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Comment by olalonde | Hacker News Reader

It's fun to speculate on what will happen when driverless cars become mainstream. Essentially, the question boils down to: "What would happen if every car owner in the world suddenly had a 24/7 personal driver?"

- 7 year old kids can now own and "drive" a car.

- Need a lift? Ask your dad/friend to send his car to pick you up.

- Forgot your laptop at home? Send your car back and ask your flatmate to put your laptop in the car.

- Leaving New York for some vacations in Miami? Take the plane and pick up your car whenever it arrives.

- Want to take a nap? Pull down the windows and windshield curtains.

- Traveling abroad for a few weeks and don't know what to do with your car? Set it to taxi mode and profit.

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I think eventually, car ownership will go down significantly, since companies managing fleets of electric cars can do it far more efficiently than private ownership of long range cars. Uber is faster than walking to the car you parked half a mile away. There's always 'free parking' for your large house party in the city. You can also create small cargo only cars for small deliveries like that laptop situation. It's far more efficient from an energy/vehicle cost/liability stand point. Amazon prime 'local' might just replace stores from a pure efficiency standpoint. The number of total cars neccesary will decrease and the large amount of real estate devoted to cars will decrease significantly. Car maintenance costs will decrease with predictable schedules, and economies of scale that come with fleets.

Car sharing only works well for urbanites without children living with them. The rest of us keep a lot of stuff in our cars: strollers, child seats, spare clothes, shopping bags, diapers, pens, ski racks, toys, first-aid kits, etc. Even with computer driven cars I'll still be willing to pay a lot to avoid the hassle of loading and unloading every day.

What if you kept all your car stuff in some sort of modular compartments that could be easily loaded and unloaded? At the moment there isn't much incentive to do so, but that might change with this scenario.

What I'm getting at is while your argument seems sound, and may in fact prevail, when you change one piece of the puzzle sometimes other solutions become possible.

> What if you kept all your car stuff in some sort of modular compartments that could be easily loaded and unloaded?

Where am I going to put these containers when I don't have a rental car?

Lugging them back and forth to the house is not a practical option.

Maybe your driveway is replaced by a compartment container. Maybe (certain kinds of) cars will be able to automatically load the compartments. Or maybe you're completely right.

Maybe your driveway is replaced by a compartment container.

I propose we call this component the garage.

> Maybe your driveway is replaced by a compartment container.

Lots of folks don't have driveways, garages, and so on.

More to the point, they may not be at a "personal storage location" when they're dropping off the rental car.

s/(driveway|garage)/$WhateverSpaceYouCurrentlyParkYourCarInThatWillBeEmptyIfYouAreRentingInsteadOfOwning/

I can't leave my stuff in the street, especially since it isn't the same location every time I park. In other words, there's not necessarily a dedicated space that will be empty if I'm renting instead of owning, let alone one that I control

In fact, folks who don't have dedicated/owned spaces are probably the best audience for rentals.

Moreover, even if I'm willing to take said stuff into my residence, I may need said stuff on my way to the drop-off.

It's getting kinda pointless. I'm suggesting something that might happen in a future where self-driving cars have completely disrupted all of transportation. You're countering "there's no dedicated space" - well, just maybe, that can change? It's not even a full space, it's just a "dock" to load the containers.

In fact, even today, people who don't have a dedicated space (even if that space shifts around a bit, ie. is a "pool" space on the street) can't own a car: Where would they leave it? People who are renters today already have to deal with not leaving stuff in the car, so this discussion doesn't apply to them.

Long story short: Your original argument was that not owning your own car will not be be an option for you, because you leave a lot of stuff for your kids in your car. My argument is that, with a bit of fantasy, maybe this isn't an insurmountable obstacle.

> I may need said stuff on my way to the drop-off.

Why would you drive your self-driving vehicle to the drop-off?

One of the small but nagging issues which will need to be resolved is how to deal with "items left behind".

When more people begin to use public cars for personal use/hire people will begin leaving phones, strollers, jackets, wallets in these vehicles. Unless the cars are to have omnidirectional cameras or electronic trackers to monitor everything, people are going to lose things. This is going to be a pain point. It might be just becoming aware -as people do in taxicabs but at least honest cabbies will return items as its in their interest to maintain good reputation --a stranger is only bound by altruism.

I think it will be similar to leaving your wallet,jacket,etc on the subway.

