> My ride was so smooth, the novelty began to wear off, turning a trip to the future into just another journey across town.
This is the only nod in the article to how futuristic and revelatory this innovation. The journalists sound so bored.
I wonder if this is a function of how “around the corner” this tech has felt for so long? Have we somehow become jaded to this innovation before it has even arrived?
Were journalists covering advent of passenger flights dedicating the first half of articles to safety and political concerns before accounting for the experience of a “first in a lifetime” ride?
My flying saucer was only going mach three. At this rate it was going to take hours to get to Singapore. What made it worse was the Starlink was janky and scrolling the influencer feed on my Oculus was only 120 FPS. Turned it off and started window whale spotting. Though they were so common now it got boring pretty fast too.
The realization a self-driving car is not infinitely exciting is how bubbles pop. This particular bubble was formed mostly by Tesla hyping up the coming of their fleet of millions of robotaxis that will turn every other car immediately obsolete, “like owning a horse”, and Teslas will 100x in price, and Tesla will be the most valuable company in the world. And all that, over a product they still can’t ship (and won’t).
The reality of robotaxis is that they’re happening but gradually, not overnight. There will be problems, also benefits. And it’ll be an OK business. And humans will be kicked out of another job only they could do.
In a way it’s not good news. It’s bad news. Because we think not being able to work this or that means we’ll be given more responsibility at a higher level. But we’re still apes barely qualified to drive a car. How does that magically make us capable of higher jobs? It doesn’t. As robots do more, the expectations of humans are also to do more. And most will fail.
Your Luddite take is profoundly wrong, and has been consistently proven wrong at every single technological turn in history. We have more robots than even today, and yet a labor SHORTAGE.
Eliminating the tedious and dangerous task of driving is an enormous benefit to humanity that will save 30,000+ lives a year in the US alone. We will end the misery caused to millions from injury and tragedy, and the billions of dollars lost. We can rethink our cities and move parking to the periphery. New jobs will emerge to replace long distance trucking and taxi driver (two jobs that didn't really exist just 100 years ago). Humanity will benefit.
I, for one, welcome a boring self driving car experience. Unfortunately they tend to be exciting. And in the case of Tesla lethal. In the case of cruise mostly annoying and mildly terrifying.
> I wonder if this is a function of how “around the corner” this tech has felt for so long? Have we somehow become jaded to this innovation before it has even arrived?
The end customer experience is nearly identical to having a quiet driver. A taxi is still a taxi.
Someone having their own self driving car would be a big change. Being able to not own a car because of cheap shared self driving vehicles would be interesting if economical, but does anyone really believe anymore that it will be cheap, given how expensive ride share services are?
> does anyone really believe anymore that it will be cheap, given how expensive ride share services are?
I used to own a car in SF, and I definitely spend way less money every month on Lyft + the occasional weekend Getaround than I did on insurance/gas/repairs/the occasional tow or parking ticket when I had my car (not even counting initial acquisition).
Obviously depends on a lot of factors, but it’s not that clear cut.
The exciting part to me would be the cost. If about 50% or taxi fares to to the driver, add some more expenses for more capital in the car and other measures you're looking at a totally different price point where it becomes more economical for things like commuting. And there would eventually be other efficiencies when cars are more designed as driverless that could theoretically drive the cost even lower.
I felt this way too after my Waymo ride in Chandler, AZ. The ride to my destination was incredible, my family couldn't stop taking pictures and gushing when the car managed to deftly make turns and obey traffic.
The ride back from our destination we were just looking out the window and occasionally glancing at the car's 3D view.
I feel like it was literally just riding in a car. Sure the car had no driver but what I took from this article is that there was nothing significant or interesting about the whole experience, which is exactly what we'd want if the goal is a future where these are common.
I think this is it - the first time riding in an airplane is vastly different than anything you've ever experienced in your life. You're watching the first the ground, and then the clouds, recede below you.
Driving in a robotaxi is (if done well) exactly the same as riding in an Uber, just without the person sitting in front. The crazy part is the how, not the what, and we're pretty good at ignoring the magic that powers many of our otherwise mundane experiences.
