Robot Car Wars: Nissan Jumps Into the Fray With Driverless Car by 2020 | Hacker News Reader

Robot Car Wars: Nissan Jumps Into the Fray With Driverless Car by 2020

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42 pointsolalonde26 comments

I feel sorry for all those poor automotive marketers that can no longer pitch based on how well a car handles, performs and drives. What a car actually is will change once they're completely automated, particularly seating configurations and ride comfort more than anything else.

Also the need to own a car diminishes, replaced with an on-demand go-anywhere taxi service. Don't need a car? Don't need car garages. Don't need a driveway. Don't need traffic lights or signals or pedestrian crossings.

Though there will be the transition period when a glitch launches some poor sod off a bridge. The news will eat it up as how the technology can't be trusted, but will ignore the statistics of casualties from manual vs automated drivers.

The same technology will filter through to everything from the military to the pizza delivery guy - just as it already has for the massive mining trucks driving themselves around Australian mine sites.

The impact of a 100% driverless car on city layouts would be profound. At some point I'm sure the OH&S arm of the governments will ban all manual-driver cars on the road and such modern day classics we be held in showrooms or farmyard sheds, available only on private roads where no insurer will dare cover.

Finally my dream will come true! The car I own will be a purely recreational vehicle, set up for rallying or some such. And I can use one of those automated thingamabobs for boring commuting to and fro.

Now just to wait and see if this can become a reality within my lifetime.

Chris Bangle had the idea that future cars will be fleet based, but people will own customizable interiors. These would deploy into the vehicle. You could also have self-assembling cars - individual electric autonomous units of drivetrain. Two wheels and an axle - you call up as many as you'd like.

While very future looking, I think these address both the ownership desire and the efficiency benefits.

But then you'd have to keep your interior around.

At some point I'm sure the OH&S arm of the governments will ban all manual-driver cars on the road...

I agree. It's interesting to think about how the morality of owning and driving a vehicle will change. When the majority of vehicles are self-driven, driving a car may be considered similar to smoking: those who do it are threatening other people's lives to indulge in a risky personal freedom.

The New Yorker wrote an interesting piece exploring the potential moral changes in greater detail:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/11/googl...

I have a pretty low bar -- I just want something which can drive on I-5 (and a few other interstates) in good weather without me actively controlling the car, such that I could safely use a laptop or tablet. I'd still be a licensed driver and in the seat ready to take over with 3-5 seconds notice.

If I can have that by 2020 in a car like the Model S AWD, I'd be quite happy.

The next big jump in functionality for me would be pretty far -- a car which can operate genuinely autonomously, so I can get out and it doesn't require me to find a parking spot. I imagine doing that in an urban environment will be the last thing a self-driving car is technically or legally able to do.

Something which can self-drive for 30 minutes to drive from SF to PA doesn't get me a huge amount. It'd be nice to be able to use a tablet or something instead of driving, but it would be a lot cheaper/easier to just make a halfway decent audio-only (and maybe trivial HUD and chording keyboard) computer for the car, rather than self-driving tech. that we could have done 15 years ago; self driving probably wasn't feasible until 5-10 years ago.

When driving from SF to Palo Alto you want to talk to a computer or perhaps look at a computer screen through your windshield and type on a one-handed keyboard? You are easy to please. I'd much rather have a wank from the back seat of my self driving car. And then a nap.

What I really want is a transporter which instantly beams me from Palo Alto to Seattle, never having to go north of Redwood City. I was trying to be realistic.

I think the main threat to the advancement of self-driving cars was always going to be big companies without a product using lobbyists and regulatory capture to hamstring those with a product. So an announcement like this from a big player is a very good thing and will accelerate the product plans of the others too.

Absolutely, but I wouldn't be surprised to see the big car manufacturers pursue both avenues.

Fully automated cars will decimate consumer demand for vehicles as people find it much more practical to share vehicles when they don't have to stay in the same place when you are not using them.

I don't think consumers are quite that rational - a lot of people I know, myself included, would be far better of financially by using taxis and hiring a car on the occasions when we need to drive a longer distance.

However, for that extra wee bit of convenience (and no doubt other purely emotional factors) we all buy our own cars....

But that may not end up like that in say China which is forecast to buy much of the world cars.

Yeah, there are several studies showing we tend to over-buy, taking into consideration infrequent or even outright imaginary needs.

Renting a car is inconvenient because you have to go somewhere and pick it up and fill in forms, try to rip you off with insurance and petrol charges.

Taxi's are inconvenient as they can take a long time to arrive and are relatively expensive for the time you are using them. They don't always turn up when you request them because the human drivers have motivations of their own. Added to this is some people don't love interacting with the drivers.

These factors are not a "wee bit" of an inconvenience. They are a pain in the ass.

Driverless cars will solve a lot of these issues. They will arrive more reliably, they will be far cheaper, they don't have a driver that makes you feel uncomfortable if you don't want to talk. They will be ordered with a few clicks of your smart phone.

Sure, some people will want to continue to own a car. But a large percentage will opt for the the convenience of getting "short term rentals", especially in big city's where parking is at a premium. How large a percentage? I guess that is the point of contention. I think it will be larger than you think.

Personally, I can't wait to get rid of my car: http://jamespmcgrath.com/why-i-am-not-buying-an-autonomous-c...

Where I am the taxi service is about as good as it could be (iPhone app or IVR, payment through Chip-N-Pin or account) - similarly I went for a while renting cars and the would come and drop the car off at my office and pick it up again from there.

I still ended up buying my own car.

2 things. 1. You do not represent everybody. 2. Even the best current systems are not representative of what automated cars will bring. What you are talking about are still way more expensive than the automated solution will be (I have to make some assumptions) and organising someone to drop the car off at a specific time is not the same as being able to make the decision 5 minutes before you need it.

At the end of the day, even if I am half right, car production will see a huge drop.

The value I place on an announcement that a certain product, especially a bleeding edge tech one, will be available by 2020, is, well, close to zero. Let's see it when/if it exists. Long term precise predictions are about as valid as long term precise weather forecasting. There are just too many variables at play, too many actors in motion, too many random events that can happen.

2020 isn't that long term any more.

I'm looking forward to the car I buy next year being the very last car I have to drive. For me, driving is stressful micromanagement which I don't want or enjoy doing.

As long as they don't install that automated robot in the taxi from Total Recall, I'm all for this.

I can see how traffic flows would dramatically improve if all cars were automated. Biggest factor for traffic is human driving.

So basically car companies have to decide in electric, driver-less technologies or both to be competitive in the future. Will driver-less tech kill the electric car movement?

I don't think the two technologies are mutually exclusive.

I think they might work rather well together. For example where I live I doubt there will be charging points at street level for a long time (if ever, due to conservation restrictions) - but if a self driving electric car can take itself off somewhere else to get charged at night or during the day then it might make things rather more practical.

Exactly like a big Roomba: do your work, go off to charge itself, come back for more.

A big Roomba with valet service everywhere.

Also; it won't be a vacuum.

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