Still no flying cars? The future of transit promises something even better
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
It's the polar opposite of what flying cars promised. Flying cars promised unprecedented degrees of freedom. You could hop into your private aircraft and fly everywhere you want unimpeded by the usual hurdles of road traffic.
Self driving cars take the common freedom of owning a personal vehicle away from the individual. Private transportation will be transformed from a thing you own to a service that you subscribe to. You probably won't even be able to choose your preferred route anymore, at least not without addition expense.
I'm not being negative. Just pointing out the difference between the two.
On the one hand, there's something to be said for owning your transportation outright and being able to do whatever you want with your vehicle.
When you rent it on-demand, there's major tradeoffs. Safety will likely improve dramatically with self-driving vehicles. That's an amazing thing. But it will go under-appreciated by anyone who gets a vehicle where the previous occupant smelled funny, left crap in the car, etc. Basically all the downsides of a cab will be translated to your personal vehicle.
This technology will be pervasive and interconnected. If the previous passenger damaged the car or disrespected the future occupants, a good ride sharing company would discontinue their service after a number of infractions. It is in their interest for profit to insure their riders are happy, and bad apples ruining the experience destroy their reputation.
You will probably be able to, from your phone, flag the previous driver as negligent. Depending on the degree of confidence the company has in you and automated tools, they may face consequences without human involvement. Or maybe someone needs to review surveillance footage to confirm the infraction. Either way, that person is told to stop or lose their service. If you false-flag, you can face your own consequences.
That also means there is a market for companies that respect their customers in that way and those that do not, that would be cheaper since they cannot attract wealthier clients.
The same applies to airlines and busses. If you are disrespectful of your fellow passengers you can easily get yourself banned from future service.
- Someone who smelled funny, had bad gas, etc.
- Baby threw up and the mom wiped it down best she could but the entire car has a whiff of puke
- Dirt and grime being tracked in. Different people have vastly different standards for cleanliness in their vehicles
- Water/snow/sludge. Something to be said about going from an indoor garage to your vehicle to an indoor garage at a destination during bad weather. If the vehicle is picking up other people, etc., there's likely to be lots of water/dirt inside.
- Food smells and perfumes can set off allergies, sensitive noses, etc. I sure as heck don't want to be in a vehicle where someone was just transporting McDonalds, or where an old lady with way too much perfume was sitting for the past hour
- Wrappers, etc. can be left and often times dropped without any sort of onboard camera picking it up
- Germs. Dear god the germs. How many sick people will be in these things without any way for future passengers to know? If I had a child, I sure wouldn't want them in such a vehicle. I personally would also not want to be in such a vehicle. Worst case scenario, someone with a serious disease transmitted via blood or bodily fluids (read: HIV+, STDs, etc.) could leave hard to detect amounts on various surfaces. What is the company going to do? Require a blood sample and medical testing from all passengers?
So there's a whole host of things that are hard to track/place blame on people for without being a technological/legal/political nightmare. And I totally realize some of these are a bit on the extreme end of the spectrum. Point is, when owning a vehicle is no longer possible, you won't have a choice about being subjected to this.
And worth calling out specifically here is the whole surveillance aspect of it. Forget your vehicle knowing where you are. Between traffic cams, license plate readers, OnStar, Google Maps/Waze, etc. I think the war on tracking your location has been lost. What hasn't been entirely lost yet is privacy within the vehicle. I fully expect there to be invasive cameras and sensors watching everything I do in these self-driving cars in the future.
Ad-supported ride? Eye-tracking software will monitor whether you are watching the screen when the ad plays. Temperature/pulse monitors in seats could measure your response to such ads. And that's just scratching the surface of the privacy invasion.
I'm trying not to sound like I am wearing a tin-foil hat, but I think the past few years have proven that these things aren't just possible, they are likely and maybe even inevitable.