Right. In terms of overall end user experience, it wouldn't, and shouldn't, feel different from just getting an ordinary Uber. The real self-driving revolution people have wanted is most/all consumer cars on the roads being self-driving so that you can (in theory) dedicate time to other things and be less likely to get in a collision, but that's far away.
The goal is that it should be boring. When you take an uber normally you really only pay attention to the driver if they're really bad at driving or they're talking to you - so being bored by a self driving car to me is high praise
And if anything I would place a premium on boredom. I am paying, in part, to have my attention back.
The complete opposite for me would be something like Tesla's "self-driving" where I'm effectively an unpaid driving instructor for the equivalent of a drunk teenager that randomly shifts between F1 driver and actively suicidal.
There's a term for this, or at least it's a known phenomena in the AI industry for a while. It's how AI becomes transparent after wide adoption. I'm still amazed at video filters that transform your face in real time, and that is now a common feature in so many apps that most people might not consider AI.
> It's how AI becomes transparent after wide adoption.
I don't like this framing for video filters.
Go back ten years and nobody thought of that kind of visual effect as AI. Then someone made an AI version, and people talked about that for a bit, then they went back to considering the actual effect.
This is very different from situations where a task is inherently thought of as an AI task when people are anticipating it.
We just get use to material objects very easily, like colour TV for example, was amazing I don’t own one and would prefer to read a book or surf the net.
If we had flying cars tomorrow morning it would be a wonderful novelty but we’d get bored with them too.
As an SF resident, I’m not at all excited about riding in them as they seem to drive annoyingly, especially right turns. They are slow and position weirdly for turns.
I have contemplated that if a person from 1995 woke up from a coma and saw one they would freak out and then think they are living in sci fi future.
But nope, the cars are mundane and boring. It’s just as google intended in order to be unthreatening. But it also makes them boring so that was a double edged sword
My first driverless ride in a Cruise vehicle was like "oh this is neat, no driver!" and then I put on my seat belt and it was immediately just another ride in a car, no big deal. Not even a lingering thought in the back of my mind.
They drive just like a human would 99% of the time.
Getting driven in a self driving car is not so much different from getting driven in a driver driven car. You get in, you check your email, you get out across town, etc. This is the same in both.
It's not really comparable to flying in the air to a different part of the world for the first time...
My four year old and I pass by several every day and always point out the magic of a driverless car. We look inside at red lights and think about how it might work.
I’m also cautious, worried it might run me over. I treat them like I might a dog… cute but could bite me or him.
Reminds me that SpaceX has now landed rocket boosters successfully over 200 times. Landing just a single rocket was huge news a few years ago.
The US is launching things into space about 20 times as frequently compared to 10 years ago [1]. Now, most rocket launches don't make mainstream news—I only keep up with things by subscribing to a niche newsletter [2].
It's true for most people, but you also have fans who never get bored --and in the case of rockets to the moon would witness every launch, if they could --just as some people love watching planes take off and land.
I think the indifference is a function of just how marginal the utility is.
Before self-driving cars, it's either: (1) I'm getting chauffeured around (2) I'm doing something tedious and boring until I arrive at my destination.
With self-driving cars: (1) I'm getting chauffeured around (2) I'm doing something tedious and boring or something entertaining until I arrive at my destination.
Like who cares how novel and futuristic the implementation is? The utility is nearly the same.
The alternative to early aviation was taking 2-20 times longer to reaching your destination, with the vast majority of the risk borne by the passengers. The alternative to self-driving is paying a guy less than minimum wage to take you in the same amount of time. And the risks are mostly on pedestrians and first responders.
Am I the only one finding it hard to be excited for this? It seems like automated taxis:
0. Encourage the use of cars in cities rather than public transit & walkability.
1. Centralize wealth by replacing payments to many drivers with payments to one large company.
2. Allow for further surveillance of individuates. It seems likely that Google will eventually create ad inventory by adding screens to the cars and incorporate travel history into peoples marketing profiles.
