[quote=“doctorow, post:1, topic:83323, full:true”]How will we pay for roads if gas-tax revenues plummet thanks to all-electric fleets?
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Missouri already has an alternative fuel tax. I pay $70/year for my Leaf. That rate, for Missouri, was about the equivalent of me driving 20,000 miles in my old Prius. Unfortunately, for me, I only drive 5,000 miles a year. I’d prefer an odometer based tax instead (not gps based, just flat odometer based)
Yea, I don’t see autonomous cars happening any time soon OR quickly once they actually exist.
I think that there are probably some interesting questions about load balancing there, similar to what happens with bike shares. i.e. Density isn’t enough, you also have to have a relatively equal number of people going from and to any given location. Otherwise, there are sources and sinks that need to be rebalanced.
You are incorrect.
Robin Chase hasn’t been involved with Zipcar since 2003. She was forced out then and “professional” (I.e. Male) leadership was brought in. In additional, she was highly critical, as rightly so, of Avis acquiring Zipcar, as they’ve really screwed the pooch as they’ve “synergized” the hell out of things. If she had any equity left in Zipcar, it’s a drop in the bucket at Avis, and I’m sure it doesn’t motivate her in the least.
I worked for Zipcar for almost 5 years, but more in the latter years, long since her departure. I met her once and she seemed nice enough.
She’s built her career on trying to make the world a better place using technology. Post Zipcar, she founded a company trying to get people to carpool. This was pre-ride sharing and it didn’t work out so well. Then founded a peer-to-peer car sharing company. Her latest work is around vehicle-to-vehicle communication and looks really interesting.
You’re thinking about shared vehicles. I think that the earlier post was talking about privately-owned vehicles.
It will be interesting to see if any companies start producing cars that are built to be shared w/ lockable compartments where you can keep your stuff, for example.
And theoretically, there should be enough “cars around” like in the current Uber / Lyft model so that there’s always one on call.
There’s a lot to unpack here…
What’s wrong with most of these things?
In terms of car cleanliness / condition, since all of the cars will effectively be interchangeable, if you “get a bad one”, you flag it, it goes away to the depot to get cleaned, and a replacement comes to get you.
I think there are there several different scenarios that are under discussion concurrently that should be broken out:
In the city short duration short distance trips. These are mostly what cab and ride sharing trips are today. There are also some car sharing companies in Europe and the US that are doing short point-to-point trips. Ride sharing has shown that there’s huge demand. Passengers aren’t keeping their junk in those cars.
The suburban living, “my car is an extension of my house” situation, where most trips are either commuting or errands and driving a self-owned car is seen as the most efficient (in time and possibly of money) route to transportation. Public transportation is limited by both route and schedule, making it undesirable.
The biggest problem right now w/ shared use vehicles outside of suburban settings is how do you get the car? People buy cars that suit their 1% or 5% use-case (“oh, we need a 7 passenger car because family visits a few times a year”, or “I need a pickup because I haul things a few times a year”, etc). I think there will still be a case for personally owned cars and trucks, but they can be smaller and more efficient for the more general use-case. Specific-purpose cars (higher passenger seating, more cargo space) can be ordered and will drive themselves to your house.
We’ve had one car because her job has historically not been commutable by public transit, while mine have. I like to say that my wife and I have 18,000 cars, as we’re car sharing members. Prior to car sharing, and now ride sharing, we might still have had two cars because there were just times we’d need a second car and taxis are too horrible and car rental is too inconvenient and too much of a hassle.
This is definitely a problem today with both rental car and car sharing, mostly because it’s expensive to warehouse cars in New York. And peak summer weekend demand (and holiday demand at other times of the year) far outstrips the general baseline needs. Autonomous vehicles could help solve this problem by being parked in cheap places outside the city and then drive in to pick you up for your trip.
Also, what gear do you have, why do you store it in your car, and is it cost-effective for you to use your car as a storage unit? Do you use your car otherwise? What do you do for parking?
You could combine an autonomous vehicle service w/ a kind of “storage cube” service. The car could go pick up a box of your stuff on it’s way to get you, for example.
