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Comment by mmanfrin | Hacker News Reader

I am really excited for the possible future of self-driving electric taxis. All the pieces kind of fit together: you can use an app to dispatch and gauge number of fleet vehicles to put out (Google just bought a huge stake in Uber), self-driving cabs can return themselves for a recharge when low on batter and another vehicle can replace it instantly, the amount of cars on the road can scale with demand fluidly. There'd be no need for a car ever in a metro area.

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Shhh, if the auto industry, public transit industry, and car rental industry hear you, they might band together and try to stop it from happening.

Someone still has to build them. And buy them.

Like airlines. Few own a private plane, but airlines front the capital and operations, just like mobility companies of tomorrow will be the bulk of self-driving car purchasers.

Yes, but far, far fewer people. Most car hours are currently spent sitting in driveways and parking lots.

They'll have to fight the insurance companies.

Insurance companies will probably love to be collecting rent on every vehicle while having to cover 90% less accidents.

Actually I think this will kill insurance companies too. They will see their business fall inline with the cost of accidents.

Someone will have to sell insurance to car manufacturers for the remaining 10 percent of accidents.

I don't think that's necessarily true - insurance companies make money out of insuring far safer modes of transport than driving (like air travel). The liability merely shifts from the driver to the software developer. Whoever is providing the self-driving cars will need to have large amounts of indemnity insurance to cover potential losses.

The second part might be true, but human-driven cars are going to be on the road for a very long time. As long as they are here, accidents will happen, and insurance companies will find a way to charge you for it. Geico et al will never stop existing, so long as there is the possibility of human error.

People will still want and demand car insurance. Stuff still happens, and I want my car and injuries paid for. So they'll still be around. It may be a smaller industry, but it won't kill them.

> People will still want car insurance.

I wasn't aware they wanted it now. People buy it because they are legally obliged to.

I don't keep enough cash to go out and replace my daily driver, in kind, today. Even if it was someone else's fault and they're eventually required to remunerate me for the loss, that can take months.

People don't like the cost, but they like the benefits when they need it.

AppleCare still sells well without a legal obligation. People tend to be risk averse, and prefer to pay a little bit now to avoid paying a lot later.

Until a smart insurance company comes around and wins away the other insurance companies' customers because the risk is 90% less and they can lower premiums substantially and still make a profit.

There would never be a need for a car in the suburbs. If i had an app that would just bring me a car and be ready at an exact time right in front of my house, bring me to a store and leave, and when twenty minutes before I'm done shopping I order another taxi to be ready for me outside the store, not need to go to the DMV or any auto shop, that would be a huge win for the suburbs.

Err. here in Australia thats what a taxi is now.

When Taxi adoption rate is high, one minute should be enough. Available cars are everywhere.

Being driverless doesn't mean this kind of thing is necessarily going to be economically viable. You need density to optimize taxi operation and keep it affordable. There would need to be a lot of taxis driving themselves around for them to be so readily available in this kind of setting, and for that you need widespread adoption.

I'm in New Jersey which is pretty dense and already has a lot of human-driven taxi companies. It definitely might not work in a sparsely populated suburb.

isn't the human factor the largest cost among transportation service?

if 1/2 of your fare went to the driver normally, now it can go to having more cars available.

All I'm saying is the economics might work

Almost every non-rural area is going to be able to support the density required. I mean, drive through any suburb and count the number of unoccupied cars.

Honestly, the biggest issue (assuming the technology is flawless) is going to be keeping them clean and maintained because of the very high usage rates.

I think tech people are overestimating how much people enjoy having their own car, as well as driving it. We see everything as something to be optimized, and rightly see driving as a huge waste of time and energy. But, I'd venture to say the majority won't give up their own cars in favor of driverless taxis. Just think about how many people underutilize mass transit available to them in favor of driving their own car.

I think it's just a matter of perspective and whether they are used to the tech, but I can see this technology being deployed in 10-20 years time, by that time older people that don't trust tech will still not drive a car or use a computer, those that wants to own a car would still owns a car, but I bet the majority will hop on this new revenue of personal, car sharing system.

Also, think of the impact in congested and developing countries: in Beijing, there is nowhere else to build roads, yet the number of cars keeps increasing. Going all self-driving in the entire city would increase road bandwidth substantially. Not to mention the problem of people flaunting traffic rules and etiquette and causing backups as a result.

This is going to be much bigger for the rest of the world than in the roads-a-plenty USA.

taxis won't need drivers to go back, so you could probably take a taxi from manhattan to like the middle of connecticut, which would be awesome.

Also, you could take a train and a self drive taxi would efficiently handle getting you to and from the train station. This is a huge enabler for public transit that can focus on more efficient high capacity routes.

Go all the way! Tune the traffic signals preferentially for these electric taxis. Configure them to pick up multiple fares going the same direction. To use train tracks for long distance.

They will be a ton cheaper too. Lower fuel costs, maintenance costs, and labor costs. The three most expensive costs associated with operating a taxi will be lowered significantly.

By governments will probably still tax Taxi ownership just like they do now, and just like for the airline industry you'll end up with taxes doubling the price of your trip. I don't believe in a cheap future of transportation as long as government has a say in it...

Ah, because like...roads are free, just like airports and air traffic control systems.

Pesky governments building infrastructure. In a libercrazian future, the free market would make such trivialities free!

Yeah, like, because, airports need to see their taxes quadruple in 10 years, with no improvement whatsoever in their infrastructures ? Isn't that very obvious to you that they are just milking the cow and not just paying back for the operational costs ? Same for motorways.

If you are American, your cost of flying and driving is already quite low compared to the rest of the world, what's being "milked?" Since you used motorways and might be from the UK, I don't know what your situation is. Transportation infrastructure is one of those monopolies that the government is the best choice to take care of.

> Transportation infrastructure is one of those monopolies that the government is the best choice to take care of.

There are many countries around the world where the government has no money to take care of the infrastructure and you need private ventures to step in.

And the infrastructure in those countries is quite crappy, relationship?

relationship > You can't expect governments to do everything. And these countries used to be in authoritarian regimes, so don't blame the private sector, it didn't exist there until recently.

I agree, so we can't make any inferences about them at this point. The problem with the libertarian hypothesis is that it lacks any reasonable examples to support it. There are however plenty of examples of governments that do work pretty well; even the USA is not as dysfunctional as many would like to believe.

> even the USA is not as dysfunctional as many would like to believe.

Well, when you have 15 trillions of unpaid debt behind your door, I can hardly call that functional. If it were any private business they would have gone bankrupt 50 years ago. If you cut the money supply, the government stops in the hour.

You have no idea what it means for the USA to be a debtor of last resort and support the world's most popular reserve currency. Only in a libercrazian world, which is necessarily stuck in the stone age, would the USA go "bankrupt." But this is not the forum to discuss this, I suggest you hang out in reddit's /r/economics rather than /r/libertarian for a more realistic discussion about the American and world economies.

Stop pretending you have the universal truth in the matter. Go and read Hayek for a change instead of Reddit, you will get a whiff of fresh air. Explain me who's going to pay the massive debt when China and others refuse to play the role of creditor in the future. And let's not pretend it's never going to happen.

China buys treasuries because its the only think they can do with their forex without destroying their economy; they basically lend us money at a negative interest rate after inflation is considered, and are very happy to do it. If we stopped borrowing money, that would be a big problem as we are a debtor of last resort.

I would love to argue more, but my Beijing to Detroit flight is boarding.

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