I'm a big urbanist (that also worked on AVs for a couple years), haven't owned a car for almost all of my adult life, and view it as a step in the right direction for a few reasons.
1 - I think the impact of parking is actually more insidious and detrimental than roads by themselves. AVs will have high utilization of a much smaller pool of vehicles and remove the need for the huge parking lots we currently have. The land-use issues from parking are perhaps the largest impediment (together with the requirements/zoning) to the density which would allow transit to outcompete private cars.
2 - The centralization of wealth is one thing, but the real economies of fewer, newer vehicles will be a boon for almost everyone. The cost of the automobile operation is about 1/4 of the average uber fare. That is a lot of room for price compression. Perhaps more will be going to a large corporation, but there will be a huge consumer surplus as well.
3 - The reduction in the size of the car fleet will likely reduce the lobbying power of the automobile industry, which may in turn lead to changes to the urban environment(bike lanes, transit expansions) which will likely shift mode share away from cars.
I also believe they will increase congestion in cities since when occupants switch from drivers to riders, they are less affected by the costs of road congestion (congested roads may mean riders get to their destinations slower, but because they are no longer driving, people may make extra trips where previously they would say "I don't want to make that trip now because driving during rush hour is too stressful").
But the public will face negative externalities of greater congestion (noise, pollution, slower travel times for busses & walking).
Without congestion pricing and right of ways for bikes, walking, and transit, automated taxis seem like a way to double down on a space inefficient mode of travel.
Hear hear. Anything that replaces humans at the wheel is a fantastic thing in my book. Road traffic injuries kill close to 1.5 million people every year. The sooner we can have robocars and robobikes replace all driving, the better. I don't care how much privacy that erodes in the short term.
I can't think of a single technology other than relational databases that Hacker News actually likes. Nothing invented after 2000 certainly. Cell phones give everyone depression, LLMs are just stochastic parrots, crypto is just a scam, Uber is just an expensive unregulated taxi, AirBnb is just an expensive unregulated hotel, self driving cars are just going to lead to centralization of wealth and congestion, every new browser feature is just another way for websites to fingerprint you, discord isn't an improvement over IRC and makes everything ungooglable, also google sucks now, also they kill every product 6 months after launch, fusion is 20 years away just like it was 20 years ago, electron makes everything slow because devs these days are too lazy to write native apps, Github is just Microsoft applying EEE to open source, WSL is just Microsoft applying EEE to Linux. I don't see why everything needs to be so terrible all the time.
0. Car use isn't actually bad, it not using cars that gobbles up space. Half of the car street space is wasted on cars that aren't in use - known as "parking."
1. Agree. But Taxi drivers are a relict of the past already. You can drive your own car and need no navigation skills. It's called Uber and it sucks hard already. Nothing much of value lost here (most of the economic value is captured by Uber anyway.)
Especially [1]. So many millions of American jobs are driving. Rideshare drivers, sure, but taxi drivers, couriers, delivery drivers, truckers, etc. The economic incentive to switch to driverless tech will be really strong, more than white collar AI automation, I think. So... what's the plan? That these drivers will all live in a hellscape where robot cars patrol their streets, surveilling them as they struggle against poverty?
On point #1: These large companies are publicly traded on the stock market and you are welcome to profit alongside them as they grow. I earned more from amazon stock than I've spent on amazon. I earned more from Tesla stock than it costs to buy a new Tesla.
A concept I look forward to is not just a driverless car, but driverless "various size vehicles" from a 1-person car to a 100-person bus. In this future we could get the advantages of public transport and car-free living into rural and suburban areas, while in the city these systems could adjust and use AI to find optimal routes that are a lot less slower than current buses (or even trains that require 2 or 3 connections). All the while using electric and reducing energy per passenger and knocking over fewer cyclists :-).
