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Comment by dmix | Hacker News Reader

Well technically you could be telepresence into the meeting because your car can be outfitted with a nice TV/monitor, audio recording equipment, and high speed wifi... so you can have meetings while you drive to work. Or you spend your quiet time in the car working, and instead use office time for meetings.

Besides, in the hypothetical self-driving future the transit times will likely be far more predictable than it is today... with AI running and optimizing everything.

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We can already telepresence into the meeting. I moderately understand your argument, but I think the parent is talking about meetings you have to be in physically. And if your argument is "Why do you have to be there physically" I would counter that if you don't have to be there physically why do you ever need to get into a self driving car.

I can't telepresence into a meeting while I'm driving, or while I'm on public transit.

Being able to videoconference during my commute would be an enormous boon.

Why not? We regularly have people join in in calls from home/on trains. They just have to mute when they're not speaking.

I'm curious what Utopia you live in that has network coverage reliable enough in subway tunnels or on trains going through rural communities to make teleconferencing from mass transit a tractable solution. ;)

(No, but more seriously: I'm a bit envious that this is working for your teams. It's completely impractical in the East Coast US cities I've frequented).

In the SF Bay Area, Caltrain is aboveground and is more than quiet enough to call into meetings. Think NYC's MetroNorth, there's no reason you wouldn't be able to make a call until you get into the tunnels near Manhattan. On the other hand, BART is underground with signal repeaters just about all the way through - but it's very noisy so you could call in and listen but probably not contribute.

If your transit system is underground without repeaters though, I agree that you're out of luck. I can't imagine trying to take a call on the T.

Here in Taiwan, we also offer free Wi-Fi access across the High Speed Rails system (~180mph, ~200 miles of coverage), reliable enough even in tunnels, as of this year.

Montreal->Toronto corridor has complete coverage (unless you take the route through Windsor). 4G LTE the entire way.

Because confidential information is a thing.

> in the hypothetical self-driving future

In suburbia/regional areas certainly, but most large cities are already heavily congested, how many more people could possibly fit in peak hours? As optimised as we can make it, there's still a predictable one-directional crush every day.

The real optimisation of roads would be incentivising companies to make their employees start/finish outside of work hours.

A self-driving future will likely still heavily involve public transport in the short term at least.

Hopefully fully autonomous vehicles will get far smaller, travelling pods which are both cheap to buy and maintain, much like a motorbike but without the downsides that turn most people off.

Smaller vehicles, especially trucks will quickly be needed to reduce road wear and offset the likely cost of greater road usage. Smaller personal transportation would also be a boon to road efficiency.

Ultimately the key point is predictability. Being able to plan when your meeting will be. Even if congestion doesn't change or gets worse, the point is that it will be easier to plan as trip times become more predictable thanks to machines. That way you won't be late for meetings. as the OP inmplied.

Selfing driving + fleet cars will most certainly reduce the average car size. People buy 4-5 seats for the edge cases when they might need to pick up some friends or more than one child at a time, or merely because it's the most common type of vehicle available, which people buy out of habit or whatever social reason.

But looking at car on any highway and you'll only find more then 1-2 drivers a minority of the time.

When we eliminate the need to buy a single car for all general use-cases, and have a high quantity of self-driving Uber style cars available, then 1-2 seater cars with become the most popular size. Which in itself with reduce climate damage and increase capacities on roads.

Especially as self-driving cars can drive at higher speeds and closer together, potentially linking up like trains for long-distance rides.

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