15 ms·

Automakers Prepare for an America That’s Over the Whole Car Thing

122 points by zonotope 10y ago

ebbv 10y ago
This headline really overstates it. Anywhere outside of a major metropolitan center you are gonna be hard pressed to deal with day to day things like getting groceries without a car. The nearest grocery store to my house is about 5 miles. I can bike it but that really limits how much stuff I can get. Similarly if you're a family with pets, particularly big dogs like mine, I can't take them anywhere without a car. There is no public transportation of any kind that comes to my neighborhood. So while yes, more and more people in cities may be abandoning cars because they have gotten more and more expensive over the last decade, there is no near future where America as a whole is able to live day to day without a car.
- janardanyri 10y ago
  The article is about moving beyond car ownership, not the absence of cars themselves.
  - imglorp 10y ago
    Also significant is the partial reduction. Plenty of families don't actually need N cars. They can probably get by with N-1 and summon another when needed. Also, one car can do multiple errands without a driver, eg drop someone off at work, drop the kids off at school, and then go stage somewhere until needed.
    - djsumdog 10y ago
      In Europe entire families usually share just one car. Some cities like Jena, Germany (<100k) have 4 tram lines and three inter-city rail stations (1 that serves a high speed ICE train). That famous city from the song, Chattanooga, no longer has a (functional) passenger rail station at all.
      - wott 10y ago
        >In Europe entire families usually share just one car. Yet, in the case of France, the number of cars per household keeps rising; the share of households owning 2 cars, owning 3 cars, keep rising as well; in spite of the decrease of the size of households (the number of people per household). To add insult to injury, car owners have become so lazy that don't bother parking their cars in their garage or their yard. Nope, that's out of fashion, now they park them on the public space: streets, roadsides, side-walks, etc. It's like witnessing an invasion, it spreads everywhere.
- muninn_ 10y ago
  For now. Where I live, and in some other cities I've visited in the Great Lakes Region (like Pittsburgh or Cleveland), people are increasingly moving back to the downtown areas. For now it's primarily young people, but the difference is that it's a lot of young people, and the jobs and shops are following. Now this is not a dramatic change, but it is a change. I think it has the potential to turn into an increasing amount of people moving into the urban cores of cities that were previously car-only.
- lkozma 10y ago
  I don't mean to side-track a very valid point that you are making, but stepping back a little, isn't it amusing that humanity has reached such an advanced state where a strong argument for owning cars is to ship dogs around? Also, only slightly related, but as someone not owning pets I always find it amusing (again, for lack of better word) to see people in the act of picking up dog-poop (I'm well-aware of the worse immediate alternative of leaving it on the ground). Still, isn't there some irony hidden in these small gestures, given mankind's (otherwise) complete domination of nature? etc. etc. etc.
  - analog31 10y ago
    I don't mean to side-track a very valid point that you are making, but stepping back a little, isn't it amusing that humanity has reached such an advanced state where a strong argument for owning cars is to ship dogs around? And double basses, my situation. I commute to work, and could do most of my shopping, by bike. But playing music requires a car, for myself, and to schlep the kids to their music activities. Still, I could see moving to a situation where I make much less use of a car. Maybe there's a way to request an Uber that's big enough for my instrument, and to pay a little extra for that. There are double bassists in NYC who get around by subway. And since most of my playing is local, I could get away with having an electric car with relatively low speed and range.
    - stormbrew 10y ago
      > Maybe there's a way to request an Uber that's big enough for my instrument, and to pay a little extra for that. There is. UberXL in most cities with Uber. This has generally also been true with taxis. There are usually van taxis you can request, but there are fewer so they take even longer to come than the cars.
- lkozma 10y ago
  At least for grocery-shopping I find that a children's bike trailer can pack a surprisingly large amount of stuff -- of course it is not quite as convenient as a car.
- jc4p 10y ago
  The article isn't discussing abandoning of cars because they've gotten more expensive, it's discussing it in the context of public transportation and "last mile logistics" being on everyone's mind now not just the local governments. In fact, the article explicitly mentions people who do have the luxury of being able to take public transport using cars on the weekends for grocery shopping, just like you mention. And it mentions that in many many parts of America solving the last mile problem isn't anything since people are driving a lot more than a mile. Please don't judge an article by its headline.
- djsumdog 10y ago