You can do all this now, you just need a driver. Why is that the part that needs to be eliminated before you can do all these things? All it is, is route planning based on demand. Uber, etc should be able to do all this now. Isn't that what Uber Pool was supposed to deliver? Nobody uses that shit for anything but a commute. Nobody wants to sit in a car with other random-ass people stopping 30 times to pick them up. That's half the reason people who drive don't take transit now.
What is it about having no driver that suddenly makes cars green, free up space on the road, etc?
Why would someone who owns a car now, want to wait around for a driverless taxi to pick them up? They can go into their driveway and be driven to their destination right away in their own personal driverless car. And if the car is gonna park itself, that means it's driving around, taking up more space on the road just looking for a parking spot.
I mean think about it. If you can work for an hour while your car drives you to the office, and you don't have to stress or worry about the traffic, why would you even bother with anything else?
For me it's more to possibility to have the ideal car for each situation. Going to the dentist, order a one person car, pick up the kid, order a two person car or order a truck if I need to pick up something large. Utilizing smaller vehicles when ever possible will use less energi.
Some one like me who lives in a small village could also opt to share a car with someone else if me and my partner wants go to the city for night out. A few of my coworkers live close to me, I wouldn't mind sharing a car with them if we happen to leave the office at the same time.
There's small changes that will eventually yield pretty big results. Some German road scientists have a study that show that it's only a few percent difference in the number of cars on the road that leads to traffic jams for instance. Eliminate 5 - 10% or cars and traffic jams goes away, for the most part.
There are cities on earth where taxis are ubiquitous and relatively affordable (even to locals making local wages). So nothing really changes there when the driver is eliminated (except maybe better traffic flows). But driverless might make ubiquitous taxis affordable in developed countries, it is a valid way of living. When I lived in Beijing, I used to commute to and from work by taxi, and used it for lots of other trips around town as well, and ya, not stressing about traffic was a bonus (but I changed my schedule so I would miss Beijing’s hellish rush hour).
Imagine being a human driver who has to constantly change routes based on what the computer tells you, switch vehicles based on demand, and not make any mistakes. That sounds exhausting. You're also occupying a seat which could be used by a passenger.
A centrally-directed autonomous fleet of vehicles would be genuinely revolutionary for public transit, replacing everything from taxis to buses with a beautifully efficient system. I can't imagine not being excited by that.
No-driver will make it more economical eventually because:
1. There is no hourly wage to pay a driver.
2. The car can be utilized 24/7 (or most likely 16/7 based on demand, but much better than 8/5 of a typical shift driver).
> What is it about having no driver that suddenly makes cars green, free up space on the road, etc?
A confluence of things: electric cars, the cheaper rides, the critical mass of users so that algorithms can find ways for people to share.
Remember if I am using a bus now, and this is offering me a 30 minute journey but (oof!) sharing with other people instead of 1 hour on a bus, this is a good switch.
> Why would someone who owns a car now, want to wait around for a driverless taxi to pick them up?
The reason is posted to you several times each year: "Car service" "Registration Fee" "Compulsory Check" "Your Toll Invoice" "Third Party Insurance" "Comprehensive Insurance" "Speeding Ticket" "Parking Ticket" and so on. And that assumes you don't crash (on in my case, hit/run done on your parked car) and have to deal with that hell.
Selling your car, getting $X,000 and being free of all that is a relief.
> If you can work for an hour while your car drives you to the office, and you don't have to stress or worry about the traffic, why would you even bother with anything else?
Depends. Replace car with helicopter and the same applies. Not everyone wants to pay for a helicopter. Not everyone will want to pay for their own car when you can get it on demand. Say it costs $25 a day to own your own car and be taken, $10 a day for your own uber-like and $5 a day if you share. A lot of people will go for the savings. Even more so if cities add single-person taxes on cars to ease congestion.
My cities public transit system is currently limited by the number of drivers they can find. The pay is quite good, they just can't sign people up. This has lead to extreme inconsistencies where if a driver calls in sick a bus or train just won't show up for 30 minutes instead of the usual 10. Driverless busses allow for the system to greatly expand the number of routes and increase consistency.
