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

A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

jalopnik.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 205 posts

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#111

Post by moogly »

akadruid1 wrote: post #91
dmitriid wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify's central office in Stockholm has ~1000 employees. So, at 6pm a thousand people call up the efficient fast driverless cars to go home.... And that's just one office out of a dozen on that street.

Those 1000 people don't have to be served by 1000 privately owned single occupancy vehicles. When they are inputting their destination before departure, a robo taxi can deliver 6-8 people with similar destinations door-to-door for a fraction of the cost of a private vehicle, the same comfort level, but occupy hardly more road space then 70-80 seat transit buses.

That's just public transport with a different name (and less efficiency). People want to ride alone.

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#112

Post by darawk »

CydeWeys wrote: post #16
kjksf wrote: post #3

Here's what this research tells me: demand for transportation is much higher than the current use of transportation. Current use is limited by cost and convenience. Self-driving car is likely to fix both so it'll lead to more use of transportation. This is a good thing. We're currently deprived and if things go well, we'll get more of what we want. The congestion problem is mostly overblown. First, maybe with rare ex…

> The congestion problem is mostly overblown. It's really not. Congestion is a huge problem already, and increasing the current road utilization by 83% will bring entire cities to a standstill for the entirety of waking hours. > I just eyeballed but ~80% cars were single person. Yes, and in the AV future the majority of cars on the road will have zero occupants, so things will get much, much worse as far as how many…

> It's really not. Congestion is a huge problem already, and increasing the current road utilization by 83% will bring entire cities to a standstill for the entirety of waking hours.

That's not how equilibria work though. Currently congestion is the primary bottleneck on personal consumption of transportation in major metro areas in the US. That will not change with AVs. That is to say, we will probably reach a similar congestion equilibrium as we have now, there will just be more transportation happening, which is a net good thing provided there are not also negative externalities (such as emissions) from that transportation bump.

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#113

Post by Merrill »

Rather than use an AV for the entire trip, might AVs solve the problem of getting to/from mass transit?

For example, your personal AV could get you from home to the station and return to your garage. After the train or bus ride, your employer's AV buses could pick up groups of employees and shuttle them to work. This might redefine what it means to be "close to mass transit" for both residents and employers.

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#114

Post by Spooky23 »

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #68
Spooky23 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is those numbers are off. With margin, the services are always more expensive. I drive a fancyish SUV, and my average per-trip cost is around $3. I can Uber for $8-10 minimum or ride a bus for $1.5. Robot cars are going to be more like Uber, as you won’t have the driver losing money on depreciation.

Robotaxis should roughly drop the cost of “Uber’s” to 1/3. Currently Uber only collects 25% of the fair for itself. The rest is for the human driving. Robotaxis can also be used 24/7 so better capital utilization on the initial investment for the car. Maintenance costs reduce with scale (+in house mechanics to improve margins). Maintenance costs reduce with electric drive trains. Maintenance costs reduce with better…

Remember that Uber doesn’t make money. And they pay their drivers less than the driver is losing to depreciation. Also, the robot isn’t free. Software isn’t free — it’s really expensive actually.

All of the cost savings that you describe also don’t require a robotaxi to realize. The cost per trip of my wife’s Nissan Leaf is about 60% of the SUV.

Even the durability can be addressed by buying a Toyota or Honda vs a Jeep or whatever.

What will be an issue for the Ubers of the world is accounting. Without some sucker wasting his car away, Uber needs to invest billions in assets and infrastructure. That capital structure is more like an airline than Google. Not something Wall St rewards.

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#115

Post by ajuc »

kjksf wrote: post #3

Here's what this research tells me: demand for transportation is much higher than the current use of transportation. Current use is limited by cost and convenience. Self-driving car is likely to fix both so it'll lead to more use of transportation. This is a good thing. We're currently deprived and if things go well, we'll get more of what we want. The congestion problem is mostly overblown. First, maybe with rare ex…

> Let's say a ride is $10 if you drive in a car alone. $5 if you share with another person and $3 if you share it with 2+ people.

