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Comment by orijing | Hacker News Reader

Guys, some of you who are criticizing the precise "assumptions" are missing the point! He's not saying that utilization will go up to 96% precisely, or that there will be 20x fewer cars. He is challenging us to imagine the possibilities ourselves, seeding it with some immediate (potential) implications. On first sight his assumptions seem reasonable, and it's up to us individually to determine what the ramifications are.

Indeed the potential is enormous for freeing up a lot of human time/etc. We will need less parking certainly, cars will be running newer models (since they're used more, they'll likely last less time) with better technologies, and potentially there will be more efficient routing algorithms to save energy, time, etc.

I like how HN is often first to criticize, but sometimes you're just missing the point. The point is to imagine for yourself the possibilities. For me, it's enormous.

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It's a really interesting article. I'm not sure if he's missing some more likely and fundamental consequences.

1. Travel time and thus speed are less important. So driving will become slower, safer, more fuel economical. BTW this will increase utilization because people will be in transit longer per trip.

2. People will travel more and for new reasons. E.g. I might hop in a car and tell it to go somewhere scenic while I work. This is going to increase utilization and possibly increase fuel consumption.

3. People will install beds in their cars or switch to bigger more comfortable vehicles. You can now sleep on the road (overnight travel). Another huge increase to utilization and fuel consumption. Bad for hotels.

4. People will accept longer commutes since they can read, sleep, work, etc. en route leading to further expansion of suburbia.

Key message: more people driving more miles for more reasons at lower speeds.

Just the idea of owning one car and sending it home for the wife to use is hardly full of win. Better yet we all share public autocars, but that smells of communism and many Americans will never wear it.

Far from increasing efficiency through greater utilization, I see self driving cars as turning cars into mobile houses and becoming more personalized and used far more.

"If some of my homes had been more like my car, I probably wouldn't have traveled this far." Paul Simon.

Driving cross country without driving sounds awesome really. About the only thing I minded about going to Burning Man was the drive there. We were all tired (scary) and I'd much rather have just sat and enjoyed my friends (and sleep) for the 36 hour trip.

You could have maybe taken a bus?

We did an RV actually. Main problem is loading up all the gear needed for Burning Man. Between 5 people's gear we literally stuffed the RV. The water alone weighed a few hundred pounds. Most Greyhounds and similar are pretty limiting for luggage in that respect.

Touche. I guess the other option is amphetamines or other stimulants then, and given that it's burning man, not terribly beyond the realm of possibility.

You ever travel by bus? I'd rather hitch-hike. :P

Every day on my commute. And once or twice a year I like to either take a green tortoise tour, or play "greyhound roulette" which entails going to a bus station, writing down the next 5 destinations on scraps of paper, shoving them in my pocket, then grabbing one scrap and buying the corresponding ticket.

Americans use shared cars all the time. They're called taxis. Also, ZipCars, rental cars, shuttle busses...

Right but aside from a few older cities most people only use a shared car when away from home. Giving up a personal car for daily use is probably not going to happen in the US without a major cultural shift.

Fully agree, just had the critic argument with my roommates about this. It doesn't really matter if everyone gets on board this plan, what matter is that with a 90% utilization rate and cars that can move themselves, someone like ZipCar/Uber or whoever can offer something like $30/month for unlimited car usage within 40KM.

It doesn't matter to me if everyone else doesn't get on board what matters to me is that a service at those rates may be possible in the near future. People still have phones that only text and call, but it's becoming a rarity.

exactly. all those car-sharing services may become much, much more useful and prevalent when you can use your smartphone to whistle the car to come to you. that would also spell doom to taxis.

perhaps then only the very rich, those who live in remote areas, and true car enthusiasts will want or need to have their own car.

a bit like a 100 years ago, everybody from the middle-class up had a maid, but now only rich people do because machines now do most of the household work for us.

> everybody from the middle-class up had a maid, but now only rich people do because machines now do most of the household work for us.

You'd be surprised how many people hire household help. Pretty-much every dual-income couple I know over a certain age has someone come in every week or so. And no, it's not a generation thing, that "certain age" has remained stable for at least 15 years. (I didn't notice before because I was too young.)

Yes, there's an income threshold, but at $150/month, the starter cost is suprisingly low. (That's San Jose prices.)

I'm not buying that last point... Having a maid or not is more to do with relative wealth.