I just want a driverless RV that will drive me between all the National Parks in the US while I work remotely from the back via a Starlink dish mounted to the roof.
Just to moderate the dream slightly, if you're moving around at a solid pace and/or driving enough that you get actual work done, the fuel costs add up. I've had trips in RV/bus-scale vehicles have portions that work out at $100-250/day in gas. So, ideally you want an electric vehicle.
And to be honest, the actual driving is often a predictable and easy part of the equation. Finding camping/accommodation options near national parks, and then dealing with the hordes is a hassle that remains. If you can work on the road, in theory you're less rushed.
Travel with a partner and then at least one of you can work while the other drives.
The solution to homelessness too! No need to find a parking spot. Just drive all night. Could it drive very slowly and charge the batteries using solar? Hmmm
What a dream that would be for myself as well. Electric too so I can charge it up at night and then essentially get free travel during the day even if it only 100-300 miles a day.
The technology is pretty amazing, but does anyone else feel like we (the public) got duped?
What I wanted was for my own car to drive itself so I could relax and make better use of car time. I also wanted some new novel ways of interacting with cars to make them feel more like public transit that would be enabled by driverless technology.
What we got was ... SciFi Uber. We are not going to be allowed to own the cars, and hiring them for trips will not be any cheaper or easier than Uber. And most will be owned by big companies with motives besides transportation.
The driverless future was so exciting in 2013. Now it's just ... there.
Different companies have different visions, but "driverless car that you own" is a goal some have. For example, if you buy a Mercedes with DrivePilot then in approved locations (including Germany, California [1], and Nevada [2]) you can legally and safely read, watch a video, or play a game while in the driver's seat. It's only Level 3, and can only do highways under 40mph (traffic jams), but it shows that this is still an active direction.
I don't feel like the tech is there yet to start selling the cars to consumers. Waymo only recently got permission to start doing rides for money right? And in the early stages, scifi Uber makes way more sense than trying to sell the cars directly.
> hiring them for trips will not be any cheaper or easier than Uber
Why wouldn't they be? When the price of a business's inputs goes down, the profit-maximizing thing for them do is lower the price of their outputs.
There seems to be a growing, invisible force working against us, nudging us toward owning less and less and renting more and more. Don't own and maintain your own car! Pay me every time you need a ride somewhere! Don't own your own single family home! Move to the city and rent an apartment from me! Don't own your own computer! Do everything in "the Cloud" and pay me every month for it! Don't own your own media! Pay me monthly to stream it! It's not the future we were all looking forward to.
I'm not sure there's a particular virtue in owning vs. renting or vice versa. It's all situational. I'm certainly going to own my car at home (which I also own). But if I take an even fairly lengthy trip it probably doesn't make sense to buy those things at my destination (though it may make sense to have a more extended arrangement than a typical night-by-night one).
If I'm going to watch a movie once it's not clear why I have to own it.
I think some people make ownership vs. rental much more of a value-laden decision than it needs to be.
Lol this is straight up conspiracy theory stuff. Yea it’s the reptilians who created streaming services instead of letting us all continue owning our VCR tapes like the goddamn red blooded Americans we were meant to be.
It’s the reptilians who have made people want to live above a grocery store and bike 15 minutes to work instead of driving their Ford F-150 two hours every day from their McMansion and back, and 45 minutes to Wal-Mart.
On the other side of that, "hiring an Uber" even several times a month to do a longer trip that you can't manage in any other way is much cheaper than any ownership situation for the same cars. Heck, you almost certainly save in recovered space from not owning the car.
Going down the path, though, as someone that has extensively used public transit in every US city I've lived in for my adult life, I'm curious how you envision "more like public transit" looking? I get that you wanted better use of "car time", but I also have to confess I don't really know what that means. Even public transit is mostly a place for you to maybe read a book. If you are super hyper and have a long commute, you can consider some programming/drawing/writing. Most anything else, though, will be pretty difficult to pull off in a highly confined space.