  Exactly. I lived outside of the US for fours years and never needed a car. Even though I moved back to a city with public transport, and a single regularly rail line, it pales in comparison to the type of transport available is much of the developed world. Self-driving cars are a terrible solution. They will ONLY solve the last-mile problem, but not the missing American infrastructure. Russia is larger, less dense and has better public rail infrastructure in terms of both commuter rail within cities and inter-city rail including high speed expansion. The US only has the California high speed system currently being constructed. Nothing else. I've written about the self-driving car problem before: http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-solve-the-transportation-problem/ http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-sol...
  - Namrog84 10y ago
    Our entire system is kinda broken with how roads/parking are relative to size. So it's not an easy problem to fix overnight. With an our established and spread out infrastructure. But self driving cars will eventually lead to smaller pods or smaller vehicles. Potentially fewer lanes or even allowing non standard road shapes and straightaway and fewer parking lots. I think autonomous vehicles is a stepping stone to a better infrastructure and community
    - muninn_ 10y ago
      I think the actual problem is a political one. Too many industries need highways to get bigger and to have more Americans buy cars.
      - Kadin 10y ago
        The problem is definitely political, but I don't think it's a corporate conspiracy. Americans just don't like paying taxes, and aren't willing to pay taxes at the rates that would make Euro-style public transportation (with a mix of buses, trams, commuter rail, intercity trains, etc.) viable. Even in the cities that have marginally-decent public transportation systems, they're chronically underfunded. You could probably build a hell of a public transportation network if people were willing to pay what they currently spend on average on automobile-related expenses (or even a substantial fraction of it) towards a shared network, but people have been making that argument to the American public for the better part of a century now and it's not gained a lot of traction. I'm not sure that self driving vehicles really change the underlying political calculus that makes Americans unwilling to pay for that sort of public infrastructure. But they could still be an improvement, in safety and resource consumption, vs the current status quo.
- hengheng 10y ago
  Do grocery stores not do delivery? In Germany this is picking up really quickly, you pay 4€ more and have everything delivered to your home in a time window that can be as narrow as two hours (when the service is well frequented). The app doubles as your grocery list, and at some point you just send it off. Great customer retention too ;-)
  - vidarh 10y ago
    I'm in the UK. One of the companies here (Ocado) will automatically populate your shopping list for you based on your shopping history the day after each delivery, so you have about a week to adjust it. We often don't even bother checking the weekly shopping list any more, as it's generally "close enough" that if we're busy we'll just accept whatever they deliver. Just need the fridge to tell them what we still have enough of :)
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  I take my dog in Ubers. I call in advance to ask if it's okay; I also give a cash tip for it. Only one driver seemed ambivalent when I asked and seemed thankful when I said I would cancel and rebook.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >This headline really overstates it. Anywhere outside of a major metropolitan center you are gonna be hard pressed to deal with day to day things like getting groceries without a car. The nearest grocery store to my house is about 5 miles. I can bike it but that really limits how much stuff I can get. Self driving cars don't limit "how much stuff you can get", and you only need a few for a neighborhood of say 10 houses...
throwaway13337 10y ago
Americans may be over the car but our infrastructure doesn't really agree.
- jonknee 10y ago
  Did you read the article? Americans are over owning a car, not mobility in general (the simple problem of when cars drive themselves you probably don't need one full time).
- theandrewbailey 10y ago
  I think the infrastructure agrees. Has it been that long since you drove (or were driven) over potholed and crumbling roads or rusty bridges?
mortyma 10y ago
Carmakers have to adjust and prepare for a reality in which mobility is treated as a service and cars are losing their traditional function as a (middle class) status symbol. I think that self-driving cars may actually increase traffic and our dependency on cars. Just think about it: - If you don't have to drive yourself but can instead use the time to sleep, watch a movie, study or shitpost on the Internet, a 1.5 hour commute to work isn't that bad anymore. - Since the labor cost for operating a self-driving car is probably really low (we'll still need mechanics for maintenance and such) and streets are heavily subsidized by the government, self-driving cars are cheap and could be a competitor to traditional public transport services. - There isn't a reason why kids, who now have to use a bike, a scooter or the bus until they are allowed to drive a car shouldn't be able to order a self-driving taxi; thus, they get used to being shuttled around all the time from a young age.