Car sharing is a great idea and it works well, for the most part. The big factors for people when making transportation decisions is cost vs convenience. I could take public transportation between two places, but the routing might mean that the trip would take over an hour and cost $1.50 (or whatever), while a ride share would take ~20 minutes and cost ~$10. Other considerations is that typically, car sharing members don’t drive as much as car owners. One of the biggest barriers to becoming a car sharing member is fear of scarcity. This is touched on above with the “peak weekend” comment, but it’s true more broadly as well.
In car sharing, for example, people really don’t want to have to walk more than 15 minutes to get a car. That drops, of course, as the temperature goes extreme and the humidity / precipitation climbs. In ride sharing, people don’t want to have to wait more than about 5 minutes.
Car sharing and ride sharing, both as currently implemented, mostly serve different markets. In the past, car sharing was used to do some of the trips that people currently use ride sharing for, but the usage for really short and one way trips is reduced. There are some “point to point” car sharing schemes like the recent Zipcar ONE>WAY and “floating” ones like Car2Go. For the moment, it’s cheaper to drive yourself than to be driven, and so these programs are successful. Unlike ride sharing though, where the cost of “dead time” where the car isn’t in a trip is paid for by the driver, company owned fleets have to balance the number of cars with the number of trips, thus leading to the concern over peak utilization.
And long term, what is the difference going to be between rental car, car sharing, ride sharing, and taxis? Taxis serve mostly short distance short duration trips, as does ride sharing. The biggest differences between them are who pays for the car, how much government oversight is there, and the focus on customer experience. Rental cars serves mostly longer trips (either duration and / or distance) and leverages cheap centralized depot locations and cheap bulk car purchases and put the liability on to the renter. Car sharing takes on the liability itself and spreads cars into neighborhoods, making it more convenient; it’s used for a mix of long and short distance / duration trips.
One of the biggest boons to having fewer cars on the road, and those that are behaving more rationally (because they aren’t driven by people), is that bus transit will become much more timely and efficient as well.
But what if the cheapest way to “park” your autonomous vehicle is to have it endlessly circle the block while you’re at work?
Interesting question. But why do we continue to allow monetary ‘cost’ to almost always be the de facto primary consideration? How can we change our system to allow for considerations such as ‘cost to the environment’, ‘cost to quality of life’, ‘cost to mental health’, etc? Will we ever get past ‘price’ (which is inaccurate anyways and only part of the transaction)? Or at least be honest about ‘cost’ and include the externalities?
Edit: I am not asking for an explanation of capitalism or markets. Moreso just wondering why we allow this to continue and if there is a possibility we will ever stop letting our society get away with this horseshit.
Ever since autonomous cars seemed feasible, it’s been obvious to me that the insurance companies will drive the switch from manual to autonomous. It will become prohibitively expensive to insure non-autonomous cars once it becomes clear that the accident rates with robot cars are so much lower. It’ll happen as quickly as the shift from VHS to DVD/Tivo. In a generation, people will hardly believe there was a time when humanity countenanced the horrifying death toll that non-robot driving exacted. I’m on the high side of middle age, and I think I’ll live to see that day.
And after yesterday’s “driving with shod feet whilst texting” video story here on BB … I can’t wait.
The “Hell” scenario is filled with so many ludicrous assumptions, that it’s impossible to take any of it seriously. The idea that people would endure the expense, wear-and-tear, and loss of resale value, by having their car endlessly drive around 24/7 is pretty much insane. Far more likely is cheap, high-rise parking facilities, where you can pack the cars in like sardines, since you don’t have to worry about space to open a door, or pedestrian areas to get to the cars. When you get home, you send your car to the nearest parking facility, and then just summon it when you next need it.
The answer to this question is the same as for air or water pollution, to put a price on externalized costs rather than making it free make your problem everyone’s. It’s not easy for some of the more esoteric negative externalities, but it can be done. I’ve often thought putting a price on using your horn would be a good one. $0.50 per beep. Not enough to make you reluctant to beep for safety, but enough that you don’t beep every time the light turns green like so many idiots.
IMHO the real transformative potential for self-driving cars isn’t “what will the world be like when we aren’t driving our own cars anymore,” it’s “how will this technology change the lives of people who currently CAN’T drive their own cars?”
If my car could drive itself it would amount to little more than a convenience with a potential added safety benefit to boot. But for a blind person or an elderly person or a severely disabled person the ability to get around independently could have truly life-changing potential.