This is why Tesla was valued beyond the top 10 car companies combined - the idea was to kill the idea of people just buying their cars and make it an overpriced subscription
It’s not actually here yet so economies haven’t actually been employed. It’s still a tech beta, though I’m not sure our Teslas will ever really do the thing.
It’s a good thing to test as a reporter. There are too many people for at least one person not to do something dumb, or fall onto while doing something dumb, so it’s good to know nothing would happen.
Disagreed. They were clearly told not to do that and didn't follow their directions. It sounds like a potential safety hazard to me.
They could just have reported what you said - they were told not to touch the wheel, and are concerned that in reality this could be a problem because there are too many people for at least one person not to do something dumb, or fall onto while doing something dumb etc.
Readit News
This is the only nod in the article to how futuristic and revelatory this innovation. The journalists sound so bored.
I wonder if this is a function of how “around the corner” this tech has felt for so long? Have we somehow become jaded to this innovation before it has even arrived?
Were journalists covering advent of passenger flights dedicating the first half of articles to safety and political concerns before accounting for the experience of a “first in a lifetime” ride?
The reality of robotaxis is that they’re happening but gradually, not overnight. There will be problems, also benefits. And it’ll be an OK business. And humans will be kicked out of another job only they could do.
In a way it’s not good news. It’s bad news. Because we think not being able to work this or that means we’ll be given more responsibility at a higher level. But we’re still apes barely qualified to drive a car. How does that magically make us capable of higher jobs? It doesn’t. As robots do more, the expectations of humans are also to do more. And most will fail.
Eliminating the tedious and dangerous task of driving is an enormous benefit to humanity that will save 30,000+ lives a year in the US alone. We will end the misery caused to millions from injury and tragedy, and the billions of dollars lost. We can rethink our cities and move parking to the periphery. New jobs will emerge to replace long distance trucking and taxi driver (two jobs that didn't really exist just 100 years ago). Humanity will benefit.
Just not yet of highly skilled labor.
So hn experience doesn't count if you want to measure the relevance or impact of this.
The end customer experience is nearly identical to having a quiet driver. A taxi is still a taxi.
Someone having their own self driving car would be a big change. Being able to not own a car because of cheap shared self driving vehicles would be interesting if economical, but does anyone really believe anymore that it will be cheap, given how expensive ride share services are?
I used to own a car in SF, and I definitely spend way less money every month on Lyft + the occasional weekend Getaround than I did on insurance/gas/repairs/the occasional tow or parking ticket when I had my car (not even counting initial acquisition).
Obviously depends on a lot of factors, but it’s not that clear cut.
The biggest expense has to be the drivers time right?
Deleted Comment
The ride back from our destination we were just looking out the window and occasionally glancing at the car's 3D view.
Driving in a robotaxi is (if done well) exactly the same as riding in an Uber, just without the person sitting in front. The crazy part is the how, not the what, and we're pretty good at ignoring the magic that powers many of our otherwise mundane experiences.
The complete opposite for me would be something like Tesla's "self-driving" where I'm effectively an unpaid driving instructor for the equivalent of a drunk teenager that randomly shifts between F1 driver and actively suicidal.
The second trip seemed humdrum.
I've taken over 100 trips now and it is no more exciting than riding the bus
I don't like this framing for video filters.
Go back ten years and nobody thought of that kind of visual effect as AI. Then someone made an AI version, and people talked about that for a bit, then they went back to considering the actual effect.
This is very different from situations where a task is inherently thought of as an AI task when people are anticipating it.
If we had flying cars tomorrow morning it would be a wonderful novelty but we’d get bored with them too.
I have contemplated that if a person from 1995 woke up from a coma and saw one they would freak out and then think they are living in sci fi future.
But nope, the cars are mundane and boring. It’s just as google intended in order to be unthreatening. But it also makes them boring so that was a double edged sword
http://web.archive.org/web/20040929041451/http://www.shrovet...
They drive just like a human would 99% of the time.
It's not really comparable to flying in the air to a different part of the world for the first time...
I’m also cautious, worried it might run me over. I treat them like I might a dog… cute but could bite me or him.