You're missing his point. At any given time it has a lot to do with relative wealth. But the change over time is the result of things like vacuums and washing machines changing housekeeping from a full-time-plus job to something that can be done in the evenings/weekends.

He either has low standards of housework or a Japanese robot... Yes, vaccuming, laundry and dishes are a bit quicker, but they still take a lot of effort, and what about dusting and ironing? I'd hire a maid in a shot if they were a bit cheaper.

It's not just devices, modern cleaning solutions are a huge improvement over what people had even just 100 years ago. As to dusting a good air filter and regular vacuuming dramatically cuts down on dust accumulation. All together the modern household with about 5 hours a week of effort get's better results than you would have from a 20 hour per week maid using methods from 1911.

PS: People still use home cleaning services but the number of hours they work is a lot less than what you would expect from a maid a 100 years ago.

>laundry... a bit quicker

Ever tried hand washing your clothes with a bucket and a stick, then running them through a mangle yourself?

It ain't quick. It is orders of magnitude more effort than putting your clothes in the washing machine, which takes about a minute and no physical exertion whatsoever.

Yep. You also have to consider the time spent on boiling the water, ironing with irons that have to be reheated on a stove, hanging the clothes out to dry (and hoping that it doesn't rain), and so on.

>a bit quicker

That's a ridiculous understatement. Have you ever done laundry, or dishes by hand? What about waking up to start all the fires around the house?

Or have you ever attempted to cook a meal from scratch, how about 3 meals a day.

Modern conveniences easily save 8 hours a day, on daily chores.

Yes, yes, and yes. I wasn't born yesterday, and I am from a fairly isolated part of the world. They all took much longer, I agree. Perhaps this is a reason that both members of a couple can usually work nowadays - but I don't think it is the reasona that less people higher maids. All I am saying is that the maids issue is economic; no matter how little housework there is, I would still pay somebody else to do it if it were economical.

>I would still pay somebody else to do it if it were economical.

Of course you would, but, for most middle class people, maids have moved from necessity, to luxury.

The marginal utility of a maid has gone down, they used to save you 10 hours a day, now they may save you 1 or 2. Most modern middle class people can manage an hour or 2 a day, but not 10, so the demand has gone way down. Most people aren't willing to sacrifice in order to afford a maid b/c they don't need one.

It will be the same with cars. If you can rent a car with 90% of the connivence of owning one, owning one will become a luxury.

Many people sacrifice a large percentage of their income because the feel a car is necessary. When it's merely, nice to have, most middle class and lower will no longer do so.

You're assuming that having driverless cars is more desirable than having human controlled cars. I doubt most people see it that way.

Why not? I'm seeing numerous, huge advantages to the driverless cars. The only advantage to a normal car is that sometimes they can be fun to drive. Frankly, I'd be more than happy to make that tradeoff, and I suspect I'm not unusual in that regard.

I'm not convinced that trade-off would exist. It can't possibly be hard for a driverless car to kick control over to a human driver.

There is a significant potential saving in temoving the now-redundant controls. Also, as computers become safer than humans, human drivers may be actively discouraged.

Would you also like to cut off your legs and replace them with computer controlled wheels?

Once again HN and techies in general are a ridiculously small percentage of the population. Normal people do not see things the same way.

People have already replaced their legs with wheels to a very large degree. The computer control is just an added nuance.

Wait until, driverless cars are mandatory. Do you have any idea how many people die each year in car accidents. The vast majority of those are caused by human error.

Human error extends beyond the act of driving... it could be bald/frayed tires, non-existent brakepads, old wipers, missing turn lights, etc.

If those are addressed by driverless cars (ie, johnny-cab) then we're probably going to see a significant drop in freeway accidents.

On the other hand, will those driverless vehicles be capable of handling the unpredictable human drivers on the road?

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration only 5% of accidents are caused by mechanical failures.

Drunk driving alone (at least in 20004) is the cause of 30% of fatal accidents during the weak and over 50% during the weekend.

So even if car maintenance is still left to humans, we'd see a massive decrease in car accidents and subsequent deaths.

>will those driverless vehicles be capable of handling the unpredictable human drivers on the road?

With certainty, yes they will, and with much better reaction times than humans. In 2004 at the DARPA grand challenge the farthest any car got was 11.78 km.

