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Comment by Cushman | Hacker News Reader

I love this future because it completely routes around the public transportation dilemma we have in the US. The fact is that automated electric vehicles on paved roads would work perfectly here, could completely replace personal cars, would provide huge cost savings, not to mention saving thousands of lives a year from traffic deaths alone.

And this is something we could actually do. The government could take $X billion, get a cost-effective robotic car platform off the ground, start replacing vehicles on a 1-to-1 basis, and outlaw manual driving on public roads inside of 20 years. It would make existing electric vehicle technology perfectly suitable for trips of any length, since you can simply change cars at the charging station and be on your way inside of a minute. Completely feasible.

But alas... Inertia.

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Automatic, cooperative routing also has great benefits over greedy time-minimising routing. In addition to the micro-level benefits (no stopping at traffic lights, fewer traffic waves) there are network-level benefits because the Nash equilibrium of user-optimal routing can be really crappy.

I highly recommend reading about Braess' Network Paradox for a great illustration of this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox

Well, the benefits of a private fleet of robotic cars is the ability to have many different providers - so I wouldn't want the government to have anything to do with it, save for setting safety standards for robotic vehicles.

There is no need to try and dictate the type of fuel, either.

But I'm interested to understand why people think a robotised taxi service would be much cheaper than human-driven taxi service. Is the driver really the highest marginal cost in the system? Does removing a driver really drive costs down that much? I wouldn't have thought so.

Oh, and your desire to ban manual driving is never going to fly. The most you would want is perhaps dedicated driverless roads where you aren't allowed to drive - much like bus lanes are now. That would allow for higher speed possible if computer systems can show they can safely transport occupants (or goods) at speeds higher than human drivers.

"Is the driver really the highest marginal cost in the system? Does removing a driver really drive costs down that much?"

Absolutely. In Austin, we have car2go, a car sharing program that allows one-way trips. Gas, insurance, maintenance, parking, and any other cost you could think of is included in the price. It costs about six dollars for me to drive downtown from my apartment. A taxi costs $15.

This isn't a perfect comparison since I walk to a car2go, but a self-driving car might need to drive to pick you up. It's pretty close, though.

Maybe the driver does add a significant cost from your example. I suspect this varies from city to city, as some cities have strict driver requirements (ie, London) while some others seem to just employ anyone with a pulse.

Another cost the car2go scheme is missing is the taxi licensing scheme, which most local governments use as a cash-cow by restricting supply and charging high recurring fees.

Add the fact that most robotic-trips are not going to be two-way and you're probably getting closer to $10 dollars for that trip, which, undoubtedly is still cheaper than with 'wetware' behind the wheel - but some people seem to be thinking this would be as cheap as mass transit, which to me is just wishful thinking.

>But I'm interested to understand why people think a robotised taxi service would be much cheaper than human-driven taxi service.

The overall cost of the system would be cheaper because you don't need as many cars. A human taxi service has tons of taxis sitting around doing nothing for some amount of time, parked somewhere when not in use, etc. If taxi were just an automated service you would just need enough cars to cover peak usage and you'd have more cheaper options on parking (e.g. parking can be LIFO, no need for each car to have exit access at all times).

>Oh, and your desire to ban manual driving is never going to fly.

I disagree. Once automated cars start gaining traction it will be pretty easy to make commercials of crying mothers talking about how they wish their star football player son had only taken an automated car, coupled with real traffic statistics. In a 100 years people are going to find the fact that we used to manually drive cars insane.

Horses were more dangerous than cars, but you're still allowed to ride horses on the road. A total ban on manual driving is just not feasible in a democratic country. I agree that it's possible some roads would be automatic-only, but you're not going to get a ban on cars being driven by people.

You would need just as many robotic cars as you would current taxis. The demand shape isn't going to change just because you remove the driver. Yes, parking and other things will improve but it's going to be a small improvement, not an order-of-magnitude jump.

>Horses were more dangerous than cars, but you're still allowed to ride horses on the road.

They may have been at some point, but that hasn't been the case for some time.

>A total ban on manual driving is just not feasible in a democratic country.

I disagree. Maybe not this generation, but supporting manual driving makes the whole system less stable unless you make a road just for them, which is really expensive.

>You would need just as many robotic cars as you would current taxis.

I don't believe this is the case. I see taxis sitting empty for hours. In that time one taxi could have made several short trips. I'm certain that a computer calculating routes, etc., could manage to get the same work done as is being done now with less resources. That's why we made them, after all.

If I can use China as an example, then in my experience, yes, the cost of the driver makes a huge difference. However, I am not entirely certain if the government is subsidising anything.

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