This “kid” reminds me just a tad too much of Jean Ralphio from Parks and Rec:
Does the Google car drive in the rain? Or snow? Or at night? Or on back roads? Pretty sure not yet.
Well, over a year ago they had night, not snow, and everything but heavy rain.
But really, a nice, tight, controlled environment is exactly what automated vehicles take to, so a public transportation grid is right up their alley.
Mind you, what this really points to is the fact that we’d benefit from cities and lives that don’t require quite so much travel to do what we need to do. Cities are engineered to suit our current needs rather than to avoid people having to drive. Some big corporate campuses are much better designed in that respect.
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Which still involves a bit too much of walking and waiting and carrying crap for my tastes.
Thought… a shopping bag with an integrated little seat and a hoverboard-like propulsion. Could be carried with relative ease to stairs, pulled along as a regular bag, or sat on and ridden like a sort-of-Segway. Doesn’t solve a problem of rain (thought: integrated umbrella holder may make it better) but would alleviate to a degree the annoyance of walking in non-precipitation days.
So, he did the easy part, you can buy cars that do all that. The problem being, how do you keep the driver from loosing their focus on the road, it can take up to 15 seconds for a person to get up to speed and capable of controlling the car, that’s 1/4 mile (500m) at US freeway speeds!
It is impressive, but it also shows how far we have to go.
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Sure it needs more iteration. But many people said the same thing about CNCs, laser cutters and 3D printers when people started tinkering on them in their garage. And those are now just as good as the industrial versions. One thing Geohotz shows us is that if you want to build it, you can.
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My horse can walk faster than that steam-powered car of yours!
You’d be better off spending your time improving horshoes and watering-troughs than wasting time on that noisy rubbish!
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Caveat: I totally understand the point about “better off improving infrastructure instead of vehicles”, and I agree.
However, “improving infrastructure” doesn’t scale down – small companies and garage-hobbyists* can hardly test new freeways, mag-lev systems, etc etc etc. Vehicles, vehicle-components, automated-vehicle-components, yes.
A hobbyist can improve a horseshoe; but a government has to build an interstate highway system.
* a totally loaded term that I am attempting to deploy without malice, using it for the scale-level, not the skill-level.
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Buddy, I live twenty minutes, via highway, to the nearest town. If public transport here had a stop a mile out from my house I’d freaking leg it because right now I have nothing other than depending on friends/family for transportation, and unless I get about five clicks past annoying and well into ‘pissing the other guy off’ territory I get lost in the shuffle.
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