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Google's Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions

forbes.com

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Re: Google's Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions

#181

Post by Cushman »

joesb wrote: post #108
tluyben2 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just because it doesn't have a driver doesn't mean it doesn't need to be manufactured. Car companies will do fine. No they won't; every > 1 car family will have 1 car only after this, because, when at work, you just send your car back on it's own for the wife and kids. Big reduction. If your neighbor has different hours than you have, you can combine that by sending the car back when you arrived. I think it'll have…

> when at work, you just send your car back on it's own for the wife and kids. And I have to wait for my car to come back if I have any immediate need to use it during the day? > If your neighbor has different hours than you have, you can combine that by sending the car back when you arrived. I'm not sure people are that much into car pool. And then there is issue with whose property the car is, people don't always l…

> And I have to wait for my car to come back if I have any immediate need to use it during the day?

Of course you don't have to; you can pay ten times as much for a dedicated vehicle if that's a feature you need. Everyone can do their own math.

Re: Google's Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions

#182

Post by Cushman »

rimantas wrote: post #93
Cushman wrote: post #50

I've been saying this to anyone who will listen for years. I really believe this technology will touch everything . Real estate markets will shift dramatically as the average commute time halves or quarters. Transport costs will plummet, making every single physical object cheaper. Public transit will be dirt cheap, always punctual, and take you absolutely anywhere. Tens of thousands of people each year will escape d…

How about first asking: why do we have to commute at all?

That's a great question, and my trivial answer is: Because people want to sleep in a different place from where they spend the day. Now, is it good for us, abstracting out travel time, for those to be in very different places? That's a whole other issue.

I do imagine communities will see many of the same benefits as individuals; that is, lower transport costs will mean its possible to build affordable, self-contained communities farther away from urban centers without sacrificing quality of life (including the ability to go to the city if you want to). But that's behind the event horizon to me; hard to speculate.

Re: Google's Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions

#183

Post by Cushman »

Kliment wrote: post #126
lukifer wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will definitely exist, but not everybody will want to give up personalized cars. Too many people see their car as part of their identity. We have the tech right now for every workplace to have open seating and non-personalized computer workstations, and while some companies do this, most people still want their own desk space and personalized computer.

I think a major point is using a car as storage. Many professionals I know keep a lot of stuff in their cars, particularly if they are not sure what kit they'll need when they go out to a client. In the trades this is even more extreme, some people run entire businesses out of their cars/vans.

Why not a semi-autonomous trailer? Hitch it to any car for charging. You can leave it on the site, arrange for it to meet you somewhere you're walking, even loan your kit to a colleague across town with the push of a button-- and still get around on your own.

Needing personal mobile storage is not needing a car if you already get a car for free.

Re: Google's Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions

#184

Post by [deleted] »

gadders wrote: post #137

One overlooked factor is how much marital discord this will save. "I drove last time, it's your turn to drive." "But they'll be serving just beer. You don't even like beer." etc etc I also look forward to the day when you will be able to go to the pub, get absolutely wankered, and still be able to get home safely without waiting for cabs.

[deleted]

Re: Google's Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions

#185

Post by r0s »

thoughtcriminal wrote: post #130
r0s wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're deluded if you think car culture in the US can change significantly anytime soon. Call me a cynic, and I'll call you a fool. If you want to throw around platitudes, why not address the real problem: uncontrolled population. Or does that make you uncomfortable?

No Mr.Pot, overpopulation isn't the problem. Greed and misallocation of land and resources is the problem. Too many cars is a problem. And you calling the kettle black is a problem. I don't drive, you do, therefore you are uncomfortable with the reality that you are destroying the environment and the air and shifting the responsibility elsewhere.

No, allocation of resources depends entirely on scarcity, because no working system of fair distribution will ever happen in the real world. Unless you rely on charity to take care of everyone, which I guess is your solution. More likely you haven't thought about it.

Cars don't have to be internal-combustion.

You have no moral authority, just shrill accusations.

Your lack of driving is a lame dodge for your destructive, hypocritical, blind consumerism; which is doing far more damage than a car ever could. Feel free to defend your lifestyle here and pretend you don't shit all over the third world as much as the average American. You're fooling yourself though. Either you work for a company that does a ton of environmental damage, or your parents do, and they pay your bills (more likely). You pay taxes to a government with a massive military machine that destroys the environment and subsidizes the worst companies. But maybe your lack of car makes you special.

Re: Google's Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions

#186

Post by bcoates »

Cushman wrote: post #178
bcoates wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Driverless cars would be a fantastic improvement to society, but I think you might be underestimating how much people will compensate. Traffic rises to fill roads, and only a small part of public transport budgets are for drivers (it looks like around 10% for LA)

Well, there's no force that makes traffic "rise to fill roads"; there's externalities to having increased traffic capacity that may cause transportation needs to increase. We still have a lot of underutilized roads. The main difference in terms of capacity, I think, is that once we have majority- and fully-autonomous roads, the system will actually not allow the road to exceed capacity. Individual vehicles will respo…

That's way beyond driverless car, that's a global optimization problem. If it were possible, you wouldn't even need driverless cars to implement it. System-to-car communication and slightly more complicated street lights would be enough.

