7 ms·

How far out are we from truly autonomous personal vehicle travel? I want to set my route and play a game or work or sleep. I want the vehicle to automatically s

by j2bax 10y ago

How far out are we from truly autonomous personal vehicle travel? I want to set my route and play a game or work or sleep. I want the vehicle to automatically stop and charge when it needs to. If I'm feeling like it, I can get out and use the restroom. I would be so much more likely to make frequent cross country trips to visit family and so much less likely to ever book a flight unless I'm needing to cross water. I wonder how this would hit the airlines in the US.

tobltobs 10y ago
In europe we have this already. It is called railway.
- adventured 10y ago
  Which for most city to city travel will end up being dramatically less efficient and far more expensive than electric, autonomous cars that can go 400+ miles on a charge - unless you're only going from large metro to large metro over a particularly long distance. For travel within cities, autonomous electric vehicles will ultimately surpass rail travel. That will happen within several decades. The cost of car use and ownership will plunge. Software and constantly improving batteries will eat the expense out of the heart of the machines. What's the cost and usefulness to run high speed rail between two mid-sized Romanian cities that are 60km or 100km apart? Right, it's wildly impractical. Inexpensive, autonomous, electric vehicles however are the future and will be extremely practical for all purposes except very long distance travel between two major cities. No other scenario will justify spending the vast sums of money required to install and upkeep high speed railway - and that cost will only continue to climb with wages and security threats in Europe; meanwhile electric, autonomous vehicles will bring the cost of vehicles down dramatically over time.
  - tobltobs 10y ago
    What about the already congested roads, missing parking places in (european) cities and lastly the expensive maintenance for roads?
  - argonaut 10y ago
    Wait what? You have it the other way around. Rail will still be dramatically more efficient and cheaper than electric autonomous cars. And inter-city subways will still be more efficient and cheaper than electric autonomous cars. They have higher density, use less space (as opposed to huge roads/highways everywhere), and pollute less.
    - MagnumOpus 10y ago
      There will be a combination. Autonomous cars replacing taxis and buses; light rail/MRT for the last 5 miles in dense city centres; heavy rail for rapid medium distance transit (100km < x < 400km); planes for long distance transit. If anyone thinks that there is the road capacity for a million self-driving cars to drop passengers during every morning rush hour in Mid/Downtown Manhattan or the City of London, they are deluded.
  - vertex-four 10y ago
    > What's the cost and usefulness to run high speed rail between two mid-sized Romanian cities that are 60km or 100km apart? What's the cost of building from scratch and maintaining year-on-year a road along the same line, including vehicle and operating costs, before subsidies? That is - what would it actually cost you to drive a car if your taxes weren't paying for it? Hint - it differs for nearly every situation, and even the idea of high speed rail - 125mph or higher - is not necessarily useful in all situations. A decent commuter line with good bus links to every station is potentially more useful than a high-speed line which zips past dozens of towns.
- PeterisP 10y ago
  Railway cannot pick me up from where I are and cannot deliver me to where I want to be - it can cover the long distance parts, but I need another means of transportation to go to the railway station and from it.
  - tobltobs 10y ago
    Seriously, we should find a solution for all those poor stranded railway passengers. Oh, wait, what are those tramway, buses, cabs, metro, rental cars, bikes and scooters are doing in front of the station. Hmmmm?
lettergram 10y ago
I'm guessing it would impact airlines minimally. I'm in California and my family is in Illinois. Even the best route, speeding the whole way, it takes me twenty hours. Hell, just to go to San Diego from San Francisco is 7 hours minimum (took me 12 last Friday). People fly to save time, and if youre going to a hub city (I.e. Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, etc.) It will likely be cheaper to fly as well, I just booked a flight from San Francisco to Chicago for $148 (driving would easily be $250).
- brianwawok 10y ago
  To be fair not $250 in an electric car
  - tlrobinson 10y ago
    Probably not if you factor in depreciation on an expensive self-driving electric car. Looks like SF to Chicago is at least 2000 miles. (Which also makes me wonder how you can do that trip in 20 hours. Speeding indeed :)
    - j2bax 10y ago
      I can only assume as autonomous travel increases and incidents decrease, the speed limit would increase. Obviously battery technology still has a ways to go to be able to last more than a couple hundred miles running 100 MPH+
      - falcolas 10y ago
        Speed limits depend more on the road (banking in corners, surface conditions, imperfections) and the car (what happens to the vehicle if an accident does happen) than the drivers, so I wouldn't expect major increases in speed limits.
        true_religion 10y ago
        I doubt that or else you wouldn't see the same stretch, and grade of road get two different speed limits depending on what side of the state border that you are on. Additionally, on the intrastate highways, the speed limits are set by local districts so local districts who like making money will often change their speed limit for any highways that go near by them so they can speed trap people.
simcop2387 10y ago
The tesla gets the easy parts down. Highway driving is largely uneventful straight travel. It's the rest of it that's hard, detecting stop signs and lights, pedestrians and all the other corner cases that make it significantly harder for the tail end of the problem. Google's press releases about their cars make it seem like it's a few years off but I'd actually expect it to be about a decade instead, more because of testing and regulatory changes that need to happen before we see them sold. A Tesla has the capability to do the worst of that long haul trip, but it has the charger problem right now that they're trying to get more of them out there for it.
- ForHackernews 10y ago
  Google's cars have logged a lot of miles, but only over a few miles of actual road in Northern California--road for which Google has extremely detailed maps already in place. It's going to be a long time before a Google car can just drive anywhere you tell it to.
  - Gatsky 10y ago
    It might happen significantly sooner if we start modifying roads and intersections to be more robo car friendly.
    - duaneb 10y ago
      That's gotta be a bigger project in terms of man power and money than anyone has invested in self driving cars already. We need more testing to even establish the problem areas and figure out how to actively solve them.
    - agumonkey 10y ago
      Google has more data. CPUs, GPUs are more potent. Yes society might take SDV in account now, a parallel 'iot' road information system. One thing that is to worry, IIRC, is that gCar sensors are only good for that climate and fail rapidly under other conditions. Fog, rain, snow have no good technology for now.
  - 10y ago
ProAm 10y ago
I'd estimate 8-12 years
kyrra 10y ago
This was a good presentation by the Google team: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj-rK8V-rik http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj-rK8V-rik I believe they say in there that they got highway driving down really early on. They have been focusing on urban driving for the last few years.
andrei_says_ 10y ago
According to Chris Urmson, lead engineer at Google's driverless car project, less than 5 years. https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_urmson_how_a_driverless_car_sees_the_road?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_urmson_how_a_driverless_car_...
bbcbasic 10y ago
I want a car to drive me to work, then drive out somewhere and find some free parking for the day (or circle the block all day) and then come back at the end of the day to pick me up.
esmi 10y ago
Technically not a personal vehicle but it does meet all your other criteria. https://www.greyhound.com https://www.greyhound.com
tim333 10y ago
Coming to Stockholm next year apparently http://www.volvocars.com/au/about/innovations/intellisafe/autopilot http://www.volvocars.com/au/about/innovations/intellisafe/au...

