5 ms·

I wonder if a fully automated car might actually be a different product category than a "regular" car. I could actually see a decent market for (relatively ugly

• intrasight 10y ago
  >market for (relatively ugly) self driving cars that are mostly seen as a means to get from A to B. You mean like a Volvo ;)
  • dagw 10y ago
    Perhaps not the prettiest car ever made, but looks OK to me: https://www.media.volvocars.com/image/low/194846/1_1/5 https://www.media.volvocars.com/image/low/194846/1_1/5
• ajmurmann 10y ago
  I can see that during a relatively short transition period but hope it won't remain that way. Once all cars are autonomous we can do incredible things. For example traffic lights to regulate traffic between cars will be obsolete. Cars can just adjust their speed way before the intersection so that they just miss each other at the intersection. Likewise we can avoid congestion by cars registering for their route in advance. We could raise the speed limits on freeways and other roads that only have cars on them or even remove them entirely since the cars will know better what their limits are than some blanket regulation. It also will be much safer, since self driving cars are likely to quickly become safer drivers, but we will also remove erratic behavior that humans display. For example there won't be no more people who cannot zip properly (currently the majority of US Americans), no more cars not speeding up properly on the freeway on-ramp and then slowing everyone down on the freeway, no more weird stopping and slow driving by drivers who are lost. This will make the overall traffic situation much more predictable and safer.
  • ch4s3 10y ago
    Sometimes stop lights are there so that people can walk across the street.
    • ajmurmann 10y ago
      That's why I said "traffic lights to regulate traffic between cars"
      • ch4s3 10y ago
        Sorry I'm being a bit glib. What I'm poking at here is what I feel to be undue optimism about self driving vehicles. It almost appears as if people are describing the Beetle from Fahrenheit 451, with no irony intended. What I'm getting at is that there seems to be a lack of critical thinking about the potential negatives of self driving cars. We know for example that transit by car is extremely price elastic, and it is easy to infer that a self driving car imposes a very low cost on drivers, so we should expect trips by car to increase if cars are self driving. Is this good or bad? Its hard to say. But we do know that more car trips increase demand for roads. Is this good or bad? If all self driving cars are going to and from similar locations, eg exurbs to job centers, will congestion decrease? If one no longer suffers the penalty of having to drive in congestion, will more people voluntarily sit in traffic, thereby saturating infrastructure?
        • icebraining 10y ago
          All was said is that traffic will be more predictable and safer, not that it won't have any possible negative effects.
        • ajmurmann 10y ago
          I totally agree that those are all valid concerns.However, I am confident we will get those things figured out. Maybe the congestion won't be that bad because autonmous driving services might encourage ride sharing. I for one already sometimes use Lyft Ride for longer trips. Maybe we can increase incentives for that? Communities could create a fee for single passenger rides. In a way car pool lanes are similar to that and already might accomplish something like that. On the less punitive side I can see something like convoys decrease fuel consumption. My university in Paderborn, Germany was working on something like that for self driving trains over ten years ago. Of course it's much harder with cars, but we also have come a long way.