The driverless road ahead • Hacker News Board

Re: The driverless road ahead

#21

Post by protomyth » Sun, Oct 28, 2012, 1:46 PM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #16

arethuza wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already have cars that don't need you to drive them: taxis. Where I live the various different competing taxi companies compete to give a pretty high level of service - I can order a cab via an iPhone app or through an IVR system that only requires me to press a single key if I want a taxi there and then - payment is to account (work) or chip-n-pin. Even with a pretty decent taxi service I still own a car, as do m…

A cab in SF costs $2.25 per mile (plus a flag fee, plus a fee for waiting in traffic, plus an airport surcharge) The IRS mileage rate is 14 cents per mile driven in service of charitable organizations and 51 cents per mile driven for business. Taxis haven't replaced private cars because they're radically more expensive.

Why would you think that a self-driving car fleet will have less cost? They will be regulated just like taxis. Including insurance and most importantly medallions. Replacing the drivers will not cut the cost in an industry that creates artificial scarcity.

Re: The driverless road ahead

#22

Post by tobiasu » Sun, Oct 28, 2012, 1:47 PM UTC

peff wrote: post #10

paulsutter wrote: post #2

>Just imagine. [Driverless cars] could, for a start, save the motor industry from stagnation...; and since [cars] would be able to drop off their passengers and drive away, the lack of parking spaces in town might not matter so much. Strange that the Economist would catch the diminished need for parking spaces, but miss the real economic impact of driverless cars: many fewer cars would be needed as utilization rates…

Is utilization over time important? If we assume that people will still travel the same number of miles[1], then while there will be fewer cars on the road at any given moment, they will wear out more quickly as they are utilized more heavily. Another way of thinking of it is that there is demand for a certain number of vehicle-miles per year. In the aggregate over the long term, it is no different if we buy 5 cars,…

It's an old chestnut that buying a salesman's car with lots of miles is a lot better than buying the same vehicle from a housewife that only used it to go shopping and shuttle the kids to school.

Besides, who says that the driverless car isn't more like industrial equipment instead of the current consumer crap, made to go on "forever" to justify its high price?

Re: The driverless road ahead

#23

Post by michaelt » Sun, Oct 28, 2012, 1:50 PM UTC

lumberjack wrote: post #8

paulsutter wrote: post #2

>Just imagine. [Driverless cars] could, for a start, save the motor industry from stagnation...; and since [cars] would be able to drop off their passengers and drive away, the lack of parking spaces in town might not matter so much. Strange that the Economist would catch the diminished need for parking spaces, but miss the real economic impact of driverless cars: many fewer cars would be needed as utilization rates…

You are assuming that driverless cars will be just as inexpensive as the typical American car today. That's certainly not true today. For example the Google car has $150K in equipment costs. Sure that might go down in time due to more demand but I doubt it will become literally negligible cost wise. Besides that, there is the added cost of software development, and maintenance. And besides that there is money to be m…

LIDAR manufacturer Ibeo currently make a ~12,000 euro LIDAR which they estimate, if mass produced, could cost less than 200 euros.

The cost of the extra equipment won't be negligible - but it'll be very low once this stuff gets widely adopted.

[1] http://www.its.dot.gov/research_docs/pdf/cicas_tech_docrpt2.... PDF, see pages 12 and 13

Re: The driverless road ahead

#24

Post by DanBC » Sun, Oct 28, 2012, 1:51 PM UTC

lumberjack wrote: post #8

paulsutter wrote: post #2

>Just imagine. [Driverless cars] could, for a start, save the motor industry from stagnation...; and since [cars] would be able to drop off their passengers and drive away, the lack of parking spaces in town might not matter so much. Strange that the Economist would catch the diminished need for parking spaces, but miss the real economic impact of driverless cars: many fewer cars would be needed as utilization rates…

You are assuming that driverless cars will be just as inexpensive as the typical American car today. That's certainly not true today. For example the Google car has $150K in equipment costs. Sure that might go down in time due to more demand but I doubt it will become literally negligible cost wise. Besides that, there is the added cost of software development, and maintenance. And besides that there is money to be m…

The Google car is a prototype. That $150k in equipment cost will be dramatically reduced by engineering for production and mass production.

The cost doesn't need to become negligible. The cost needs to become justifiable.

Re: The driverless road ahead

#25

Post by DanBC » Sun, Oct 28, 2012, 1:54 PM UTC

ari_elle wrote: post #20

One problem that nobody seems to see is: -) As soon as software controls something it's the question about if you control the software, or if the software controls the user One of the big arguments rms always had about free software, but think about it: Let's say i have a self-driving car, how do i know that there isn't a backdoor in there? How about my car being hacked and being remote controlled? How about my car b…

There have been a few news articles about people who have driven into rivers because "the sat nav told them to".

