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Comment by rblatz | Hacker News Reader

I think this plays out where it becomes a luxury to drive oneself. Over the next 10-15 years it looks like self driving will continue to advance and will likely become safer than the alternative.

Once that happens insurance companies will start charging more for people that drive themselves compared to people that let the car drive.

I can see some states outlawing that practice. Then it’s left to see who is still underwriting insurance in those states.

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> I think this plays out where it becomes a luxury to drive oneself. Over the next 10-15 years it looks like self driving will continue to advance and will likely become safer than the alternative.

I think this is a long way away and will vary geographically.

For a long time, self driving cars will be more expensive because they’ll have expensive sensors on it. Not many people will want a $100K self driving car instead of a $30k Camry. This means the cost-per-mile goes up unless utilization rate goes up. The most effective way to do that is make it a Taxi.

The natural result of self-driving-taxis is that the people least likely to take a taxi but most dependent on a car (rural Americans) will drive themselves still and those cars will be cheaper because they’re sensor free. That will never be a luxury product.

In urban environments though, the poorest people will continue to own cars but be slowly priced out by insurance. But maybe insurance won’t go up for manual cars, but down for self driving cars. They’ve already priced the cost of manual driving, which won’t get more dangerous as less cars are human. States might try to protect them, but I think politicians and citizens will be persuaded by “safety” over “poor people need to afford transportation”.

I wouldn’t be surprised if safety requirements will gradually tighten until every car will need most sensors. Manufacturers have an interest in selling expensive difficult to manufacture cars and politicians like to reduce traffic fatalities.

The average age of a car in the US is 12.6 years old right now. History shows that we’ve not forced safety items into existing cars. (I have one car where I would be permitted to pass safety inspection without seat belts (any) because it wasn’t originally equipped. [I have chosen to add them.])

After the 15 year mark, give or take, it becomes a luxury to maintain the car. There will hopefully be a point in the nearer future where ICE will become a luxury.

If I understand your point about luxury correctly, I agree that there’s a crossover point, but I think it’s more like 35 years (1990 model year or earlier) rather than 15 (2010 MY or earlier).

I don’t think many people driving a 20 model years-old 2005 (including myself) are treating maintaining that car like it’s a classic car hobby.

12.6 and rising.

> Not many people will want a $100K self driving car instead of a $30k Camry

What you said is true, but does not reflect reality.

Today The Model 3 is ~$40k, and once self driving is "solved", there is no reason a ~$40k car won't be capable of it.

Sure, but that’s assuming the technology on a Tesla Model 3 actually is capable of safely self driving. Today, Waymo is the clear winner, and the equipment costs a lot more than a Tesla.

I know Elon/Tesla can be a charged topic, but teslas don’t self drive today. It might be true, but I don’t think we can assume they’re capable with just a software update based on the info we have today.

> Waymo is the clear winner, and the equipment costs a lot more than a Tesla.

I don’t think that is true. What costs a lot more? Lidar?

Call it $10k more on the very high end. So you have fully self driving cars for $50k. A very long way from your $100k

The LIDAR sensors are significantly more expensive than 10k. There are a lot of them on it too. Additionally, I expect that the GPUs or other compute requirements are an extra 10+k at least.

While I'm sure the prices can come down with mass production, the estimated BOM for a Waymo are speculated to be >200k per vehicle. Maybe we can that down to 100K, but I'd be very suspicious of a 50k vehicle anytime soon.

Tesla Model 3 is right below that $30,000 mark, Tesla FSD does the bulk of my driving today. I think your core premise is flawed, it will be cheaper and sooner than you anticipate which will alter the conclusions you’ve come to.

Teslas 'FSD' is not the commonly understood HOOTL self driving.

And? Just a few years ago waymo had safety drivers. I really only intercede when I want to take a route different than the Tesla routes me on, or I want to be a bit more aggressive in highway traffic.

Seems like 10 years isn’t too out there for affordable self driving vehicles considering we have one working today at the high end of cost and another getting close at the lower end of cost.

Won't happen unless tradesmen, engineers, etc can use self-driving cars, which will e awkward when you need to park up onto a curb or something to inspect a downed power line.

That is what .5% of all drivers that need to drive on a curb to inspect a power line? I’m not sure what your point even is here?

Fourth of July, kids sports that take place outside, etc. are all regular occurrences where people need to be able to easily go up onto a curb and park in the grass.

Seems like you’re grasping at straws to find weird edge cases that don’t at all preclude a mostly self driven future. I don’t think these cars will be made without steering wheels, or a mechanism to control the vehicle directly.

But I bet they get a report of how often you manually drive and if you cross a specified threshold your rate increases.

Edit: Also why would you need to park on grass! Hop out of the car and it will park itself wherever in a nearby lot, or just drives around until you need it.

How do you call this grasping at straws exactly ?

Your suggestion that all the cars should just e driving around waiting for you is fanciful, imagine something like a live music event with 100k people? Will there just be 100k cars circling the venue waiting for pick everyone up ?

I agree with you that driving manually will become a luxury but it's important to recognise that it will manifest as a discount on self driving, not a surcharge on manual.

The only way in which I can see a surcharge on manual happening is if it becomes so incredibly rare that it becomes a niche product, or if there ends up being a bias e.g. it turns out that the pool of manual drivers is now biased towards people who like to drive in a risky manner.

If anything, in a competitive market that is able to price individual risk appropriately, the cost of manual insurance for you or I should be lower in the self driving world, because most other drivers are now "superhuman" and thus we should get into fewer accidents.

And historically has this competitive market manifested itself? Or have insurance companies instead vastly changed from their 'distributed risk' origins and instead act more as corporate entities with profits at the forefront, where the moment you actually use them the cost of being insured rises?

I don't think insurance companies need to distribute risk from auto insurance. They do, however, need it for property insurance. Floods, earthquakes, and fires and level thousands of homes quickly. There isn't any risk like that for driving.

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