I think that’s a good point about this technology… but I don’t think that’s how it’s being marketed and thought about in the market place - or at the very least, it’s considered a tangential benefit. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me that the focus has been on the luxury, silicon valley market not the disability market. Am I wrong in thinking that it’s thus far been aimed at the silicon valley elites initially? I don’t think I’ve seen any talk about that aspect of the technology, more of it being “the next big advancement” and how it’s going to make traffic better?
Could be. But even from a practical standpoint they’d be smart to start off by focusing on that market.
I can’t think of a more ideal testbed for self-driving car technology than in a retirement community. You’d have all the right conditions including:
Prove that you can safely operate the things in places like that for a few years and you’ll have a much better case for letting the technology go wide.
Sure and I’d love to see that, especially testing in retirement communities… that’s a great idea, if you ask me. But I don’t think they are doing so thus far? Am I wrong?
I dunno, but if they are they haven’t exactly been drawing attention to it. I’m sure I’m not the first one to ponder the idea, the AARP seems pretty excited about the potential for self-driving car tech.
The most troubling thing for me here is the really huge bugbear it touches on at the end relating to increasing levels of automation in general. Specifically, if everything is automated to the point at which even the on-demand micro jobs of the ‘sharing’ economy dry up, how will anyone other than the ruling techno-elite make a decent and secure living? The only nod toward a solution to this is that “…we need to start piloting basic income” This makes the inner Marxist in me smile, but considering the ever-increasing chasm that is income and racial inequality in the US, I don’t see the prospect of a socialist utopia as a very realistic one.
Another important point that the video cautions us of, although not explicitly, is the assumption that technological progress is a sort of natural force unto itself: that self-driving cars, etc. are going to happen, and to stand in the way of this development is to somehow defy the will of evolution. This is of course, dangerous nonsense. The decision to implement this type of technology, if at all, should be up to the people affected by it, not corporate tech-giants that think they know what’s best for us.
Yes, that is an outstanding idea.
My in-laws who are young - only in their late 60’s - live in a retirement community in AZ of “single family” homes. Many of these people don’t drive anymore. Many of the ones that do shouldn’t. Usually they stay within the confines of the very large community (which includes all necessary services, etc…) so they aren’t a menace to the city at large… Usually.
Both of them drive some folks around who are in their late 80’s and 90’s and there are shuttles for those that want to use them, too. But those only go so far. For someone that’s still relatively mobile but really shouldn’t be driving, autonomous cars would be great. They could use uber, of course, but not too many smart phones around.
Yeah, “post-scarcity” fiction rarely delves into the idea that while wealth and material created by automation isn’t scarce, it’s so unevenly divided up by the disappearance of both the white collar and blue collar jobs as to be dystopic. The whole world looking like a 3rd world megacity of the unemployed starving in slums with the 1% “capitalists” living behind walls, guarded by their drones. Or would they be in neo-feudal walled estates, self sufficient in robot run farms and factories? Hmm, maybe Stephenson did cover some of this territory in Diamond Age.
I can’t drive at all now because of anxiety, I make terrible and dangerous decisions when under stress. And I need to prep myself alot to take public transportation, although once I’ve gotten used to a route it’s a fine. I’d still rather that we lean more on good mass transit but it would be extremely freeing if I could deal with emergencies and edge cases with an automated system.
We are currently carless and get a zip car once a week for shopping, but there are things still to hard to get done so we’re going to end up buying again in a year or two. If it were not hard or overly expensive to do road trips and recreational stuff with a service we wouldn’t buy.
Lots of “as seen on TV” “I can’t break an egg” type tech is developed for the disabled but then gets marketed to the general public without even mentioning the original intent. Self driving will not be marketed for this even if implications are obvious. Hopefully usability/ accessibility will at least be kept in mind.
I guess that makes sense from a pure marketing point of view, it will be harder to get trendy 20- and 30-somethings to shell out a lot of money for a self-driving car if people think of it as a mobility device for elderly people. I still think that’s the logical place to actually start rolling out the technology though.
the catch will be to implement these solutions before the problems arise, rather than waiting until the damage has been done
Dude, do you even america? That’s not the way we do it here!