It will just be way more economically efficient to have the subscription model so you maximize vehicular utilization, so you just pay the premium difference of that efficiency. I cannot imagine they will be significantly more expensive than a Tesla is today.
Certainly cheap readily available taxis will be a popular choice, but if people feel there are advantages to owning their vehicle then they will do so.
I think there are actually quite a few advantages. Persistent storage space. Interior customisation. Instant availability in less popular areas.
> human-driven cars will eventually become illegal to drive on public roads.
Certainly, but that's a separate issue to vehicle ownership.
Given how much of the country is rural, I doubt that.
> human-driven cars will eventually become illegal to drive on public roads.
I really doubt that one since we haven't seen large scale testing of driverless cars in adverse conditions.
A rental has a certain set of expectations on maintenance and cleanliness, and maintaining those expectations come at a higher price, whereas most people are not strictly adhering to manufacturer's maintenance schedules and don't wash/vacuum their cars on the daily basis.
As one moves away from urban centers, the cost of getting the car to them as well as getting it back to the owner from them is becoming higher, and whoever is in charge of those rentals has to incorporate those costs into the final price, which might or might not be competitive with outright ownership.
But you're right, rural areas are clearly harder to make that model work.
if its because 'this route is less busy' well, thats your idea but the car should be able to tap into traffic information anyway and route around busy areas. Even ones you didn't know about.
if its because 'this route is more comfortable' then I think the car will drive safely and smoothly anyway. If the road is bumpy, then it probably won't go that way (damage to vehicle is expensive)
if its because 'this route is nicer to look at' then apart from the fact that people mostly don't care to look out the window while travelling along, when they can just fiddle with their phone, the case is that it is more expensive now to travel the longer, scenic, route already so if you are willing to pay the extra you can continue doing that.
The common freedom of owning a personal vehicle you mention doesn't seem to me that much of a positive thing in any case. I don't own one and when I do drive around I am always shocked at how much trouble it is to arrange to park it in a safe place when I want to get out, or maintain it. Simple self-driving vehicles that turn up when you want them and take you where you want to go, and then disappear.. Well, that sounds like a whole lot of freedom!
auto piloting VTOL gives you the ultimate freedom.
how to do a self separating ATC system with robot planes is the thorny problem.
But once that is solved uber for robot planes will beat any ground bound system (except in really bad weather).
"Beat" as in get to the destination faster, but the ground system would probably be cheaper (use less energy) as it doesn't have to continually expend energy fighting gravity. Perhaps if traffic conditions are very bad (e.g. stop-start driving with no regenerative braking) then the air option would be cheaper.
All cars promise that in the commercials but it never really works out like that. We would just use them to commute 400 miles in the morning and tell everyone that it is with it!
Feeling that kind of freedom is a leisure activity. Go ride a bike, ski, surf or even fly a paraglider. The rest of the time it would be nice to be able to walk through my town without having to constantly wait stressed out people in cars.
I suspect that any service which operates shared driverless cars will figure out things like cleanliness if they're a serious issue. They can just let people complain / refuse this care / send it out for cleaning/service and charge the person who made the mess a surcharge.
I'd be more worried about driverless cars not getting proper maintenance. When the driving computer starts going bad, I want to be sure it's fixed properly.
(It's also a job that trains do better than trucks, which is why there are so many long trains loaded with double-stacked containers rolling through the midwestern US.)
Partial automation of driving may be a big mistake. At the point where the driver can take their hands off the wheel, the manufacturer must assume financial responsibility for accidents. Volvo's CEO accepts that, Google agrees, and other car companies are starting to come around. NHTSA Level 2 systems (smart cruise plus lane keeping) must require hands-on-wheel. Hands-off driving requires NHTSA Level 3 (where Google currently is.) Systems which allow hands off driving need to be at NHTSA level 3 or 4.
Cruise (YC W14) and Tesla's autopilot are Level 2 systems pretending to be Level 3. This is scary; I've called it the "deadly valley". It's pretend automatic driving, just good enough that drivers tune out but not good enough to use hands-off. Tesla is already removing some of their autopilot features.[2][3] This sort of thing [4][5] is why.