by j2bax 10y ago

tobltobs 10y ago

In europe we have this already. It is called railway.

adventured 10y ago
Which for most city to city travel will end up being dramatically less efficient and far more expensive than electric, autonomous cars that can go 400+ miles on a charge - unless you're only going from large metro to large metro over a particularly long distance. For travel within cities, autonomous electric vehicles will ultimately surpass rail travel. That will happen within several decades. The cost of car use and ownership will plunge. Software and constantly improving batteries will eat the expense out of the heart of the machines. What's the cost and usefulness to run high speed rail between two mid-sized Romanian cities that are 60km or 100km apart? Right, it's wildly impractical. Inexpensive, autonomous, electric vehicles however are the future and will be extremely practical for all purposes except very long distance travel between two major cities. No other scenario will justify spending the vast sums of money required to install and upkeep high speed railway - and that cost will only continue to climb with wages and security threats in Europe; meanwhile electric, autonomous vehicles will bring the cost of vehicles down dramatically over time.
- tobltobs 10y ago
  What about the already congested roads, missing parking places in (european) cities and lastly the expensive maintenance for roads?
- argonaut 10y ago
  Wait what? You have it the other way around. Rail will still be dramatically more efficient and cheaper than electric autonomous cars. And inter-city subways will still be more efficient and cheaper than electric autonomous cars. They have higher density, use less space (as opposed to huge roads/highways everywhere), and pollute less.
  - MagnumOpus 10y ago
    There will be a combination. Autonomous cars replacing taxis and buses; light rail/MRT for the last 5 miles in dense city centres; heavy rail for rapid medium distance transit (100km < x < 400km); planes for long distance transit. If anyone thinks that there is the road capacity for a million self-driving cars to drop passengers during every morning rush hour in Mid/Downtown Manhattan or the City of London, they are deluded.
- vertex-four 10y ago
  > What's the cost and usefulness to run high speed rail between two mid-sized Romanian cities that are 60km or 100km apart? What's the cost of building from scratch and maintaining year-on-year a road along the same line, including vehicle and operating costs, before subsidies? That is - what would it actually cost you to drive a car if your taxes weren't paying for it? Hint - it differs for nearly every situation, and even the idea of high speed rail - 125mph or higher - is not necessarily useful in all situations. A decent commuter line with good bus links to every station is potentially more useful than a high-speed line which zips past dozens of towns.
PeterisP 10y ago
Railway cannot pick me up from where I are and cannot deliver me to where I want to be - it can cover the long distance parts, but I need another means of transportation to go to the railway station and from it.
- tobltobs 10y ago
  Seriously, we should find a solution for all those poor stranded railway passengers. Oh, wait, what are those tramway, buses, cabs, metro, rental cars, bikes and scooters are doing in front of the station. Hmmmm?

