4 ms·

A good read, but it's another tech/car article that completely fails to take into account two huge things: Car Culture and things that aren't cities. On car cu

A good read, but it's another tech/car article that completely fails to take into account two huge things: Car Culture and things that aren't cities. On car culture: There is still an extremely large community of people in the U.S. (and I have no reason to believe this is restricted to the U.S) who buy cars NOT based on efficiency and price, we buy what we like. This is a huge factor that I've heard no technical pundit address yet. Excluding the Tesla which is a masterpiece, almost every other electric car is extremely dull. Lackluster styling, meh on performance, and focuses on gadgets to make the sale. To a "car guy," an electric car is right there with a Honda Accord or a Toyota Camry; it's mashed potatoes. It's a doughnut with no filling. Yeah, it will do the job and it will do it well, but you don't have any fun with it. When I'm going to out to spend a years salary or so on transportation I want something I'm going to enjoy driving. On the other thing, I have yet to see an even semi-autonomous car that can handle NOT being in a city. Intermittent Internet access, gravel/dirt roads, long stretches of unmarked highway, etc. I can't picture one of Google's cars making it's way up the driveway to my house, I have a feeling it would just stop at the edge of the driveway (dirt) and go "Welp, my tiny 8 inch tires can't handle an obstacle of that magnitude, get out and walk." I realize these are the concerns of a small market but when people throw around terms like "the car of the future" I feel the need to point out that it's not the future for everyone, and in fact might be the future for a very small group of people while everyone else keeps doing what they're doing.

exelius 11y ago
> Car Culture Well, "car culture" was invented to sell economy cars - nobody gets excited over mashed potatoes, so they had to invent something sexier. I don't think anyone legitimately believes that the auto industry is going to keel over and disappear - autonomous cars will have a very, very long adoption period. But over that period, I expect the "car guy" segment of the market (sports cars, etc) to become more of the niche hobby of "human-controlled car racing". It's not like horses totally disappeared after the invention of the automobile; their purpose just became much more heavily weighted towards entertainment. > things that aren't cities. Autonomous vehicles already exist that work in non-city environments. But yeah, there is probably some infrastructure that would need to be built first -- and it will get built, just like roads did. I expect we'll see autonomous cars in cities first, but the algorithms and hardware will improve over time and extend to rural areas. IMO we're about 15 years out from this entire debate being laughed at for how stupid we all were back in the mid-2010s :)
- FussyZeus 11y ago
  I would hope it becomes more niche. I'd say it will be a lot like the performance desktops that gamers build right now. Most people just get an off the shelf boring old laptop, but then the hobbyists who are into tinkering build custom machines that look sexy and run like hell. Hopefully we'll get to that point with cars in my lifetime. The thing with the infrastructure argument is we're not funding our infrastructure right now enough to maintain what we've already got, let alone upgrade to roads and highways capable of keeping autonomous cars on the road. I'm sure this kind of thing will be huge in California, Texas, New York, etc. but for the rest of the states I think a Google car is going to have a hell of a time.
  - exelius 11y ago
    > we're not funding our infrastructure right now enough to maintain what we've already got We don't maintain our infrastructure because businesses aren't complaining loud enough. If it starts to infringe on some company's ability to make a profit, they'll start up and fund an astroturf campaign to improve the roads. It's kind of laughable how cheap lobbying actually is relative to the amount of money corporate America can throw around -- I'd bet you could make great strides in a localized area with even $100,000 to spend (a lot to an individual, but any decently large company spends more on alcohol for a holiday party than that). If we're going to have corporate money in our political system, let's at least try to make it work for us.
gutnor 11y ago
What the article misses is families. The same reason cable package have stayed around a lot longer than expected are families. Sure the majority of vehicle miles are commuting to work, 1 person commuting to work, generally in the city. But part of the appeal of a car ownership is solving the whole family getting to their leisure area over the we. Anecdotally that's actually the whole reason I even have a car at all - it is very convenient to have your properly size, properly equipped car waiting for you to go. The usage pattern of a family during the we is also sufficiently different that it is going to take a lot of time for the magic combination of all the tech listed in the article to impose themselves completely. That's not to say that I'm pessimistic or in disagreement with the article, it is just another of those 90%-10% problem. Since that 10% covers leisure time it is not going away and that should be acknowledged in the article. Another thing that is missing from the article is car rental. The reason I will be able to keep my car a few more years past its already 15 year old is that I will be able to boost the deficiencies of my current car by renting car for the 1% of the those times where I need a better ride. There have been some progress in that area too, like zipcar, that smoothes a few use cases between Uber and full car ownership. It can only also benefit from technology like self-driving to better manage the car pool and seems like a perfect fit for electricity (cities allocate specific parking spot for zipcar, so they could have plug ready there and zipcars are used for small trips). There is no similarly innovative rental model between very short rental and traditional week-end / holiday rental. Regular rental car companies are still operating exactly the same as their where 20 years ago.
- nasmorn 11y ago
  Also Child seats. When you need them using a different car or taxi is a huge pain