[1] http://www.path.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/documents/i... [2] http://www.autoblog.com/2015/12/11/tesla-autopilot-feature-c... [3] http://www.teslarati.com/tesla-beta-firwmare-7-1-adds-autopi... [4] http://www.autoblog.com/2015/11/09/why-tesla-needs-update-au... [5] http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x3d5k7b
The vehicles traveling hybrid routes like that would probably be seen as (much) better railcars () rather than as slightly better trucks/buses. Your point that those won't directly reduce congestion on urban road networks is certainly valid, but i am convinced that the increase of long distance passenger service quality (many single-car direct connections instead of switching between few long trains) would have a network effect spillover influencing the modal split in favor of public transportation also on the urban level. So indirectly urban congestion might still drop.
() benefits of the "better railcar": frequent, nonstop hub to hub connections for passengers, door to door transport for freight, easy fallback to regular roads for maintenance or incompleteness of the hybrid network, fallback to the road wheelset for emergency braking power, for switching tracks and to climb gradients much too steep for rail traction. Because of the much more relaxed gradients, a hybrid network might even be cheaper to build than a pure rail network when the terrain is not perfectly flat. Of course "hybrid" would only mean optional rail use for increased efficiency with heavy loads, not mixed use including rail-only vehicles.
For passengers, there's a long history of buses that can also run on rails.[2][3] This has remained a niche product.
[1] http://www.triplecrownsvc.com/who-we-are-and-what-we-do/equi... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road-rail_vehicle [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guided_bus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzm6pvHPSGo
Anyone remember the IBM "Flying Cars" commercial with Avery Brooks from Star Trek DS9? Watch the whole thing, and wait for the punchline.
Birds are basically two massive chest muscles and some hollow bones, and not much else.
Normal planes get away with flying because they make maximum passive use of the air via the wings.
Now consider the Harrier, i think it has a hover capability measured in minutes. And thats at full fuel load and no weapon load.
planes can give you greater mpg than cars. A 70 year old cessna can gives you 15mpg. A modern plane can give you 40 MPG. Hovering is inefficient (10gph) but it can be only 2 minutes of a 20 minute, 60 mile VTOL commute.
The real barrier is cost, currently 50k per seat for a 4 seater. it would need a 3x improvement to compete with teslas.
Still, I think in and near city PRT will have a much larger impact. If you could average 40mph in and near city's that's a huge difference in peoples lives.
(Obviously there are safety issues, but we're playing the 'cars are smart enough to make everything perfectly safe' game)
I saved 3.5 hours, but cost me hundreds of dollars. I think self-driving cars will change the way we travel to things on land that are 16 hours of driving or less.
The time invested is probably the most expensive part of driving, and that's where flying has been losing its lead for years.
PS: "57.5 cents per mile for business miles driven, up from 56 cents in 2014"
"The standard mileage rate for business is based on an annual study of the fixed and variable costs of operating an automobile, including depreciation, insurance, repairs, tires, maintenance, gas and oil."
I do this a lot flying to Ottawa. Leave at 6am, get home at 10:00pm. I'd consider driving if the car was autonomous.
think of it as a modern version of Chicago highways where the left lanes get sectioned off on occasion with less chances to exit all to keep people in lanes consistently to reduce accidents from moving lane to lane.
fully autonomous cars and lanes dedicated to them and similar buses will remove the need for rail with in city limits beyond what exist. with no need to transfer vehicles and dedicated lanes you don't need as much planning for changes in travel patterns. fixed rail is always trapped, worse you end up with periods where you have too much capacity or too little and the inflexibility of track means no one else can use it. dedicate roadways can use the same space and be entirely flexible with easier maintenance and lower overall costs
At a certain scale congestion is inevitable, whether automated or not, faster traffic will eventually need to merge with slower traffic...