- stormbrew 10y ago
  Many people have hour+ long commutes during which they can shitpost on the internet. It's still really fucking boring and a massive waste of your day. Also, congestion still affects people in a self driving future. A complete abandonment of public transit in major cities would lead to much larger increases in commute times than you seem to think.
- drcross 10y ago
  >I think that self-driving cars may actually increase traffic Your assumption is that cars will stay the same form and shape after they become self-driving, which is myopic. Without needing all of the safety protection cars or three spare seats, cars can be far smaller and you can easily envision a sitution when we get a x4 increase in traffic density, meaning traffic won't be an issue.
  - tmptmp 10y ago
    >>Without needing all of the safety protection Curious to know, what safety protections can be removed. Also, how small a car can get, given the limits put by the physics of comfort, balance, commute speed, aerodynamics?
- 10y ago
rhino369 10y ago
I wonder how low "cars per person" we will achieve through self-driving Uber/lyft services? Those type of services, if cheap enough, could replace the need for cars for little trips here and there. But things like commutes are harder to replace. You have everyone trying to drive all at the same time during high traffic. Traffic will only increase as people can nap during commutes because people will commute from further and further away. You'd have to have a lot of extra cars that only make 2-4 trips a day due to demand. Plus a large amount of car lifetime is determined by mileage. Fleet maintenance will help, but after 150k miles on average, they'll need to be replaced. If these self driving car services are so cheap, we might increase the car mileage per person. Which means we'll burn through cars at a faster pace than person. I'm not convinced that the end of personal ownership will be all that bad for car companies. I bet it hurts midmarket luxury the hardest since nobody will buy them.
- jawbone3 10y ago
  Taxis are already self driving cars, and affordable for parts of the population. Those people buy cars regardless.
  - ehnto 10y ago
    Cars are definitely more than a commuting device, they are cultural. Also I think articles like this often forget that while it would be great to not need a car for the morning commute, people in suburbia still need to do many other things like shopping and fetching children etc. Many of those tasks are just easier or more preferred to be done in personal transport. Sometimes you need to leave some shopping in the car while you go in to sit with the kids at an after school thing, before heading past a friends house to drop off their kids then finally heading home. A self driving fleet could probably still achieve that in multiple trips, but how many people want to deal with continuously pre-planning and concerting a half dozen small trips a day? I strongly dislike suburbia and car culture does grind my gears in various ways, but I can't help but feel the car-in-an-app is solving the very specific problem of short once off trips, and solving that doesn't even come close to solving the nations transport issues.
goatlover 10y ago
This makes sense for big cities, but that vast territory in between, where Trump got the majority of his support, that territory where you see lots of trucks and SUVs, and people drive miles to Walmart or the grocery store or baseball practice - they're going to still want their own vehicle.
- waterphone 10y ago
  Need, not just want. For the residents of most of the surface area of America, you cannot survive without owning your own vehicle. Stores can be 10 to 50 to 100 miles away from your home, there are no buses or taxis or Uber, you can sometimes get a ride from a friend or neighbor but only if they're also planning to go to town, and if you each go to town together you're usually stuck there all day and then have to each wait long times for the other person to do what they need to do, because you're each shopping for the next 2 – 3 weeks before you go to town again.
  - fulafel 10y ago
    Sure if you lock everything else as constants. "We are accustomed to living like this" is not an overriding force.
  - monkmartinez 10y ago
    Agreed, I have the feeling that most people think San Francisco or New York when they think "city"... the problem is that Phoenix exists (all 517 square miles). There are many, many medium sized (1 million ppl +) cities that are conglomerations of suburbs, with very little "urban" interface like Phoenix dotting the western portion of the US.
    - waterphone 10y ago
      And there are plenty of people who do not and have no desire to live in a city at all, and that isn't going to change. Many people retire to rural areas, or live in smaller cities/towns. It's a deliberate lifestyle choice for many, and these people are perfectly happy to own a vehicle of their own and use it and it's not a problem that needs solving for them. So when urban technologists come in and say they're going to "solve" the problem of car ownership and turn it into a service, such people respond somewhere between mockery and outrage at the ignorance of such people thinking their ultra-urban environment is the only acceptable way of life.
godelski 10y ago