exelius 11y ago

> Car Culture Well, "car culture" was invented to sell economy cars - nobody gets excited over mashed potatoes, so they had to invent something sexier. I don't think anyone legitimately believes that the auto industry is going to keel over and disappear - autonomous cars will have a very, very long adoption period. But over that period, I expect the "car guy" segment of the market (sports cars, etc) to become more of the niche hobby of "human-controlled car racing". It's not like horses totally disappeared after the invention of the automobile; their purpose just became much more heavily weighted towards entertainment. > things that aren't cities. Autonomous vehicles already exist that work in non-city environments. But yeah, there is probably some infrastructure that would need to be built first -- and it will get built, just like roads did. I expect we'll see autonomous cars in cities first, but the algorithms and hardware will improve over time and extend to rural areas. IMO we're about 15 years out from this entire debate being laughed at for how stupid we all were back in the mid-2010s :)

FussyZeus 11y ago
I would hope it becomes more niche. I'd say it will be a lot like the performance desktops that gamers build right now. Most people just get an off the shelf boring old laptop, but then the hobbyists who are into tinkering build custom machines that look sexy and run like hell. Hopefully we'll get to that point with cars in my lifetime. The thing with the infrastructure argument is we're not funding our infrastructure right now enough to maintain what we've already got, let alone upgrade to roads and highways capable of keeping autonomous cars on the road. I'm sure this kind of thing will be huge in California, Texas, New York, etc. but for the rest of the states I think a Google car is going to have a hell of a time.
- exelius 11y ago
  > we're not funding our infrastructure right now enough to maintain what we've already got We don't maintain our infrastructure because businesses aren't complaining loud enough. If it starts to infringe on some company's ability to make a profit, they'll start up and fund an astroturf campaign to improve the roads. It's kind of laughable how cheap lobbying actually is relative to the amount of money corporate America can throw around -- I'd bet you could make great strides in a localized area with even $100,000 to spend (a lot to an individual, but any decently large company spends more on alcohol for a holiday party than that). If we're going to have corporate money in our political system, let's at least try to make it work for us.

gutnor 11y ago

What the article misses is families. The same reason cable package have stayed around a lot longer than expected are families. Sure the majority of vehicle miles are commuting to work, 1 person commuting to work, generally in the city. But part of the appeal of a car ownership is solving the whole family getting to their leisure area over the we. Anecdotally that's actually the whole reason I even have a car at all - it is very convenient to have your properly size, properly equipped car waiting for you to go. The usage pattern of a family during the we is also sufficiently different that it is going to take a lot of time for the magic combination of all the tech listed in the article to impose themselves completely. That's not to say that I'm pessimistic or in disagreement with the article, it is just another of those 90%-10% problem. Since that 10% covers leisure time it is not going away and that should be acknowledged in the article. Another thing that is missing from the article is car rental. The reason I will be able to keep my car a few more years past its already 15 year old is that I will be able to boost the deficiencies of my current car by renting car for the 1% of the those times where I need a better ride. There have been some progress in that area too, like zipcar, that smoothes a few use cases between Uber and full car ownership. It can only also benefit from technology like self-driving to better manage the car pool and seems like a perfect fit for electricity (cities allocate specific parking spot for zipcar, so they could have plug ready there and zipcars are used for small trips). There is no similarly innovative rental model between very short rental and traditional week-end / holiday rental. Regular rental car companies are still operating exactly the same as their where 20 years ago.

nasmorn 11y ago
Also Child seats. When you need them using a different car or taxi is a huge pain