lettergram 10y ago

I'm guessing it would impact airlines minimally. I'm in California and my family is in Illinois. Even the best route, speeding the whole way, it takes me twenty hours. Hell, just to go to San Diego from San Francisco is 7 hours minimum (took me 12 last Friday). People fly to save time, and if youre going to a hub city (I.e. Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, etc.) It will likely be cheaper to fly as well, I just booked a flight from San Francisco to Chicago for $148 (driving would easily be $250).

brianwawok 10y ago
To be fair not $250 in an electric car
- tlrobinson 10y ago
  Probably not if you factor in depreciation on an expensive self-driving electric car. Looks like SF to Chicago is at least 2000 miles. (Which also makes me wonder how you can do that trip in 20 hours. Speeding indeed :)
  - j2bax 10y ago
    I can only assume as autonomous travel increases and incidents decrease, the speed limit would increase. Obviously battery technology still has a ways to go to be able to last more than a couple hundred miles running 100 MPH+
    - falcolas 10y ago
      Speed limits depend more on the road (banking in corners, surface conditions, imperfections) and the car (what happens to the vehicle if an accident does happen) than the drivers, so I wouldn't expect major increases in speed limits.
      - true_religion 10y ago
        I doubt that or else you wouldn't see the same stretch, and grade of road get two different speed limits depending on what side of the state border that you are on. Additionally, on the intrastate highways, the speed limits are set by local districts so local districts who like making money will often change their speed limit for any highways that go near by them so they can speed trap people.

simcop2387 10y ago

The tesla gets the easy parts down. Highway driving is largely uneventful straight travel. It's the rest of it that's hard, detecting stop signs and lights, pedestrians and all the other corner cases that make it significantly harder for the tail end of the problem. Google's press releases about their cars make it seem like it's a few years off but I'd actually expect it to be about a decade instead, more because of testing and regulatory changes that need to happen before we see them sold. A Tesla has the capability to do the worst of that long haul trip, but it has the charger problem right now that they're trying to get more of them out there for it.

ForHackernews 10y ago
Google's cars have logged a lot of miles, but only over a few miles of actual road in Northern California--road for which Google has extremely detailed maps already in place. It's going to be a long time before a Google car can just drive anywhere you tell it to.
- Gatsky 10y ago
  It might happen significantly sooner if we start modifying roads and intersections to be more robo car friendly.
  - duaneb 10y ago
    That's gotta be a bigger project in terms of man power and money than anyone has invested in self driving cars already. We need more testing to even establish the problem areas and figure out how to actively solve them.
  - agumonkey 10y ago
    Google has more data. CPUs, GPUs are more potent. Yes society might take SDV in account now, a parallel 'iot' road information system. One thing that is to worry, IIRC, is that gCar sensors are only good for that climate and fail rapidly under other conditions. Fog, rain, snow have no good technology for now.
- 10y ago

ProAm 10y ago

I'd estimate 8-12 years

kyrra 10y ago

This was a good presentation by the Google team: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj-rK8V-rik http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj-rK8V-rik I believe they say in there that they got highway driving down really early on. They have been focusing on urban driving for the last few years.

andrei_says_ 10y ago

According to Chris Urmson, lead engineer at Google's driverless car project, less than 5 years. https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_urmson_how_a_driverless_car_sees_the_road?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_urmson_how_a_driverless_car_...

bbcbasic 10y ago

I want a car to drive me to work, then drive out somewhere and find some free parking for the day (or circle the block all day) and then come back at the end of the day to pick me up.

esmi 10y ago

Technically not a personal vehicle but it does meet all your other criteria. https://www.greyhound.com https://www.greyhound.com

tim333 10y ago

Coming to Stockholm next year apparently http://www.volvocars.com/au/about/innovations/intellisafe/autopilot http://www.volvocars.com/au/about/innovations/intellisafe/au...