I know it is a pipe-dream, but it'd be nice if all the data these cars gathered got loaded into a central database. That way they all could improve faster and it would increase the ability for competition. I feel right now how we're doing it you'll get a certain brand that is definitely safer than another, which could easily cause a feedback loop.
- dsfyu404ed 10y ago
  Minority Report, read/watch it. You'll know the relevant part when you get to it. That's why "central" databases aren't a thing.
- Kadin 10y ago
  If that's implemented by way of some sort of public agency which obtains, analyzes, and releases sanitized versions of the data collected by self-driving cars for the benefit of the public... then sure, that sounds like something we ought to do. But I would probably not phrase that as asking for a "central database" as though it's being fed by the cars themselves. That sort of centralization is... architecturally suspect, for a lot of reasons.
graycat 10y ago
Decades ago when I was in Indiana, which liked and still likes cars, I knew some people from NYC, and they hated cars, any and all cars. Ever since then, NYC has had a lot hatred for cars. NYC just doesn't like cars. And, no surprise, now the NYT from NYC doesn't like cars. I've lived in Tennessee, Indiana, Maryland, and upstate NYS, and all those places like cars, and those places have liked cars for all the decades NYC hated cars. So, the OP is from the NYT in NYC and is about hating cars. So, from the decades of history, I'm not surprised or impressed. E.g., I have a car in my garage. I own it 100%. It costs me $500 or so a year in auto insurance. Since I drive it about 5000 miles a year, there is nearly no cost for maintenance and the insurance costs me, what, about 10 cents a mile. The gasoline costs me about 17 cents a mile. So, all things considered, we're looking at ballpark 30 cents a mile. And the NYT wants me to replace my car with what? No thanks. Yes, it's easy for NYC and its NYT to believe that they have the right answers for everything for everyone on the two coasts and everywhere between. Alas, mostly NYC and the NYT are in an echo chamber and at odds with nearly everyone else in the US except for parts of a few of the largest cities and some of the West Coast. Long ago I concluded that quite broadly NYC and the NYT are out of step with nearly all the rest of the US. So, the NYT doesn't like cars -- I didn't expect anything else and am not influenced at all. Of course, there is the old screaming that humans are evil, sinners, that humans are doing terrible transgressions against kittens, puppies, flowers, the grass, the air, the water, the land, the oceans, the great natural order, etc. and that these transgressions are leading quickly to terrible retributions. Then, the claim goes that if we act quickly, we can achieve redemption. Of course, the redemption will require sacrifice. It's a trilogy -- transgression, retribution, redemption. And we can add on sacrifice. I'm not nearly the first person to think of such things! So, we hear from the NYT that cars show that humans are evil, sinful transgressors .... Gee, not nearly new. I'm having a tough time finding what the NYT is good for. Apparently so are many others since, IIRC, now the NYT is planning to shrink its staff, vacate several floors of its main building, and lease the space to others. The NYT used to have some utility: It was printed on paper which was good for starting fires, wrapping dead fish heads, and in the outhouse out back. Whatever side one was on in the election, everyone can see that the NYT was strongly on the side that lost. Since I put new batteries in my loser detector, it has been making loud noises in response to any mention of the NYT! To me, the NYT fills a much needed gap in journalism and would be illuminating if ignited and still printed on paper. I continue to pay attention to the NYT occasionally, first, to remind myself of how much I miss good journalism and, second, to have details to argue that the NYT should just go out of business.
faebi 10y ago
I am not shure. As a european I see the cost of public transport only rising and at the same time I am giving up lots of flexibility. I see the option to buy a cheap self driving for arround 10'000$ as very appealing. Public transport is a tradeoff between cost, flexibility, time losing/saving and freedom. A self driving car can give lots of flexibility which public transport never can and will give. It's where I see the future of owning a self driving car. Also I do not see lots of chances for makers of self driving cars to differentiate between each other except the interour. About what else should I care?
internaut 10y ago
As much as I endorse concepts like Minimalism, Tiny Houses and Ride Sharing for reasons of practicality/economy, it should be abundantly obvious we're getting poorer. It is not even subtle and a good portion of us are pretending it's about lifestyle choices.
- antisthenes 10y ago
  Wages have been stagnant since the 1980s. The perceptible poorness, or rather lack of increasing prosperity is anything but subtle. But the American 50-70s have only been possible due to an anomalous rise in oil consumption per capita. Energy = wealth.
  - internaut 10y ago
    I see that. I don't see a lot of urgency in our societies either. Perhaps you have seen this: https://i.redditmedia.com/LkKBNe1NW51Wh-8nLSTRdQtTha2sV1yY46vhUWcu_6g.png https://i.redditmedia.com/LkKBNe1NW51Wh-8nLSTRdQtTha2sV1yY46... I blame the television and the media, they have sunk the population into a hypnotic stupor.

