Robo-Taxis are rolling, did you notice?
cmte.ieee.org
cmte.ieee.org
The article doesn't say whether these ventures are profitable yet, or at least whether their losses are decreasing to zero.
How do their operating expenses compare with conventional taxi fleets? Don't they need constant monitoring and ready staff to address issues? Not to mention periodic maintenance of the geofenced area to update maps and rules as conditions change?
I wonder if there are unique problems with European cities - e.g. Paris has a population density roughly fifteen times as great as Beijing() and Phoenix. European cities also tend* to have narrower streets than N. American cities.
(* Although this is complicated, and perhaps not a fair comparison. Paris draws its city limits very close - e.g. only about 2 million people of the 12 million people in the Paris metropolitan area actually live in Paris, so we should expect the population density to naturally be greater that a city which includes its suburbs).
The EU regulatory environment has also been very different than the US on this subject. NHTSA and the various DMVs have been very laissez-faire about robotaxis, not banning them and allowing some level of (frankly unsafe) testing. The EU has taken a more traditional approach, where public road deployments will require type classification, which necessitates a whole bunch of legislation exist. For L2/L3 vehicles, that only recently came into existence. That framework doesn't exist for L4+ vehicles, so they cannot currently be deployed in Europe regardless of development status.
But yeah, it is indeed also sad that Europe does not have a single credible horse in the race.
The regulatory environment is certainly noted and prepped for though.
Chongqing is even more rural with a bunch of small cities dispersed throughout, it isn’t really a single city with 39 million people.
Anyways. If someone has figured out self driving cars for chaotic (core) Beijing traffic, I don’t think any other city would pose that technology any problems.
I've actually though about this for a while, not just replace cars with light rail and have small "pods" that you can call to come to your nearest station and hop on it, kind of like on demand rail. IMO this is kind of what has been built.
Trivial to do self-driving when the tracks are real.
All train systems have remote monitoring (normally as part of the signal system), even for driverful trains. The Danish Metro has 5 "operators" passively monitoring the entire train network, but can step in if something goes wrong. Nothing is required in normal operation - the trains even schedule and execute cleaning, and return to service fully automatically.
All train systems require tracks to be kept clean, with driverful trains often having issues with leaves or snow. Some 20 years back when the Metro was new, there was some issues with spurious debris detection stopping the train, but that was sorted out.
All modern trains have automated signalling, brake distance management and brake control, the whole shebang. The system, not the driver, enforce safety, and driverless systems have exactly the same characteristics. This is also why some trains bought more than 2 decades ago already boasted "self-driving ready" capabilities - the signalling system was already then for all intents and purposes the operator of the train.
Emergency braking does not become more sufficient with a driver on board, so I do not understand that logic. The signal system is not less able to track occupancy on country-side, and it is much better suited to react early than a driver with their limited sight and fallibility. The signal systems have come a long way since the days of just monitoring simple track segment occupancy.
I am not suggesting you just slam self-driving trains on a random track without setup - it takes a signal system overhaul if not already prepared - just that self-driving trains has been a solved problem in regular commercial operation for well over two decades.
That's why in autumn in France, a 2h52 train trip like La Rochelle-Paris will be marked as taking 3h04 or 3h08 to account for the slow-downs.
Snow is manageable, ice too (until a certain point i guess? In France it's manageable). Leaves though, they have to be cleaned. They are easily the worst from what i heard (although a girl from Salt Lake City told me a story about crickets on railroads, so i guess that could be worse).
futurists:train::evolution:crab