This is overly complicated, hard to implement and to prevent abuse. There's a much simpler way already in place - tax on fuel. And it's much harder to circumvent or abuse. You can hope they won't catch you driving alone and paying as if you drove with 3 people in car. You can't hope to drive without fuel.

Increase the fuel prices 10 times and people will be much more efficient with their use of transportation. You use almost the same amount of fuel no matter if you move 4 people or 1. And public transport uses slightly more to move 20 or 50 people. With high enough fuel prices we can reduce traffic jams to 0.

The problem is - it will suck and people will complain. Ultimately people spend time in traffic jams because that's what their least sucky option is.

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#116

Post by rootusrootus »

kjksf wrote: post #57
Someone wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

”The cars would no longer be an expression of personality and a status symbol” You’re not the only one claiming that, but I don’t think it automatically follows. People can currently afford to buy cars for themselves, so unless self-driving cars will be (much) more expensive, people still would be able to afford them. So, in this case, the question is what else, if anything, people would want to use their money on in…

When you use X and then a substitute Y arrives that is 10x cheaper and more convenient, you'll switch to it. Using robotaxi network will be much cheaper than total cost of owning a car, mostly because cars are dramatically underutilized. On average a car is used 1-2 hrs a day out of 12-16 hrs it could be used as a robotaxi. To start off we have 5-7x price difference. Then most use is not shared. Assuming robotaxis wi…

> Why would Tesla sell a car to you for $10k profit if they can make $70k profit?

Because there is a niche that is profitable and if Tesla doesn't fill it, someone else will? After all, Tesla has had no motivational difficulties trying to fill that niche right now, so someone will be willing.

I also question the 70K profit part. Assuming robotaxis actually become a thing, why do you think the cars will make much profit at all? There will be a race to the bottom. I know a lot of Model 3 owners trying to justify their FSD purchase by suggesting they will eventually make back all of that money and more, but I can't figure out why they think this time they will be immune to market dynamics.

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#117

Post by BubRoss »

CydeWeys wrote: post #102
erik_seaberg wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The number of people who need to commute during rush hour can't increase 83%. Maybe some transit commuters will switch to cars, but maybe some car commuters will finally be able to switch to transit if these make the first and last mile feasible. And 83% was the first and only week. Maybe the number doesn't stay that high once indulging in the novelty wears off.

You're forgetting the unoccupied trips. There will be unoccupied trips running errands even at rush hour, because why not, you're not sitting in traffic, just your car. Also you seem to be thinking more of the robotaxis model, but the article is talking about the more likely future of everyone continuing to own their own car, only now it can drive. If cars are driving back empty after a commute then rush hour will ha…

Wouldn't that be a trip that someone would normally be driving anyway? Also wouldn't it make sense to have a store deliver to lots of people on one circuit, this reducing traffic?

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#118

Post by rootusrootus »

CydeWeys wrote: post #58
maxerickson wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, their point is clear enough. My point is that the politics of landuse are hopeless enough that other mitigations will be more beneficial for quite some time to come.

I disagree, I think the politics of land use are more easily solvable than the simple physics problem of too many cars, not enough space. Plenty of other countries in the world (and even some US cities) have solved the land use problem to the point that most people don't use space-inefficient private vehicles to get around. It's solvable and there are working models to emulate. This is not true of your alternative.

So we all just need to compress our cities until they achieve NYC density?

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#119

Post by BubRoss »

rootsofallevil wrote: post #22
optimiz3 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much health care is just to mitigate population control failures. More health care is solving the wrong problem. So much computing is just to mitigate math education failures. More computing is solving the wrong problem. Etc. Thank goodness some people are willing to innovate.

No OP but I think you are misunderstanding the position: Solve the land misuse problem and everything else follows

Self driving cars seems more realistic

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#120

Post by scribu »

ctdonath wrote: post #93
wbl wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you pay Ford for every trip?

Paid Ford some $50,000+ up front (two SUVs), plus fuel & maintenance. Cars ain't free.

The study selected participants that already owned cars.
Post reply on HN