122 points by zonotope 10y ago

ebbv 10y ago

This headline really overstates it. Anywhere outside of a major metropolitan center you are gonna be hard pressed to deal with day to day things like getting groceries without a car. The nearest grocery store to my house is about 5 miles. I can bike it but that really limits how much stuff I can get. Similarly if you're a family with pets, particularly big dogs like mine, I can't take them anywhere without a car. There is no public transportation of any kind that comes to my neighborhood. So while yes, more and more people in cities may be abandoning cars because they have gotten more and more expensive over the last decade, there is no near future where America as a whole is able to live day to day without a car.

janardanyri 10y ago
The article is about moving beyond car ownership, not the absence of cars themselves.
- imglorp 10y ago
  Also significant is the partial reduction. Plenty of families don't actually need N cars. They can probably get by with N-1 and summon another when needed. Also, one car can do multiple errands without a driver, eg drop someone off at work, drop the kids off at school, and then go stage somewhere until needed.
  - djsumdog 10y ago
    In Europe entire families usually share just one car. Some cities like Jena, Germany (<100k) have 4 tram lines and three inter-city rail stations (1 that serves a high speed ICE train). That famous city from the song, Chattanooga, no longer has a (functional) passenger rail station at all.
    - wott 10y ago
      >In Europe entire families usually share just one car. Yet, in the case of France, the number of cars per household keeps rising; the share of households owning 2 cars, owning 3 cars, keep rising as well; in spite of the decrease of the size of households (the number of people per household). To add insult to injury, car owners have become so lazy that don't bother parking their cars in their garage or their yard. Nope, that's out of fashion, now they park them on the public space: streets, roadsides, side-walks, etc. It's like witnessing an invasion, it spreads everywhere.
muninn_ 10y ago
For now. Where I live, and in some other cities I've visited in the Great Lakes Region (like Pittsburgh or Cleveland), people are increasingly moving back to the downtown areas. For now it's primarily young people, but the difference is that it's a lot of young people, and the jobs and shops are following. Now this is not a dramatic change, but it is a change. I think it has the potential to turn into an increasing amount of people moving into the urban cores of cities that were previously car-only.
lkozma 10y ago
I don't mean to side-track a very valid point that you are making, but stepping back a little, isn't it amusing that humanity has reached such an advanced state where a strong argument for owning cars is to ship dogs around? Also, only slightly related, but as someone not owning pets I always find it amusing (again, for lack of better word) to see people in the act of picking up dog-poop (I'm well-aware of the worse immediate alternative of leaving it on the ground). Still, isn't there some irony hidden in these small gestures, given mankind's (otherwise) complete domination of nature? etc. etc. etc.
- analog31 10y ago
  I don't mean to side-track a very valid point that you are making, but stepping back a little, isn't it amusing that humanity has reached such an advanced state where a strong argument for owning cars is to ship dogs around? And double basses, my situation. I commute to work, and could do most of my shopping, by bike. But playing music requires a car, for myself, and to schlep the kids to their music activities. Still, I could see moving to a situation where I make much less use of a car. Maybe there's a way to request an Uber that's big enough for my instrument, and to pay a little extra for that. There are double bassists in NYC who get around by subway. And since most of my playing is local, I could get away with having an electric car with relatively low speed and range.
  - stormbrew 10y ago
    > Maybe there's a way to request an Uber that's big enough for my instrument, and to pay a little extra for that. There is. UberXL in most cities with Uber. This has generally also been true with taxis. There are usually van taxis you can request, but there are fewer so they take even longer to come than the cars.
lkozma 10y ago
At least for grocery-shopping I find that a children's bike trailer can pack a surprisingly large amount of stuff -- of course it is not quite as convenient as a car.
jc4p 10y ago
