5 ms·

It's a ridiculous timeframe if you consider that there are no driverless cars for sale right now. Even if Tesla or Ford or any other vendor started selling them

It's a ridiculous timeframe if you consider that there are no driverless cars for sale right now. Even if Tesla or Ford or any other vendor started selling them tomorrow, the driverless cars would be too expensive and the factories could hardly pump out enough of them to put every Uber driver out of a job in just 5 years. I'm looking forward to being able to order a driverless car from my phone, but in just 5 years, these cars might still be scarce, illegal in most places and they might suffer from limitations in their driving ability that prove problematic.

OmarIsmail 11y ago
You're thinking about it wrong. No consumer is going to buy a driverless car. Instead you'll call an Uber or GoogleTaxi and there won't be a human behind the wheel. Just like Musk said, owning s car is going to become like owning a horse. People do it as a hobby but not as a necessity.
- adamwong246 11y ago
  I agree. We'll buy into car share networks. There will be super primo services where you can ride in a limo, business class networks that allow you to ride in privacy and maybe even economy class networks where busses and vans carpool like uber's new hop feature. Crucially, this allows the number of overall cars to slashed. 1 auto-auto can do the work of 10 non-auto-autos, and the cost will be spread out among subscribers and expensive electric cars will finally be cheap enough for everyone.
nostrademons 11y ago
Driverless cars don't have to be custom-built: you can add a kit to an existing car that contains a Linux box, LIDAR, cameras, and appropriate machinery to drive the car's controls. Most of the existing Google prototypes have been Priuses or Lexuses with the kit. IIRC, all the components are pretty inexpensive; by far the biggest cost is the LIDAR, but that's because they're not produced in volume and so you have to pay custom-built prices.

OmarIsmail 11y ago

You're thinking about it wrong. No consumer is going to buy a driverless car. Instead you'll call an Uber or GoogleTaxi and there won't be a human behind the wheel. Just like Musk said, owning s car is going to become like owning a horse. People do it as a hobby but not as a necessity.

adamwong246 11y ago
I agree. We'll buy into car share networks. There will be super primo services where you can ride in a limo, business class networks that allow you to ride in privacy and maybe even economy class networks where busses and vans carpool like uber's new hop feature. Crucially, this allows the number of overall cars to slashed. 1 auto-auto can do the work of 10 non-auto-autos, and the cost will be spread out among subscribers and expensive electric cars will finally be cheap enough for everyone.

nostrademons 11y ago

Driverless cars don't have to be custom-built: you can add a kit to an existing car that contains a Linux box, LIDAR, cameras, and appropriate machinery to drive the car's controls. Most of the existing Google prototypes have been Priuses or Lexuses with the kit. IIRC, all the components are pretty inexpensive; by far the biggest cost is the LIDAR, but that's because they're not produced in volume and so you have to pay custom-built prices.