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> 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

by 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.

by exelius 11y ago

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.