The article isn't discussing abandoning of cars because they've gotten more expensive, it's discussing it in the context of public transportation and "last mile logistics" being on everyone's mind now not just the local governments. In fact, the article explicitly mentions people who do have the luxury of being able to take public transport using cars on the weekends for grocery shopping, just like you mention. And it mentions that in many many parts of America solving the last mile problem isn't anything since people are driving a lot more than a mile. Please don't judge an article by its headline.
djsumdog 10y ago
Exactly. I lived outside of the US for fours years and never needed a car. Even though I moved back to a city with public transport, and a single regularly rail line, it pales in comparison to the type of transport available is much of the developed world. Self-driving cars are a terrible solution. They will ONLY solve the last-mile problem, but not the missing American infrastructure. Russia is larger, less dense and has better public rail infrastructure in terms of both commuter rail within cities and inter-city rail including high speed expansion. The US only has the California high speed system currently being constructed. Nothing else. I've written about the self-driving car problem before: http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-solve-the-transportation-problem/ http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-sol...
- Namrog84 10y ago
  Our entire system is kinda broken with how roads/parking are relative to size. So it's not an easy problem to fix overnight. With an our established and spread out infrastructure. But self driving cars will eventually lead to smaller pods or smaller vehicles. Potentially fewer lanes or even allowing non standard road shapes and straightaway and fewer parking lots. I think autonomous vehicles is a stepping stone to a better infrastructure and community
  - muninn_ 10y ago
    I think the actual problem is a political one. Too many industries need highways to get bigger and to have more Americans buy cars.
    - Kadin 10y ago
      The problem is definitely political, but I don't think it's a corporate conspiracy. Americans just don't like paying taxes, and aren't willing to pay taxes at the rates that would make Euro-style public transportation (with a mix of buses, trams, commuter rail, intercity trains, etc.) viable. Even in the cities that have marginally-decent public transportation systems, they're chronically underfunded. You could probably build a hell of a public transportation network if people were willing to pay what they currently spend on average on automobile-related expenses (or even a substantial fraction of it) towards a shared network, but people have been making that argument to the American public for the better part of a century now and it's not gained a lot of traction. I'm not sure that self driving vehicles really change the underlying political calculus that makes Americans unwilling to pay for that sort of public infrastructure. But they could still be an improvement, in safety and resource consumption, vs the current status quo.
hengheng 10y ago
Do grocery stores not do delivery? In Germany this is picking up really quickly, you pay 4€ more and have everything delivered to your home in a time window that can be as narrow as two hours (when the service is well frequented). The app doubles as your grocery list, and at some point you just send it off. Great customer retention too ;-)
- vidarh 10y ago
  I'm in the UK. One of the companies here (Ocado) will automatically populate your shopping list for you based on your shopping history the day after each delivery, so you have about a week to adjust it. We often don't even bother checking the weekly shopping list any more, as it's generally "close enough" that if we're busy we'll just accept whatever they deliver. Just need the fridge to tell them what we still have enough of :)
JumpCrisscross 10y ago
I take my dog in Ubers. I call in advance to ask if it's okay; I also give a cash tip for it. Only one driver seemed ambivalent when I asked and seemed thankful when I said I would cancel and rebook.
coldtea 10y ago
>This headline really overstates it. Anywhere outside of a major metropolitan center you are gonna be hard pressed to deal with day to day things like getting groceries without a car. The nearest grocery store to my house is about 5 miles. I can bike it but that really limits how much stuff I can get. Self driving cars don't limit "how much stuff you can get", and you only need a few for a neighborhood of say 10 houses...