For example, many cities already have lit signs that forbid turns from cross-streets onto oversubscribed roads, your nav system could allow you to pay the congestion fee and get authorization to disregard the sign and take the turn. Similarly, you could get out your smartphone and queue yourself to a destination and be told when you get to leave and take the fast route for free. As long as queuing at home got you to your destination faster than queuing in traffic, it would be the individual best strategy to do it and enough people would use it for it to work.

The hard part is probably doing traffic scheduling at an acceptable latency, for a city like LA you'd need to model the behavior of millions of cars however many iterations your optimization algorithm needs every few seconds. These kind of problems are really computationally expensive, it may not be economical with current systems and algorithms.

Re: Google's Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions

#187

Post by bcoates »

bsenftner wrote: post #172
lukifer wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will definitely exist, but not everybody will want to give up personalized cars. Too many people see their car as part of their identity. We have the tech right now for every workplace to have open seating and non-personalized computer workstations, and while some companies do this, most people still want their own desk space and personalized computer.

I foresee certain technical careers, such as us developers, having combo driverless cars that also double as their office. It picks you up, you simply start working. The destination that day is where ever you want to have lunch, or some meeting with a client or fellow developers on your team. You just work, in your traveling office, and arrive at desired destinations for your breaks.

I commute by bus, with the most skilled of drivers who somehow manage to travel at freeway speeds with standing passengers without killing them all. But trying to work on a moving vehicle is an unpleasant experience. I really can't do anything more productive than a phone call or reading.

I don't think there's anything inherent in a self-driving car that causes it to have a smooth ride with minimal sensation of movement like a train or plane, it's more a property of the road.

Re: Google's Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions

#188

Post by Cushman »

bcoates wrote: post #186
Cushman wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there's no force that makes traffic "rise to fill roads"; there's externalities to having increased traffic capacity that may cause transportation needs to increase. We still have a lot of underutilized roads. The main difference in terms of capacity, I think, is that once we have majority- and fully-autonomous roads, the system will actually not allow the road to exceed capacity. Individual vehicles will respo…

That's way beyond driverless car, that's a global optimization problem. If it were possible, you wouldn't even need driverless cars to implement it. System-to-car communication and slightly more complicated street lights would be enough. For example, many cities already have lit signs that forbid turns from cross-streets onto oversubscribed roads, your nav system could allow you to pay the congestion fee and get auth…

> That's way beyond driverless car, that's a global optimization problem. If it were possible, you wouldn't even need driverless cars to implement it. System-to-car communication and slightly more complicated street lights would be enough.

I disagree, I'd say scheduling is the smallest part of it. On most trips I take, there's a single major road that covers most of the distance, and I'm most likely to be delayed by traffic on that road slowing or halting completely. It's the moment-to-moment perverse behavior of other drivers when it comes to merging, changing lanes, accelerating and braking that causes that to happen, and having intelligent drivers on the same roads at the same times would make a much more significant impact.

In other words, you're saying we could do global scheduling with traffic lights, which is true. I'm saying that with sufficiently competent drivers we won't need the lights, and I think that will cause a qualitative shift in the nature of traffic.

Re: Google's Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions

#189

Post by jaggederest »

r0s wrote: post #185
thoughtcriminal wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No Mr.Pot, overpopulation isn't the problem. Greed and misallocation of land and resources is the problem. Too many cars is a problem. And you calling the kettle black is a problem. I don't drive, you do, therefore you are uncomfortable with the reality that you are destroying the environment and the air and shifting the responsibility elsewhere.

No, allocation of resources depends entirely on scarcity, because no working system of fair distribution will ever happen in the real world. Unless you rely on charity to take care of everyone, which I guess is your solution. More likely you haven't thought about it. Cars don't have to be internal-combustion. You have no moral authority, just shrill accusations. Your lack of driving is a lame dodge for your destructi…

The correct term for his arguments is 'hair shirt green'.

Re: Google's Driverless Car Is Worth Trillions

#190

Post by thoughtcriminal »

r0s wrote: post #185
thoughtcriminal wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No Mr.Pot, overpopulation isn't the problem. Greed and misallocation of land and resources is the problem. Too many cars is a problem. And you calling the kettle black is a problem. I don't drive, you do, therefore you are uncomfortable with the reality that you are destroying the environment and the air and shifting the responsibility elsewhere.

No, allocation of resources depends entirely on scarcity, because no working system of fair distribution will ever happen in the real world. Unless you rely on charity to take care of everyone, which I guess is your solution. More likely you haven't thought about it. Cars don't have to be internal-combustion. You have no moral authority, just shrill accusations. Your lack of driving is a lame dodge for your destructi…

You don't know what you're talking about. I don't live in the US.
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