1 year later 22 cars got farther than that, and 5 completed the race (240 km).

Self driving cars have only kept improving over the last few years. The Google car has never had an accident while in autonomous mode, only while a human was in control.

Self driving cars will be here. When is going to be dictated legislation, but when that time comes, they will save tens of thousands of lives per year.

The majority are pedestrians cyclists etc. Those deaths wont suddenly be solved.

In 2008 pedestrian and cyclists deaths accounted for only 14% percent of traffic fatalities in the US.

Where did you get "The majority."

Also most of those deaths were caused by human errors, why do you think they won't be solved by removing human error from the equation? Do you think driverless cars will keep running down pedestrians at the rate humans do?

Here's the problem I see.

The potential for car-sharing and an attendant rise in utilization rate has existed for a long time. (There's little reason something like Zipcar couldn't have been organized by telephone years ago.) Yet it has only caught on in a small way, and only in places where there are other overwhelming advantages to that scheme, in cities where car ownership (parking) is terribly expensive.

I think he's overlooking something regrettable but true: the low utilization rate, great expense, wastefulness and general economic insanity of private cars are critical parts of their appeal to consumers. Many people who could commute by train or bus choose to take a car instead, even though it's hugely more expensive, more stressful, and often not much faster. They'd rather feel like they had some control than no control. They'd rather sit in a seat no strangers have been sitting in. They like knowing the glove compartment is crammed with their own crap and not someone else's. They like the fact that their car will be waiting for them and for them alone in the parking space where they left it, with no need for waiting or a call-ahead reservation.

And of course there's the fact that parking an enormous, expensive, gas-guzzling monstrosity in the office lot or the driveway has a genuine (shallow, materialistic, emotional, and pitiably simian - yet still genuine) effect on your friends, neighbors, minions, and yes, on yourself.

He's supposing that driverless cars will somehow finally yield to economic pressures that have been present (and irrationally resisted) all these decades.

I don't see the points you mentioned as the primary benefits of a car over a bus or train. A car requires no waiting, and takes you directly to where you want to go, with no stops or detours. A bus or train requires waiting, makes various stops, does not take a direct route to your destination, and drops you some distance away from where you want, perhaps with a couple of transfers required for long distances.

Car sharing programs eliminate some of the drawbacks (no detours or stops), but several still apply (no guarantee of timely availability, one or both endpoints does not coincide perfectly with your destination). On top of those, you also pay more than mass transit, and you still have to do the driving.

Give me a transit mechanism which picks me up from my house at the time I want to leave, and takes me directly to my destination with no stops, and I see no reason to ever drive a car again.

I certainly believe that some car enthusiasts exist who actually driving, rather than just doing it to get to a destination. However, I don't believe those people make up the majority of drivers, or even a significant fraction; I think most people just want to get from point A to point B, and driving sucks the least for them.

A car requires no waiting, and takes you directly to where you want to go, with no stops or detours.

I think that after a moment's thought about this you'll have to agree that this is completely wrong. The roads don't even go directly where you want to go, most of the time; there are stop lights and stop signs and police checkpoints and emergency vehicles and slowdowns and gridlock and accidents and construction detours and traffic detours and "stops on the way" that aren't, really, for your spouse and on and on.

Which I think is really telling. The feeling of being in control that a private vehicle gives one changes one's perceptions and evaluations a lot. A driver-less car will probably not offer that illusion, and we collectively love that illusion.

Interestingly enough, the article attached to this other current HN post (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3329676) points out how much we humans hate passive, helpless waiting, and how we tend to exaggerate its severity.

Mass transit mostly fails to avoid all the same things you mentioned; to the extent it doesn't (trains) it exaggerates the other problems (drops you off far from your destination). Also, half the problems you mentioned go away with driverless cars.

So, no, I disagree entirely.

Mass transit mostly fails to avoid all the same things you mentioned...

But... so what? This isn't about private cars vs. mass transit. This is about unthinkingly exaggerating the virtues of private cars. We all do it, all the time.

...half the problems you mentioned go away with driverless cars.

That's what was claimed about parkways, thruways, expressways, and later about the interstate freeways, and none of those problems have in fact gone away at all.

The main point is convenience. Limos are shared resources, but no one complains about not having access to their glove box when riding in one, because they're so awesomely convenient and the level of service is spectacular.