throwaway13337 10y ago

Americans may be over the car but our infrastructure doesn't really agree.

jonknee 10y ago
Did you read the article? Americans are over owning a car, not mobility in general (the simple problem of when cars drive themselves you probably don't need one full time).
theandrewbailey 10y ago
I think the infrastructure agrees. Has it been that long since you drove (or were driven) over potholed and crumbling roads or rusty bridges?

mortyma 10y ago

Carmakers have to adjust and prepare for a reality in which mobility is treated as a service and cars are losing their traditional function as a (middle class) status symbol. I think that self-driving cars may actually increase traffic and our dependency on cars. Just think about it: - If you don't have to drive yourself but can instead use the time to sleep, watch a movie, study or shitpost on the Internet, a 1.5 hour commute to work isn't that bad anymore. - Since the labor cost for operating a self-driving car is probably really low (we'll still need mechanics for maintenance and such) and streets are heavily subsidized by the government, self-driving cars are cheap and could be a competitor to traditional public transport services. - There isn't a reason why kids, who now have to use a bike, a scooter or the bus until they are allowed to drive a car shouldn't be able to order a self-driving taxi; thus, they get used to being shuttled around all the time from a young age.

stormbrew 10y ago
Many people have hour+ long commutes during which they can shitpost on the internet. It's still really fucking boring and a massive waste of your day. Also, congestion still affects people in a self driving future. A complete abandonment of public transit in major cities would lead to much larger increases in commute times than you seem to think.
drcross 10y ago
>I think that self-driving cars may actually increase traffic Your assumption is that cars will stay the same form and shape after they become self-driving, which is myopic. Without needing all of the safety protection cars or three spare seats, cars can be far smaller and you can easily envision a sitution when we get a x4 increase in traffic density, meaning traffic won't be an issue.
- tmptmp 10y ago
  >>Without needing all of the safety protection Curious to know, what safety protections can be removed. Also, how small a car can get, given the limits put by the physics of comfort, balance, commute speed, aerodynamics?
10y ago

rhino369 10y ago

I wonder how low "cars per person" we will achieve through self-driving Uber/lyft services? Those type of services, if cheap enough, could replace the need for cars for little trips here and there. But things like commutes are harder to replace. You have everyone trying to drive all at the same time during high traffic. Traffic will only increase as people can nap during commutes because people will commute from further and further away. You'd have to have a lot of extra cars that only make 2-4 trips a day due to demand. Plus a large amount of car lifetime is determined by mileage. Fleet maintenance will help, but after 150k miles on average, they'll need to be replaced. If these self driving car services are so cheap, we might increase the car mileage per person. Which means we'll burn through cars at a faster pace than person. I'm not convinced that the end of personal ownership will be all that bad for car companies. I bet it hurts midmarket luxury the hardest since nobody will buy them.

jawbone3 10y ago
Taxis are already self driving cars, and affordable for parts of the population. Those people buy cars regardless.
- ehnto 10y ago
  Cars are definitely more than a commuting device, they are cultural. Also I think articles like this often forget that while it would be great to not need a car for the morning commute, people in suburbia still need to do many other things like shopping and fetching children etc. Many of those tasks are just easier or more preferred to be done in personal transport. Sometimes you need to leave some shopping in the car while you go in to sit with the kids at an after school thing, before heading past a friends house to drop off their kids then finally heading home. A self driving fleet could probably still achieve that in multiple trips, but how many people want to deal with continuously pre-planning and concerting a half dozen small trips a day? I strongly dislike suburbia and car culture does grind my gears in various ways, but I can't help but feel the car-in-an-app is solving the very specific problem of short once off trips, and solving that doesn't even come close to solving the nations transport issues.

goatlover 10y ago

This makes sense for big cities, but that vast territory in between, where Trump got the majority of his support, that territory where you see lots of trucks and SUVs, and people drive miles to Walmart or the grocery store or baseball practice - they're going to still want their own vehicle.

waterphone 10y ago
Need, not just want. For the residents of most of the surface area of America, you cannot survive without owning your own vehicle. Stores can be 10 to 50 to 100 miles away from your home, there are no buses or taxis or Uber, you can sometimes get a ride from a friend or neighbor but only if they're also planning to go to town, and if you each go to town together you're usually stuck there all day and then have to each wait long times for the other person to do what they need to do, because you're each shopping for the next 2 – 3 weeks before you go to town again.
- fulafel 10y ago
  Sure if you lock everything else as constants. "We are accustomed to living like this" is not an overriding force.
- monkmartinez 10y ago
  Agreed, I have the feeling that most people think San Francisco or New York when they think "city"... the problem is that Phoenix exists (all 517 square miles). There are many, many medium sized (1 million ppl +) cities that are conglomerations of suburbs, with very little "urban" interface like Phoenix dotting the western portion of the US.
  - waterphone 10y ago
    And there are plenty of people who do not and have no desire to live in a city at all, and that isn't going to change. Many people retire to rural areas, or live in smaller cities/towns. It's a deliberate lifestyle choice for many, and these people are perfectly happy to own a vehicle of their own and use it and it's not a problem that needs solving for them. So when urban technologists come in and say they're going to "solve" the problem of car ownership and turn it into a service, such people respond somewhere between mockery and outrage at the ignorance of such people thinking their ultra-urban environment is the only acceptable way of life.

godelski 10y ago

I know it is a pipe-dream, but it'd be nice if all the data these cars gathered got loaded into a central database. That way they all could improve faster and it would increase the ability for competition. I feel right now how we're doing it you'll get a certain brand that is definitely safer than another, which could easily cause a feedback loop.

