Cars destroy the environment (with the infrastructure needed to accommodate them) and are one of the primary drivers of climate change. We need technology to make them obsolete, not to make more of them that can drive themselves (or not).
Failing that, self-driving cars as a service preserve all of these while also being significantly better for the environment. You don't need parking lots, because utilization is close to 100% and they go back to a depot when not required. It's easier to electrify the fleet, because the service knows exactly how far the trip will be and can bring the car back to a charging station while it has no passenger. You can share rides when multiple passengers have destinations that are close without them needing to go to the exact same place. You can have pods that dock with each other in motion (benefitting from better aerodynamics) but preserve privacy and split off to different destinations when needed.
Actually, since the goal should be the preservation of the environment that is supporting our continued existence, what is needed is mass transit, which is the least damaging form of (mechanised) transport we know of; not a technology to replace it with privately-owned and operated vehicles.
I mean, I understand that's never going to happen, but that's only because we are collectively incapable of making the right decision on this one.
Imagine a city-managed fleet of buses and shuttles that have a significantly decreased cost-to-operate, that dynamically respond to demand, aren't bound by work rules, and that customize their routes as needed. That's revolutionary.
A more workable system for a free market society would be to shell out an equal endowment, say 20 driving hours a month, to all citizens. They will then chose if to sell them to the rich people or spend them to impress that special date.
Before you know it, the poorer plebs will fight the richer ones to maintain the driving voucher system, for the sake of the revenue they earn out of it.
A lot more than 1% of people would be unable to function in modern society if you took their car and told them to walk and run.
Implement congestion taxes and dedicated lanes for high-occupancy vehicles (vehicle more than 50% occupied) and you have a fleet of highly adaptable, efficient, utilized, and available buses at a fraction of the current cost. You've eliminated some of the major problems of mass transit systems - last mile connectivity, financially marginal routes having to choose between poor service or losing money, lack of frequency at off-peak hours, relative lack of comfort, convenience, needing to know a timetable as a user.
Why mass transit and not walking more or personal blimps shaped like giant Trump babies? To make them more than your opinion, you need to put some numbers on those statements.
And the numbers work much worse than you think: between the low energy efficiency and low occupancy at non-rush hours, the massive infrastructure and the longer routes due to non-optimal layout, mass transit is better than American gas guzzlers but nothing to write home about. Here's some numbers put up by people who share your opinion - and that do not even take all these effects into account: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2012/11/can-we-please...
So for in-city transport, mass transit is a hard sell on environment alone. (Intercity transport like trains are great though, and there is a strong convergence there, self driving cars pair well with fast trains, giving the best of both worlds: flexibility, speed and low footprint)
That's probably true on a per mile basis, but it's actually expected to be net worse for the environment because it will enable car access for a large percentage of the population who are currently homebound due to either being disabled or not being able to afford a car.
That said, because they don't need street parking, in the long run it may enable more bike lanes and bike usage.
That sounds like a really horrible outcome. /s
I just don't see any world in which the only reasonably efficient form of self-driving vehicles is basically a fleet of (dynamically scheduled, self-routing, autonomous) bus rapid transit - and I'm assuming these would only beat out trains in a realistic dynamic system mainly because of the additional flexibility/ease of re-routing.
It’s just dawned on me how many cars you could fit in a carpark for self driving cars. They can park properly, park each other in and park close together. I wouldn’t be surprised if you could get 4x more cars in the same place.
Once people are less tied to private vehicle ownership and open to any effective form of transportation, then adoption of new technology could become easier.
We do not know that this will happen, people won't like using public cars. Also the number of cars is not important as the number of kilometers those car run, the companies will try the best to maximize the number of kilometers the cars will run to maximize the profits so we may have people using cars even more instead of walking or public transport
You're aware buses are large automobiles right? Lyft Line with self-driving cars is effectively a more nimble, efficient, usable, and cheap bus network.
My point is that if we get cheap or convenient cars to drive us around then this would increase number of kilometers done by cars.
About buses you have say 30 people using a bus and the bus is driving 10 km, if people would use cars and say they will be 3 people in a car you get 10 cars x 10 km = 100km, so you get 9 more vehicles on the road , you get the more energy consumed since a bus is not consuming 10 times more then a car.
> About buses you have say 30 people using a bus
The problem is that it's difficult to match transport demand and supply perfectly because the bus is such a large unit of transport. The more common scenario is a close-to-empty (off-peak times, unpopular routes) or bursting-at-the-seams (peak times, popular routes) vehicle. Because the self-driving car is a smaller, more granular unit of transportation, you can deliver more targeted supply to the places where there's demand, at the exact times when there's demand.