I don’t think you need a technology to be fully functional for people to tire of it. It just has to be in the news for enough years.
The US is launching things into space about 20 times as frequently compared to 10 years ago [1]. Now, most rocket launches don't make mainstream news—I only keep up with things by subscribing to a niche newsletter [2].
[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/yearly-number-of-objects-...
[2] https://orbitalindex.com
Before self-driving cars, it's either: (1) I'm getting chauffeured around (2) I'm doing something tedious and boring until I arrive at my destination.
With self-driving cars: (1) I'm getting chauffeured around (2) I'm doing something tedious and boring or something entertaining until I arrive at my destination.
Like who cares how novel and futuristic the implementation is? The utility is nearly the same.
0. Encourage the use of cars in cities rather than public transit & walkability.
1. Centralize wealth by replacing payments to many drivers with payments to one large company.
2. Allow for further surveillance of individuates. It seems likely that Google will eventually create ad inventory by adding screens to the cars and incorporate travel history into peoples marketing profiles.
1 - I think the impact of parking is actually more insidious and detrimental than roads by themselves. AVs will have high utilization of a much smaller pool of vehicles and remove the need for the huge parking lots we currently have. The land-use issues from parking are perhaps the largest impediment (together with the requirements/zoning) to the density which would allow transit to outcompete private cars.
2 - The centralization of wealth is one thing, but the real economies of fewer, newer vehicles will be a boon for almost everyone. The cost of the automobile operation is about 1/4 of the average uber fare. That is a lot of room for price compression. Perhaps more will be going to a large corporation, but there will be a huge consumer surplus as well.
3 - The reduction in the size of the car fleet will likely reduce the lobbying power of the automobile industry, which may in turn lead to changes to the urban environment(bike lanes, transit expansions) which will likely shift mode share away from cars.
But the public will face negative externalities of greater congestion (noise, pollution, slower travel times for busses & walking).
Without congestion pricing and right of ways for bikes, walking, and transit, automated taxis seem like a way to double down on a space inefficient mode of travel.
Headline: Self-driving cars are actually a thing!
"Yeah so here's why that's not very exciting and actually bad."
1. Agree. But Taxi drivers are a relict of the past already. You can drive your own car and need no navigation skills. It's called Uber and it sucks hard already. Nothing much of value lost here (most of the economic value is captured by Uber anyway.)
You can do all this now, you just need a driver. Why is that the part that needs to be eliminated before you can do all these things? All it is, is route planning based on demand. Uber, etc should be able to do all this now. Isn't that what Uber Pool was supposed to deliver? Nobody uses that shit for anything but a commute. Nobody wants to sit in a car with other random-ass people stopping 30 times to pick them up. That's half the reason people who drive don't take transit now.
What is it about having no driver that suddenly makes cars green, free up space on the road, etc?
Why would someone who owns a car now, want to wait around for a driverless taxi to pick them up? They can go into their driveway and be driven to their destination right away in their own personal driverless car. And if the car is gonna park itself, that means it's driving around, taking up more space on the road just looking for a parking spot.
I mean think about it. If you can work for an hour while your car drives you to the office, and you don't have to stress or worry about the traffic, why would you even bother with anything else?
Some one like me who lives in a small village could also opt to share a car with someone else if me and my partner wants go to the city for night out. A few of my coworkers live close to me, I wouldn't mind sharing a car with them if we happen to leave the office at the same time.
There's small changes that will eventually yield pretty big results. Some German road scientists have a study that show that it's only a few percent difference in the number of cars on the road that leads to traffic jams for instance. Eliminate 5 - 10% or cars and traffic jams goes away, for the most part.
A centrally-directed autonomous fleet of vehicles would be genuinely revolutionary for public transit, replacing everything from taxis to buses with a beautifully efficient system. I can't imagine not being excited by that.
No-driver will make it more economical eventually because:
1. There is no hourly wage to pay a driver.
2. The car can be utilized 24/7 (or most likely 16/7 based on demand, but much better than 8/5 of a typical shift driver).