dsfyu404ed 10y ago
Minority Report, read/watch it. You'll know the relevant part when you get to it. That's why "central" databases aren't a thing.
Kadin 10y ago
If that's implemented by way of some sort of public agency which obtains, analyzes, and releases sanitized versions of the data collected by self-driving cars for the benefit of the public... then sure, that sounds like something we ought to do. But I would probably not phrase that as asking for a "central database" as though it's being fed by the cars themselves. That sort of centralization is... architecturally suspect, for a lot of reasons.

graycat 10y ago

Decades ago when I was in Indiana, which liked and still likes cars, I knew some people from NYC, and they hated cars, any and all cars. Ever since then, NYC has had a lot hatred for cars. NYC just doesn't like cars. And, no surprise, now the NYT from NYC doesn't like cars. I've lived in Tennessee, Indiana, Maryland, and upstate NYS, and all those places like cars, and those places have liked cars for all the decades NYC hated cars. So, the OP is from the NYT in NYC and is about hating cars. So, from the decades of history, I'm not surprised or impressed. E.g., I have a car in my garage. I own it 100%. It costs me $500 or so a year in auto insurance. Since I drive it about 5000 miles a year, there is nearly no cost for maintenance and the insurance costs me, what, about 10 cents a mile. The gasoline costs me about 17 cents a mile. So, all things considered, we're looking at ballpark 30 cents a mile. And the NYT wants me to replace my car with what? No thanks. Yes, it's easy for NYC and its NYT to believe that they have the right answers for everything for everyone on the two coasts and everywhere between. Alas, mostly NYC and the NYT are in an echo chamber and at odds with nearly everyone else in the US except for parts of a few of the largest cities and some of the West Coast. Long ago I concluded that quite broadly NYC and the NYT are out of step with nearly all the rest of the US. So, the NYT doesn't like cars -- I didn't expect anything else and am not influenced at all. Of course, there is the old screaming that humans are evil, sinners, that humans are doing terrible transgressions against kittens, puppies, flowers, the grass, the air, the water, the land, the oceans, the great natural order, etc. and that these transgressions are leading quickly to terrible retributions. Then, the claim goes that if we act quickly, we can achieve redemption. Of course, the redemption will require sacrifice. It's a trilogy -- transgression, retribution, redemption. And we can add on sacrifice. I'm not nearly the first person to think of such things! So, we hear from the NYT that cars show that humans are evil, sinful transgressors .... Gee, not nearly new. I'm having a tough time finding what the NYT is good for. Apparently so are many others since, IIRC, now the NYT is planning to shrink its staff, vacate several floors of its main building, and lease the space to others. The NYT used to have some utility: It was printed on paper which was good for starting fires, wrapping dead fish heads, and in the outhouse out back. Whatever side one was on in the election, everyone can see that the NYT was strongly on the side that lost. Since I put new batteries in my loser detector, it has been making loud noises in response to any mention of the NYT! To me, the NYT fills a much needed gap in journalism and would be illuminating if ignited and still printed on paper. I continue to pay attention to the NYT occasionally, first, to remind myself of how much I miss good journalism and, second, to have details to argue that the NYT should just go out of business.

faebi 10y ago

I am not shure. As a european I see the cost of public transport only rising and at the same time I am giving up lots of flexibility. I see the option to buy a cheap self driving for arround 10'000$ as very appealing. Public transport is a tradeoff between cost, flexibility, time losing/saving and freedom. A self driving car can give lots of flexibility which public transport never can and will give. It's where I see the future of owning a self driving car. Also I do not see lots of chances for makers of self driving cars to differentiate between each other except the interour. About what else should I care?

internaut 10y ago

As much as I endorse concepts like Minimalism, Tiny Houses and Ride Sharing for reasons of practicality/economy, it should be abundantly obvious we're getting poorer. It is not even subtle and a good portion of us are pretending it's about lifestyle choices.

antisthenes 10y ago
Wages have been stagnant since the 1980s. The perceptible poorness, or rather lack of increasing prosperity is anything but subtle. But the American 50-70s have only been possible due to an anomalous rise in oil consumption per capita. Energy = wealth.
- internaut 10y ago
  I see that. I don't see a lot of urgency in our societies either. Perhaps you have seen this: https://i.redditmedia.com/LkKBNe1NW51Wh-8nLSTRdQtTha2sV1yY46vhUWcu_6g.png https://i.redditmedia.com/LkKBNe1NW51Wh-8nLSTRdQtTha2sV1yY46... I blame the television and the media, they have sunk the population into a hypnotic stupor.