It's one of the great cost distortions of private car ownership: Anybody who is parking a car in public, filled with surfboards and strollers or not, is actually storing private property (car and contents) on public space. And even worse, "regular" parking spots are often free, even though they minimize the number of cars that can be "stored" on a given surface area as opposed to garages. Thus, we incentivize wasting urban space that is inherently scarce. If this stays the same, using a more efficient, stackable, standardized cargo pod that is auto-loaded onto your self-driving rental car, will be more expensive for you because you now actually see the cost. This is one of the many hidden costs of driving that people will suddenly have to face with on demand automatic car rental.

There's something that I am genuinely wondering. Will car ownership really decrease?

Where I used to live in 2003, in China, taxis were really cheap, and public transportation was functioning OK. Yet, after some economic boom, people started to buy more and more cars. It was very provable that cars were a negative in every possible way. More expensive, PITA to maintain, inconvenient to park, incompatible with drinking alcohol or being tired, but still, people preferred to own and drive their own cars!

I know a self driving car is not exactly like a Taxi driver (or even like a private driver), but the parallel is close enough for me to wonder about the consequences.

I think there's another factor in play in a place like China. Many of these new car owners probably grew up with cars being an unattainable luxury - now, suddenly, they can actually just own one. I can't blame such people for jumping on the opportunity, practicality be damned.

For the average chinese person, is it cheaper to use taxis & long range busses & subways to go everywhere, or a personal car? Will the taxis come out to your residential area, at any time? Your still paying for taxi labor on top of a car.

> - Leaving New York for some vacations in Miami? Take the plane and pick up your car whenever it arrives.

Alternatively, in say 20 years or so, going to Miami which would take 21 hours (at 65-70 mph), could probably be done on an overnight sleeper-car (at probably something more like 120-130mph).

Even a cross country trip would only take a day or so at such a rate, and with a few strategically placed stops, you could have a nice week long cross country trip at a fraction of the normal cost.

Here's a few negative thoughts though:

These driverless cars might significantly increase road usage and wear since driving becomes less of a burden.

Suburban sprawl could grow out of control since it's no longer necessary to either have public transit options or be attentive to have a long commute.

Some people might even choose to buy automated RVs instead of homes, decreasing a sense of community and investment in place.

Fully automated cars let's you have all sorts of crazy solutions in the 200+ year time-span.

Think 100% electric high speed trains that let cars 'board' at highway speeds. Evacuated underground tunnels for low drag long distance high speed trips. Hybrid Maglev cars that rocket down the highway on a cushion of air while being inductively charged. Even things as simple as highways without road signs of any kind.

"Evacuated underground tunnels for low drag long distance high speed trips."

That's interesting because while I've heard of and thought about the concept of a vacuum tube train that could go ridiculously fast, I didn't think of a merely low-pressure tunnel that ordinary cars (with pressurized compartments, anyway) could use in flexible manner. You wouldn't go 15,000 mph, but you could do several hundred pretty easily.

> Alternatively, in say 20 years or so, going to Miami which would take 21 hours (at 65-70 mph), could probably be done on an overnight sleeper-car (at probably something more like 120-130mph).

Believe it or not we already have this. It's an Amtrak train between DC and central Florida. You are a passenger aboard the train but your car comes with you! http://www.amtrak.com/auto-train

Let me guess, this costs quite a bit more than flying and renting a car for a week?

This is not a cheap stab at US rail, I looked into this on the similar service that the German railways offer - and it did not make financial sense over flight+rental.

Increasing energy costs work against all that.

> Leaving New York for some vacations in Miami? Take the plane and pick up your car whenever it arrives

my car? Like I own the car? Why would you own a car? Who takes care of the maintenance?

Just kidding. But seriously, if self-driving cars were a thing, I can think of very few reasons why any normal people would own cars.

I agree, it could definitely be a situation where owning a car is like owning a plane. Sure, some people do it as hobbyists, but why would you when there are extremely efficient (computer operated) and inexpensive (no taxi driver, 100% uptime except for filling up/charging) taxi services that can take you around. Especially as more people use them (thus reducing wait times) I could see taxis being usable/profitable even in the suburbs.

Yes, exactly!

If the cars could drive themselves, they would probably be more like taxis without the drivers. We no longer need parking lots because the cars are constantly in use, that will free up a lot of space and mirror what already happens in dense urban areas (which depend on taxis, public transit, parking is very $$$). The cars will wear out in a couple of years from constant use (or maybe not if electric?), but we won't need as many of them. Rush hour commutes are a problem, but road capacity is limited anyways and peak pricing + mass transit + car pooling can lead to a workable solution.