> What is it about having no driver that suddenly makes cars green, free up space on the road, etc?
A confluence of things: electric cars, the cheaper rides, the critical mass of users so that algorithms can find ways for people to share.
Remember if I am using a bus now, and this is offering me a 30 minute journey but (oof!) sharing with other people instead of 1 hour on a bus, this is a good switch.
> Why would someone who owns a car now, want to wait around for a driverless taxi to pick them up?
The reason is posted to you several times each year: "Car service" "Registration Fee" "Compulsory Check" "Your Toll Invoice" "Third Party Insurance" "Comprehensive Insurance" "Speeding Ticket" "Parking Ticket" and so on. And that assumes you don't crash (on in my case, hit/run done on your parked car) and have to deal with that hell.
Selling your car, getting $X,000 and being free of all that is a relief.
> If you can work for an hour while your car drives you to the office, and you don't have to stress or worry about the traffic, why would you even bother with anything else?
Depends. Replace car with helicopter and the same applies. Not everyone wants to pay for a helicopter. Not everyone will want to pay for their own car when you can get it on demand. Say it costs $25 a day to own your own car and be taken, $10 a day for your own uber-like and $5 a day if you share. A lot of people will go for the savings. Even more so if cities add single-person taxes on cars to ease congestion.
And to be honest, the actual driving is often a predictable and easy part of the equation. Finding camping/accommodation options near national parks, and then dealing with the hordes is a hassle that remains. If you can work on the road, in theory you're less rushed.
Travel with a partner and then at least one of you can work while the other drives.
What I wanted was for my own car to drive itself so I could relax and make better use of car time. I also wanted some new novel ways of interacting with cars to make them feel more like public transit that would be enabled by driverless technology.
What we got was ... SciFi Uber. We are not going to be allowed to own the cars, and hiring them for trips will not be any cheaper or easier than Uber. And most will be owned by big companies with motives besides transportation.
The driverless future was so exciting in 2013. Now it's just ... there.
[1] https://media.mbusa.com/releases/release-1d2a8750850333f086a...
[2] https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/27/23572942/mercedes-drive-p...
> hiring them for trips will not be any cheaper or easier than Uber
Why wouldn't they be? When the price of a business's inputs goes down, the profit-maximizing thing for them do is lower the price of their outputs.
If I'm going to watch a movie once it's not clear why I have to own it.
I think some people make ownership vs. rental much more of a value-laden decision than it needs to be.
It’s the reptilians who have made people want to live above a grocery store and bike 15 minutes to work instead of driving their Ford F-150 two hours every day from their McMansion and back, and 45 minutes to Wal-Mart.
They display their methods all over the place. WEF, Klaus and Hariri are demons.
Going down the path, though, as someone that has extensively used public transit in every US city I've lived in for my adult life, I'm curious how you envision "more like public transit" looking? I get that you wanted better use of "car time", but I also have to confess I don't really know what that means. Even public transit is mostly a place for you to maybe read a book. If you are super hyper and have a long commute, you can consider some programming/drawing/writing. Most anything else, though, will be pretty difficult to pull off in a highly confined space.
I had ZIPCAR and one month I took one on a trip and on several other excursions - and the bill for ZIPCAR that month was $850.
for like minimal time...
NO WAY was that "an affordable option"
https://media.mbusa.com/releases/release-1d2a8750850333f086a...
You'll own nothing and be happy ;)
Everything will be a subscription/lease/rental, your medias, your car, your house, your land, &c.
There are several videos where Tesla FSD beats cruise and Waymo in getting to random destinations, with no interventions.
Surprised they admit to this, considering earlier in the article they mention being instructed not to touch the wheel.
They could just have reported what you said - they were told not to touch the wheel, and are concerned that in reality this could be a problem because there are too many people for at least one person not to do something dumb, or fall onto while doing something dumb etc.
- music in your house
- new clothes that fit you at least sort-of-well
- ice in your kitchen
- travel
- communication at speed and over large distances
- access to a lots of literature
- and now, chauffeur-driven cars