I think it will rise:
- the people that afford expensive cars now(Tesla,BMW) will continue to own their own cars
- people that can't drive now but have enough money will buy their own cars
- some of the less rich people that own a car will keep using it
- people that use buses would use the new taxis if their are cost effective
So I think we will get more cars so we will have more energy consumed and we need better roads, better electric infrastructures that includes clean energy generation.
About safety my personal opinion is that with current software and hardware we are far for self driving cars in general conditions, we could get this cars maybe to work safely on specific roads.
I am also of the opinion that what Tesla is doing is wrong, aka here is auto pilot, it drives for you but you MUST still be 100% aware of the driving because you must intervene at any time, what advantages has this system ?
-advantage 1 you don't use your hands and legs that much
-no other safety that is not included in the driving asist packages from non self driving cars
- autopilot makes many drivers behave illegally and don't pay attention, the PR shows the cazrs driving themselves where the small print in manual tells you to pay attention 100% of the time
I think I understand your point, I am also frustrated by bad drivers that text, speed and kill people, I want them out of the roads too but it will not be easy to replace human inteligence, driving is a complex process and software and hardware is not there yet (I was an optimist like you about an year ago until the cases with Tesla hitting trucks, police cars and concrete obstacles happened and I read about the fact they have to ignore inputs because there are too many and the hardware is not good enough to process it) maybe Google cars have better sensors,hardware and software and can bring the optimism back for me.
You can do this by implementing congestion pricing and heavily advantaging carpool vehicles on the road by giving them more dedicated lanes, or by restricting single-occupant vehicles to a single lane on highways.
In urban areas, renting a parking space for your own car is already quite expensive. It's an easy decision to give your car up if robo taxis are cheap and plentiful.
In suburbia the calculus is a bit trickier because there's still a bit of keeping up with the Joneses. But there are many who'd jump at the chance of getting rid of their garage and driveway and have more living or personal work space.
I agree with you about Tesla autopilot.
With some good regulation and investing in infrastructures we could reduce the car accidents and pollution today without having to wait decades until most cars will be self driving cars, but we don't have the regulation and investment unfortunately.
Cutting out the middleman (i.e. the company that wants to profit off of the ownership of the self driving car) should always be cheaper given enough usage. It's the same currently with owning a car vs Uber, Lyft or taking cabs etc.
It's some kind of narcissistic tragedy of the intellectual commons.
Once people stop commuting with cars, they may find out that owning a car is no longer with it
I'd be very much in support of congestion taxes, carbon taxes, and expanded HOV lanes, however.
>> This technology applies to mobile transportation in general and it doesn't necessarily have to effect greenhouse gas emissions.
Well, I don't know that there is any way to drive a fleet of some millions or billions of cars (once self-driving cars have been adopted widely, that is) that doesn't rely on burning fossil fuels, either directly or indirectly (to charge batteries etc). So how are they not going to affect greenhouse gas emmissions?
I don't see how greenhouse emissions is relevant to this conversation. Obviously, we'd prefer to all be driving around (human operated or otherwise) in vehicles powered 100% by clean energy, and certainly people are working on that, but that's independent of whether or not those vehicles are operated by humans.
> (with the infrastructure needed to accommodate them)
Laying pavement quite literally destroys the environment, and a _ton_ of it is needed to support personal automobile lifestyles (particularly in suburban sprawl); far more than the amount required to support freight, walkers, cyclists, and mass transit. Modern US car-centric streets are very inefficient in space.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18623096
"the proportion of England's landscape which is built on is… 2.27%."
More cars means more emissions, the industry wants to sell more cars by loading them with self-driving features, therefore the issue of emmissions is relevants.
I mean, that's kind of like saying "I don't see how coronary heart disease is relevant to this conversation that's about selling more hamburgers", or "I don't see how diabetes is relevant to this conversation that's abot selling more sugary drinks".
Strangely as it may sound, the plan is exactly the opposite, to make personal cars a rarity.
> "I don't see how coronary heart disease is relevant to this conversation that's about ending world hunger"
Fixed that for you. People without access to cheap transport or food really don't have time to worry about emissions or coronaries.
The promises might fail but that's the plan anyway, to make ride hailing so ubiquitous and frictionless that it's more convenient than ownership.
I belive genocide is against the law in most civilised societies, but, be my guest.
<It matters even less, but> You could argue that to eradicate humans you would have to commit genocide several times.
[0] https://www.etymonline.com/word/genocide
[1] https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/253505/is-there-...