The biggest challenge overall is going to be overcoming the issues with autonomous driving in inclement weather. But I’m sure it’s doable eventually.
I was pretty baffled by this, but figured that attitude should be expected at a "labor" event, so I brought the topic up with my IT colleagues, and many agreed that they would never trust a driverless car.
I agree that we will eventually get there, but I think major regulatory setbacks should be expected, and a 5-year timeline is pretty optimistic.
They'll do what we've been so-well-trained-for at self-checkouts: the passenger might be given control of the vehicle in such situations (e.g. loss of network connection).
>within 5 years
As for predicting the future: I think within five years ALL vehicles on public roadways will require a beacon for travel, simply to alert other self-driven vehicles & intersection controllers. This process will be gradual, akin to "insurance discounts" for allowing driving habit monitoring (e.g. without a beacon, traffic lights won't auto-cycle for you).
Who handles liability if you get into an accident? When does it take control of the vehicle away? The most likely scenario is the car pulls over safely and asks you to get out or wait.
There are _many_ people who cannot or will not driver. They won't just take over control of a vehicle they're unfamiliar with. Teenagers, the elderly, people without a driver's license, people injured, ...
I personally think within 5-10 years, forward facing cameras will be mandated on all vehicles, starting with commercial/heavy duty vehicles. Yes, there's some degree of a privacy argument with it all, but the safety and liability boosts dramatically outweigh them.
Assuming that happens, either your suggestion could also happen, or a visual solution to the same thing could also be in play.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s very difficult to imagine that if AVs take over let’s say over the next 30 years that the end result will still be running on the same infrastructure we rely on today and that if we will still be a society where most people drive most of the time that AVs will really be all that transformative in the first place since they would be filling a sizeable but still relatively small use case- taking a cab around a major city. I can’t tell whether it’s the amazement of seeing a driverless vehicle or the actual utility of it that generates the excitement
They can already handle quite heavy rain and fog, the only thing missing is snow.
And that's completely ignoring their issue with surges, as their robot car supply is inherently fixed - they either don't intend to handle surges, or intend to have low utilization of their fleet.
None of it makes sense to me.
The cost per vehicle could get to something like $50k in the long-term, labor costs could get to maybe 2 people per 10 vehicles and utilization would be substantially higher compared to personally-owned cars.
The vehicles are / will be designed to last for a long time, Dolgov used 400k miles in his napkin calculation.
They can charge more because the user experience is better, so not only lower cost per mile but also higher price.
Cost of developing the technology will become negligible with scale, it's a fixed cost.
They're not just competing with other taxi services, but with all types of road transport. It's a technology that has the potential to be used by most people on the planet, daily.
Regarding surges, there are multiple ways to deal with it, for example surge pricing (which would motivate people to use the service when utilization is low) or using free capacity for delivery.
Their unit costs are at least break-even in San Francisco, and this is with their 5th gen vehicle, 6th gen is supposed to be much cheaper.