This is where car-sharing services of the past didn't go. They went with the cheapskate (why have a car payment?) enviro-friendly (share cars) route. I think of a driverless pod service as on-demand limo service, with the potential to be at a price that's cheaper than owning your car.

Still wanna hear the roar of your motor on the open freeway? Sure go ahead! There are plenty of people who enjoy riding horses too! I don't think either of these "hobbies" are going to go away and I wouldn't ever want them to either.

My point about the glove box was regrettably unclear; it's not about "access to my stuff" so much as it's about "insulation from other people's stuff." In a shared car, the dirty Kleenex you find under the seat will be someone else's dirty Kleenex, not yours or your spouse's or your child's.

I'm not standing up for cars here. I'm not a motoring enthusiast. I simply think that the reason cars have been adopted so widely is because of the way their particulars fit together with human psychology, specifically with issues of control and self-esteem.

I agree with your points, except I don't agree with 'irrationally resisted'. If we take it at face value that someone does something (ie, own their own car) with clear alternatives available (ie, using shared cars) the behaviour is rational. It mightn't seem right on a cost-per-mile basis, but then it just shows that people place value in other things above and beyond cost-per-mile.

Wanting to own your own car even though it is more expensive than the alternatives is no different to wanting to buy designer clothes at 10 times the price of wal-mart offerings. You might call them irrational, but clearly the person making the free choice finds value in the proposition, thereby, as far as they are concerned, it is rational. In fact, we hear people rationalising it all the time.

No more "I can't drink tonight I'm the driver" excuses - our society is doomed!

I do hope car companies will switch to using truck-quality bearings on cars. Trucks are more like airplanes in that respect, they easily do a million miles and spend a lot of their time on the road.

I think that will happen automatically. The market would change: cars would be bought more and more by companies providing them to others for a fee, like with trains and airplanes. With the current logistical problem of car-sharing out of the way (specifically: the labor costs associated with a driver and the risks that human poses to the car), that becomes viable very quickly. Those companies would differentiate between cars on different criteria than current consumers and would demand higher quality, longer-lived cars. Car manufacturers will have to adjust.

To say change to truck (I assume you mean the Heavy Goods Vehicle, rather than the pickup variety) quality bearings is a vast simplification. Cars manufactures over the years have been striving to reduce the cost of producing cars, the weight (improving performance and efficiency) and reducing the maintenance requirements of their cars.

This means we have things like sealed ball joints which can't be lubricated, spark-plugs which are expected to last for 75,000 miles, gearboxes without sump bolts as the oil 'never' needs changing and sealed units which cannot be opened and/or put back together without specialized tooling.

Trucks on the other hand are expected to have a very regular maintenance schedule with lubrication points (or complex single point lubrication), the weight of the vehicle parts is smaller in comparison to the load meaning there is little incentive to reduce weight (and even counter productive in low traction situations). They also have a much higher millage expectation within their expected lifespan and so are designed accordingly.

Well, having driverless cars will make maintenance more feasible too. I mean, if your car needs servicing, you can go to work, then send your car off to the mechanic's while you're at work. If it's something minor (like an oil change, or fluid replacement), the car'll be back by the time you're done working.

"I like how HN is often first to criticize, but sometimes you're just missing the point."

Welcome to the internet. Not sure how long you've been here but anything posted publicly will get criticized and torn apart regardless of where it's posted.

I can't help thinking this guy is reinventing the bus.

Buses have problems with aggregation, they don't go exactly where you want to go and you have to stop the bus whenever one of the passengers wants to get off or one. Also, you might have to share it with crazy people ranting at you.

Driverless cars cut down on most of the downsides of public transportation, but they do lose the fuel efficiency.

> you might have to share it with crazy people ranting at you.

god help us if we are forced to spend time with other people in the world who are not like us...

People who are just different than me I can deal with. Its when some drunk guy falls over when the train accelerates, assumes he was pushed, and starts screaming at the woman who was behind him and telling her that he's going to put a bullet in her head that makes me think I might be reluctant to use public transportation if I wasn't a relatively burly guy.

I can't disagree with the circumstance, but I don't like the implicit assumption that public transport is always destined to be this way (whilst driverless cars might revolutionise their own sector). IMHO every city that loathes public transport (and because of this they generally don't put the money into providing a safe, accessible, and attractive service) suffers greatly for it, both financially and culturally...

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