I hope Google is investigating these weird edge cases, and testing for them.

Re: The driverless road ahead

#26

Post by ari_elle » Sun, Oct 28, 2012, 1:55 PM UTC

LeafStorm wrote: post #17

While driverless cars do provide advantages over normal cars, there are two counterpoints I would like to make. First, there are people who simply will not trust the driverless cars. I was talking to a friend yesterday who said that he wouldn't ride in a driverless car, and he wouldn't want to drive on the same road as one. Uptake is not going to be as fast as people seem to expect once the cars are practical for mar…

If driverless cars, why not a driverless buses ?

Re: The driverless road ahead

#27

Post by swombat » Sun, Oct 28, 2012, 2:04 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #21

michaelt wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cab in SF costs $2.25 per mile (plus a flag fee, plus a fee for waiting in traffic, plus an airport surcharge) The IRS mileage rate is 14 cents per mile driven in service of charitable organizations and 51 cents per mile driven for business. Taxis haven't replaced private cars because they're radically more expensive.

Why would you think that a self-driving car fleet will have less cost? They will be regulated just like taxis. Including insurance and most importantly medallions. Replacing the drivers will not cut the cost in an industry that creates artificial scarcity.

It will in countries that aren't completely bone-headed about it.

I guess a good measure of how corrupt a particular political environment is will be how long it takes to give in to the overwhelming reasons (ecological, economical and social) to allow the true, very low cost of self-driving cars to have its impact on the taxi industry.

Re: The driverless road ahead

#28

Post by marshallp » Sun, Oct 28, 2012, 2:07 PM UTC

Everyone's missing that drones (flying cars) might take off too at roughly the same time. The challenge of making driverless cars completely safe (intelligent sensing and control) is also the challenge for flying cars. Flying cars would beat out road cars and so the reenvisioning of society is greater than what people like Brad Templeton have done. With flying cars, all investments in roads become useless and huge swathes of land become inhabitable. Real estate prices should consequently plummet and a worldwide financial panic occurs (this can all happen within 5 years). However, this will be a good thing since it will clean the current mess of unproductive activity that is land owning and leasing.

What the mainstream media also aren't realizing is that the technology for driverless cars is also the same technology that automates away most factory/farming/mining/retail/distribution jobs. The effect in the west might not be so large, but in the rest of the world it could be devastating, leading to riots and civil wars.

Re: The driverless road ahead

#29

Post by cynicalkane » Sun, Oct 28, 2012, 2:09 PM UTC

peff wrote: post #10

paulsutter wrote: post #2

>Just imagine. [Driverless cars] could, for a start, save the motor industry from stagnation...; and since [cars] would be able to drop off their passengers and drive away, the lack of parking spaces in town might not matter so much. Strange that the Economist would catch the diminished need for parking spaces, but miss the real economic impact of driverless cars: many fewer cars would be needed as utilization rates…

Is utilization over time important? If we assume that people will still travel the same number of miles[1], then while there will be fewer cars on the road at any given moment, they will wear out more quickly as they are utilized more heavily. Another way of thinking of it is that there is demand for a certain number of vehicle-miles per year. In the aggregate over the long term, it is no different if we buy 5 cars,…

It's easy to forget that durability is a trade off because nobody makes ultra-durable cars. But carmakers do plan for cars to last "only" a few hundred K miles before becoming prohibitively expensive to maintain. It's planned obsolescence, and it's not a conspiracy, just good economics and a consumer taste for new things.

But other vehicles are made to last much longer. why not cars? Also, computer drivers can be programmed to be much gentler on the engines and transmission.

Re: The driverless road ahead

#30

Post by johntb86 » Sun, Oct 28, 2012, 2:11 PM UTC

peff wrote: post #10

paulsutter wrote: post #2

>Just imagine. [Driverless cars] could, for a start, save the motor industry from stagnation...; and since [cars] would be able to drop off their passengers and drive away, the lack of parking spaces in town might not matter so much. Strange that the Economist would catch the diminished need for parking spaces, but miss the real economic impact of driverless cars: many fewer cars would be needed as utilization rates…

Is utilization over time important? If we assume that people will still travel the same number of miles[1], then while there will be fewer cars on the road at any given moment, they will wear out more quickly as they are utilized more heavily. Another way of thinking of it is that there is demand for a certain number of vehicle-miles per year. In the aggregate over the long term, it is no different if we buy 5 cars,…

It's possible the incremental cost of a driverless car trip from a shared pool (like zipcar in that respect) would be higher than the cost of driving your own car, due to the fact that when you're not using your personal car it's just sitting around in your driveway collecting rust. That would be an incentive to reduce the number of trips.