. Gas stations even today don't make money with gas, it's next to a loss leader to get customers into the store and spend money on snacks and car…

surely they will just change the name of them then to shops :) or stores as you call the over there. over here we have petrol stations and other places called 'services' which basically serve the function you are on about. so i guess we will just rename the petrol stations to services, the ones that survive that is. this cant come quick enough for me!

Re: The Electric Car

#120

Post by tikhonj » Tue, Jul 14, 2015, 12:09 AM UTC

> The Tesla Model S has demonstrated that a well made, well designed electric car is far superior to anything else on the road.

I think this is a bit of an exaggeration. What the Tesla Model S has actually shown is that a startup-designed $100k electric car can be comparable to $100k luxury cars (S-class, 7-series... etc) and that classic car makers got complacent on certain features (like electronic UI elements). Much of what he said is true, or could easily be true, for $100k gasoline cars too!

In fact, I think that's enough of an exaggeration for me to question his whole conclusion. He made a good case for why Tesla could be the next big thing, but just like Android popped up against the iPhone, I could see gasoline cars copying many of the advantages—anything that's not a direct result of an electric drive-train.

This isn't to say that electric cars won't take over—I think they very well might—but the blog post doesn't make the best case for it.

I also really dislike that whole argument style of cherry-picking a "disruptive" innovation that happened to succeed but ignoring all the others that either failed or didn't deliver for decades. You can't generalize the smart-phone's success that easily! It feels like a pernicious case of what poker players call "results oriented thinking"[1], which is something I see a lot in business analysis.

[1]: http://www.toppokersites.com/strategy/results-oriented-think...