Eventually, since all cars are automated, safe highway speeds could be increased dramatically (reduce space between cars, more predictability, reroute and reduce speeds to prevent full stop bottlenecks). Accordingly, you won't even be able to enter the highway in manual mode.

I wonder, since cars also have a large social signalling aspect, at least in many societies.

I guess that can still be maintained, with various levels of luxury in taxis/rentals/however it works.

But then where will all that social signalling money go? I guess since it's mostly financed money anyway, that capital will have to seek other venues? Will consumer debt drop due to this? Or will something else pick up the slack?

I think simply owning a car will be such a signal, similar to how owning a plane today is a mark of the super-wealthy. There will be "automotive Boeings" that produce cars for transportation companies, boutique shops that produce them for the wealthy, and not much in between.

Yes, this is already the case in China and I suspect in many places around the world. In Shenzhen, taxis are very cheap and available within 100m around the clock pretty much everywhere. Even if you drive on average 1 hour per day which is very unusual in a high density city, owning a car would probably be more expensive then always taking the taxi. Yet, a lot of people still purchase cars (mostly luxury brands).

I suspect this is the case almost everywhere in the world. A car's purchase price + gas + maintenance + taxes easily surpasses what you'd spend on taxis, even in a 5 year period. The keys to car ownership are convenience and the emotional aspects.

Taxis don't go everywhere.

Hauling, vacations, kids, bike rack...the list goes on.

Many, many cars get customized for one reason or another. You can't do that with a taxi.

You're right that people now use their vehicles for a variety of tasks, but I think that's actually part of the problem.

My dad has a pontoon boat that he has to twice yearly haul around. It might make more sense to get something specialized for those two days than drive something sufficiently powerful and fuel inefficient year round.

I need the bike rack every other day. Others have dirt bikes, surfboards, skis. This is pretty normal.

Assuming 6315 waking hours per year and 540 hours a year spent in a car, I would say a 9% increase in productivity for the average American.

Numbers from:

http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=392456

http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2002/PatrickLi.shtml

Averages are nice, but I'll be interested to see what happens to the workforce that depends upon them entirely, as mentioned above: truckies, taxis, FedEx, etc.

I say, leave it for a year to lull the companies into a false sense of security, then tax the hell out of companies using them for a few years to pay for some re-education for the old employees.

Why on earth should the responsibility (of those that will become redundant) fall on the early adopters of a new technology?

If I had become a fax machine expert would it be fair to charge a tax on those that began to use email to support me?

People should take responsibility for themselves and their own actions.

You should be used to this kind of talk by now. It's the modus operandi of socialism and the Democratic party. Who ever heard of personal responsibility?

Let them eat cake?

Let them bear the consequences (unforeseen or not) of their decisions.

How dare that person get cancer, become unemployed because of unforseen shifts in the job market, etc.

Social safety nets exist for a reason. You may opt out by moving somewhere else if you would prefer not to participate in a society with said safety nets.

I say this as someone in a $200K/year+ household. People who preach personal responsibility are oblivious to the realities of the world.

Well every one knows that becoming severely ill is a possibility for anyone, that's what insurance is for. Can't afford insurance? Give up unhealthy habits to lower your rates, get a better job, look after family so that they will support you if you need help.

Get made redundant due to unforeseen shifts in the job market? Educate yourself, get a better job, work harder. Innovate, invent, think, mow your neighbors lawns. Use your brain and don't embark on a dead end career.

I agree that some social safety nets are needed for a civilized society (No one that is ill should go without out treatment if they don't have any money etc) but at the same time there are limits and I think paying for people who lose their jobs because of new technology is way past that line. We need to encourage people to be smarter, not dumber.

"People who preach personal responsibility are oblivious to the realities of the world." I live in South Africa and government handouts do nothing but keep the poor oppressed and uneducated. They are used as a tool for control by populist politicians. People will have more children just for another R250/month from the government instead of creating value. Socialism is a huge threat to everyone everywhere. It keeps the populous dumb and gives governments way too much power. Please don't preach about the realities of the world from your $200K/year+ household pedestal. Socialism is obviously working out great for you.

>I live in South Africa and government handouts do nothing but keep the poor oppressed and uneducated.

I live in Australia, one of the best examples of how government handouts can ruin a race, and I'm saying this as someone coming from a low-income family with poor education and working+educating myself to a $100k/y job before I'm 30.

