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We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

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Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#221
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It won’t take a century if there’s political will. China built a network larger than the rest of the world combined in less than 20 years. Yes, you heard that right, in 2007 there was only one high speed passenger rail service in the entire country.

I’ve ridden Chinese HSR trains…and I still needed to take a taxi to get to Beijing South and whatever was on the other end of my trip.

Agree. The location of Chinese HSR stations is terrible. Japan's are much more central.

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has 25k miles of bullet trains and China accounted for a third of the cars sold in 2022. A third. This is a country that limits imports and even limits the number of drivers in some cities. So it’s silly to suggest public transit can replace cars. ETA: Replace all cars. So as long as we will have cars, we might as well make them safer. > getting self driving cars that are all electric will be a big win. I will…

Most of Chinas 25k miles of HSR are at risk.

What does "at risk" mean?

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#223
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rebuilding the tribe. We have divided ourselves into neat little nuclear family boxes and thrown ourselves together with a bunch of other randos in neat little boxes, with the unstated assumption that the family unit is the end all be all of human lived experience. This has separated us from our physical (atom-based) communities, to many ill effects including our friends and extended family being further away. This m…

Sounds like an old way of living to me, and one achievable by removing cars almost entirely from our lives. The most connected I’ve ever been to community was living in large asian cities without a car.

Sort of, but the communities you're describing have a lot more likelihood of being stuck in the place they are. Stuck means less likelihood of people finding the right place for them, because they have less to choose from. Better automated transport infra means being less stuck by virtue of having less time to go further distances, and in better conditions.

Even in high density car-less environments with great transport, you've still got all the attention and friction entailed with being on public transport and last mile issues walking to/from it (effectively traveling through 'far community' to get to 'close community'). This means more need to be co-located to avoid these through 'far community' journeys, which limits ones options for finding their best life.

Meanwhile radically different automated transport infra could mean things like 'you walk into the elevator-like transport connected to your house and 5 minutes later you're at your friends house'. No crazy subway, no need for attention, just hop in the pod and do what you'd already be doing at home like reading or work.

This means you could go from ~20,000 people within 10 mins of you to ~100,000 (or insert your number). And ultimately this means more ways that we could optionally have larger social units, because there would be more 'space' for them to live within 10 mins of you.

E.g. if my friends wanted to all live right next to each other they'd need to find enough land that it'd be like 3 hours away and a huge inconvenience for anyone living in a city. So the only people who would do that are crazy committed to the commune life, and thus quite distant culturally too. If it was 30 mins away instead due to better transport, culturally we'd see a lot more mixing of different types of lifestyles.

I think all this represents a new way of living. It's not near future stuff I admit, but driverless tech is the next on the 'move atoms' tech tree that brings us toward these opportunities.

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#224
post #12

This is a good move on Cruise's part. Cruise is still nowhere near the maturity level that Waymo was at when Waymo first started driving on public roads. On the other hand, we definitely need a real competitor to Waymo. It doesn't seem likely, but hopefully some combination of Cruise, Apple(?), Tesla, or another player will be able to have a feasible alternative to Waymo's Driver.

Out of all the tech problems to solve, driverless cars or driverless taxis has always baffled me. It’s a very complex thing to solve with a zillion edge cases. And for what net gain? What incredible inconvenience are we trying to solve? Lack of good public transit? Let’s solve that instead. Millions of cars driverless or not are not a great solution to anything.

> What incredible inconvenience are we trying to solve?

The rich and the ultra-rich are thinking long term and they don't want to interact with their angry peasants in the neo-feodal post-climate change world we are joyfully heading to. /s

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#225
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are over 30 US cities with trains to the airport. Another half dozen on the way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airport_rail_link_syst... US also has almost 350 miles of high speed rail, not 0. The Northeast is where it’s all concentrated with Acela being the fastest. If you live in a major city in the States it’s often way easier and faster to take rail. In Seattle for instance you can beat a driver to…

"Mass transit is the solution." I spent most of my 45 years of age in public transport, I only had a car for a year and a half (and a total lemon, I don't miss that). Yet I say: beware of people who speak of THE solution . For mass transit to work, population density matters. At least in the EU, there is a trend of people being priced out of capital cities to the surrounding countryside, where the population density…

Definitely agree with everything you wrote. I just moved out of a major German city into a small town because I lost my apartment due to Eigenbedarf, then was unable to find a new place in the city at an affordable price in the time I had. Had to get a car again for the first time in 10 years.

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody likes crowded or dirty space, but an aversion per se to having other people around is definitely pathological. I think this is a social trust thing - lots of people are just scared of strangers. This is particularly true for high-violence/high-tension societies like the US. My city (in Australia) is very peaceful and I don't feel bothered or frightened at all by the general public - in fact I like being able t…

"People who like different things than me definitely have pathological issues." Good luck winning people to your side with that.

I’m not trying to win anybody over. Agoraphobia is a real disease. Look it up.

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#227
post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's wrong with sharing space with other people? Do you have some kind of phobia? You don't need to lug groceries around - just get them delivered.

>You don't need to lug groceries around - just get them delivered. And pay markup + delivery fee + service fee + tip? No thanks

? I pay $15 for my weekly groceries to be delivered, which saves me at least an hour. They are otherwise the same price as in store.

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#228
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think bigger. "Driverless cars" are a technology that moves atoms without the need for people, a lot like how we move bits around today. There are innumerable benefits to moving the right atoms to the right places at the right time. There are many form factors that moving atoms can take, only one of which looks like a car. The car is a good place to start for many reasons, including everyone needing transportation, e…

I think you’re absolutely right. But while we’re daydreaming about the future, I think it’s more likely we’re going to irreversibly fuck the planet well before we realize beautiful technological utopia. And if fucking the planet doesn’t kill (all of) is, it’s going to leave us irreversibly broken. Inequality will reach staggering levels. Further advances will not be for the benefit of all, but the enrichment of the f…

there are a lot of ways things could go

Re: We have decided to pause driverless operations across all of our fleets

#230
post #170
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few people do drive to the island. Over 60% of workers in Manhattan take mass transit to work versus 21% driving. https://www.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/planning-le... And mass transit adoption keeps growing for the workforce. Because sitting in a car in traffic sucks that much. So we make self driving cars and all those people pile into personal vehicles? That only exacerbates the problem.

I’m actually shocked the ratio is only 3:1. That’s not “few” people that’s hundreds of thousands fighting for a handful of bridges and tunnels each and every morning and every evening in between.

Try sitting in one of those tunnels, full of busses, crawling into Manhattan every weekday.

The reality of it all is extremely painful

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