EVs could be the opportunity of the century for utilities | Hacker News Reader

EVs could be the opportunity of the century for utilities

utilitydive.com

19 pointsOsiris307 comments

I believe that this article considers electricity, gas and water as utility, but not utility computing. The business model might be a little different, but information and data processing are arguably utilities to me, in the form of Google Search, Facebook, Skype, Google Maps, GMail, etc. Soon, driving people around using self-driving cars will be an even more clear utility, and one in the very traditional sense.

Electric vehicle will be the utility of the 21st century, but not because of their power train, but because of the comfort of sleeping it off on your way back to home, being able to video-conference with your children on their way back from soccer practice (from anywhere), and never have to worry about parking.

If self-driving cars become anything like what armchair futurists are predicting within 10 years, I'll eat my hat. The on-demand car that picks you up and drives you around while you sleep is a long, long way away.

What do you see as the gating milestones that we can't hit in 10 years?

What kind of hat do you wear?

While city driving might be some ways off, do you really believe reliable highway driving is more than 10 years off. I really can't see why that could not be achieved within just a few years.

We can send rockets into space to build space stations on autopilot, why not drive on the highway? Those odd, really seldom cases where an AI can operate your car it should not be hard to build a failsafe system which drives the car safely off the highway, stops, wakes you up and insist that you take over the driving.

The car that I describe could be either yours or on-demand, possibly as a complement to you driving it yourself — just like using any of Google services is the main service for any of your own device. I predict that the service that Google or others might provide (mapping, avoiding congestion) will have a larger market growth than electricity consumption.

That is indeed a prediction for the next 84 years, so futurism, made from my armchair, but I don’t think that many developers works without one (standing desk excluded) — so I’m a little confused: are you using that expression as a dismissive?

I am not sure that self-driving cars will become an utility.

There are two problems - peak demand and hygiene.

With the personal car I am guaranteed to get it when I need it and in the controlled condition.

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