>I think paying for people who lose their jobs because of new technology is way past that line.

I think completely supporting them would be a bad idea, but as said in my original post, assistance in re-education should be partially paid for. I am always of the opinion that education should be at least partially subsidised - full subsidy encourages a poorer quality of education.

Example: You're 26 and have just spent $80k and 8 years of toil studying furiously for a degree, and the market for your chosen field evaporates. Sure, you've got the rest of your life ahead of you, but now you're significantly in debt because of something you had no control over.

This is a difficult analogy to compare with taxi drivers, but I hope you see the point - and over the next 10-40 years we will see this happen more and more as machine intelligence replaces more and more jobs.

I don't have much to add to tetomb. While certain safety nets can be successfully argued to make sense in a large, wealthy, productive, and strongly-led society, that doesn't imply all safety nets make sense in all societies. It also doesn't imply that even the desirable nets can be had feasibly at a good quality of service. For deductive reasons why they don't, see Carlyle, Mises, et al. (If you prefer inductive observation, you can also look at a wide variety of examples across history of failed and failing attempts.)

Lest you think I have no experience with the US situation and system, I've never lived in a 6-figure income/year household, I have a family member who was unemployed for over a year, who broke her arm only months after losing her job and medical insurance (all the years of medical insurance payments wasted, she having never been injured or seriously ill during that time--but that's a risk one takes when deciding (when one has a choice) to pay for insurance), finally getting a job that paid less than half of what she used to make--she's just trying to make it to retirement because all the money the government has forced her to "save" is effectively untouchable until then. I have a cousin who recently got knee cancer (but he'll be fine because it hasn't spread, his dad's an attorney, and a lot of cancers are curable), and I have another family member with a mental illness who without medical treatment could not function. He has paid the (often brutal) consequences of going off the medication enough times, fortunately he's been stable now for some years. (And mental illness is far worse than cancer, from the underfunded and incomplete medical understanding and treatments to government systems for aid to the social stigmas that make making friends, getting family support, getting a job, and a whole bunch of other things incredibly difficult.) I'm not oblivious to realities of the world. I see the causes deserving of aid as well as the crappiness of institutionalized aid systems.

Easy on the pitchforks, man.

Maybe it's because I'm Australian and have got used to the free ride of healthcare and education, but I'd gladly take a minor tax increase if it means a significant portion of the population gets into an entirely new career quicker, instead of remaining unemployed and being MORE of a strain on the economy.

Career is a strong word, though. The sorts of people we're talking about usually have no other option, and education can change that.

> Traveling abroad for a few weeks and don't know what to do with your car? Set it to taxi mode and profit.

CarBnB

https://www.whipcar.com https://relayrides.com/list-your-car

There may be others, not sure.

7 year old kids can now own a guided missile.

7 year old kids can be kidnapped in hacked vehicles.

Statewide gridlock due to DDOS.

Just looking at the flip side.

Think about those for a minute.

I rather doubt a self driving car in the hands of a 7 year old could possibly be more dangerous than a manual car in the hands of a 7 year old. It's fairly trivial to keep kids from using an iPhone inappropriately. A simple password would easily stop it, or we can keep using physical keys.

7 year old kids can be kidnapped in non hacked vehicles. It's considerably easier to track down a stolen car from 2012 with OnStar than one from 1992 without.

Relavant HN article from today: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19660765. I don't see why DDOS would be the attack of choice for vehicles, but say it were to happen. DDOS attacks happen. They can be defended against (see http://blog.cloudflare.com/65gbps-ddos-no-problem).

For the foreseeable future cars will have manual overrides, and I can't see any attack or series of attacks, no matter how horrifying, resulting in 32,885 deaths over the course of a year.

Certainly there are many scenarios and details to consider, but the typical objections seem to be red herrings, strawmen, or just totally bogus.

> Statewide gridlock due to DDOS.

Modern cars are 100% dependent on computers, yet this doesn't happen. Why would it begin happening in the future? Note that the Google car is designed to be autonomous, it has no dependencies on external systems - there is nothing to DDOS. Yes, you can blind/obstruct it's sensors in a variety of ways, but it's much easier to just aim a laserpointer to a driver's eyes today.

"Traveling abroad for a few weeks and don't know what to do with your car? Set it to taxi mode and profit."

- come back to a completely trashed car that you just paid $50k for.

We have insurance for that. And I imagine people's emotional investment in their cars will be less when they don't drive them themselves.

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