9 ms·

The Fleet Can Withdraw

42 points by exolymph 10y ago

Shivetya 10y ago
I think the idea of not owning a car or other personal transportation is going to take more time that the examples of DVDs/CDs/etc will. Owning your own transportation imparts freedom or the sense of it and if you look at former communist countries what exploded out the door when it was available, automobile ownership. So until driver less cars and the costs of using such transportation on a per use basis becomes so cheap as to not matter personal ownership ain't going anywhere. if anything the advent of EV or FC cars with autonomous features will let even more people own vehicles who can't or keep them longer.
- pif 10y ago
  > I think the idea of not owning a car or other personal transportation is going to take more time that the examples of DVDs/CDs/etc will. Especially because of the copy-ability of the songs/videos with respect to the uniqueness of a car. In other words, a song can be sent to multiple listeners in parallel, while a car, at a given instant, is either serving me of another person. I'd hate having to trust a fleet of autonomous cars on Super Bowl Sunday or Black Friday!
  - VLM 10y ago
    "Black Friday" The fleet issue is critical to the failure of shared cars. The problem of the rich young urbanite traveling a few blocks on a statistically random time frame (bar hopping perhaps) is solved by car sharing services, yet they're a vanishingly small fraction of the population. For example the kind of employer that is so geologic in thinking that they don't allow remote work is going to be so backwards as to forbid flex time hours, so two hundred 9-5 jobs implies someone has to own two hundred individual cars, and if the employees don't directly own the two hundred cars all you get is a useless middleman skimming off profit. Public grade school isn't remote or flex time and observation shows roughly one parent-car per kid. No matter how time flexible life is for rich young adult urbanites, normie life isn't like that. Too much of normie life involves hundreds to tens of thousands of people running on a tight fixed schedule. Back in the bad old days of limited long distance telecom bandwidth, you couldn't financially provision to survive mothers day, for example, so on mothers day people got fast busy signals sometimes. That also made it extremely expensive and encouraged companies to set up their own LD routings. In the long run this will happen with shared cars and after enough firings for failure to get to work and enough CPS calls for failure to pick up little kids people will get tired of the expense of shared cars and save a lot of money by owning their own car.
Heliosmaster 10y ago
I also find worrying that all these developments have on the horizon an extreme individualistic view of society. Why nobody is considering the option that you might have a self-driving car whose ownership is shared among different family groups (e.g. all the people in the same apt block)?
- nerdponx 10y ago
  I never even thought to consider it. But now that you mention it, it's a great idea. In the United States at least, we have been indoctrinated into this idea that cars are in individual possession, when really if you look at what our car is and does that makes very little sense.
  - ghthor 10y ago
    We've also been indoctrinated that living out of our car is shameful or below us, which is sad. With the current state of our tech we could build an amazingly small moving vehicle that also could operate as a 2 person, bed, kitchen, and food storage locker. Combine that with automation and a sane wireless tech and you're now equipped a fully mobile human being.
    - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
      Doubly odd in that, if you reduce further to a backpack then you're back to a romantic figure, roughing it in the wild.
    - nerdponx 10y ago
      The current doctrines are ideal for big business: make sure they buy a house (support the Realtors), and make sure they buy a car (support the auto industry).
      - nradov 10y ago
        The current doctrines are ideal for people who enjoy having some privacy, space, and freedom to customize their environments.
d_theorist 10y ago
>YOU AND LYFT MUTUALLY AGREE TO WAIVE OUR RESPECTIVE RIGHTS TO RESOLUTION OF DISPUTES IN A COURT OF LAW BY A JUDGE OR JURY AND AGREE TO RESOLVE ANY DISPUTE BY ARBITRATION Is it actually possible to waive the right to resolution of disputes in a court of law?
- throwanem 10y ago
  Ironically, that question can be finally answered only by a judge.
  - moomin 10y ago
    It appears that Oracle doesn't really believe in these clauses: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/26/oracle_sues_employee_undo_arbitration_loss/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/26/oracle_sues_employe... TL;DR; Arbitration clauses are for exploiting the little guy. If the arbitration goes against the big guy, he sues.
- user5994461 10y ago
  In the EU, it is definitely not.
  - d_theorist 10y ago
    Can you explain why?
    - PeterisP 10y ago
      EU consumer rights laws state that such clauses are not valid in consumer contracts, and that's it, no contract can change that. e.g. EU directive on unfair terms in consumer contracts back from 1993 (implemented in relevant national laws separately in each country) http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:31993L0013&from=EN http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX... : Article 3-1 "A contractual term which has not been individually negotiated shall be regarded as unfair if, contrary to the requirement of good faith, it causes a significant imbalance in the parties' rights and obligations arising under the contract, to the detriment of the consumer" Article 6-1 "Member States shall lay down that unfair terms used in a contract concluded with a consumer by a seller or supplier shall, as provided for under their national law, not be binding on the consumer and that the contract shall continue to bind the parties upon those terms if it is capable of continuing in existence without the unfair terms." ... and from the examples of terms considered unfair per se: "(q) excluding or hindering the consumer s right to take legal action or exercise any other legal remedy, particularly by requiring the consumer to take disputes exclusively to arbitration not covered by legal provisions" You can have dispute resolution by arbitration in most cases, but you can't mandate dispute resolution only by arbitration, you can't waive the right to sue.
bruceb 10y ago
One could imagine a world where you get on a now fly list for all transit. The door of a autonomous vehicle will not open as you have been banned.
- VLM 10y ago
  Soon people will be "no platformed" off transit for political reasons.
  - bartread 10y ago
    Arguably this already happened for a while with Uber and Greyball.
- undersuit 10y ago
  One can also imagine a world where government can't or won't do this because the government is beholden or respectful to all citizens.
  - marssaxman 10y ago
    Yes, certainly, in much the same way that one can imagine a world where everyone is entitled to a free pony.
a_imho 10y ago
And when/if that happens we will complain our streets have been stolen [1] [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13854367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13854367
- sevensor 10y ago
  We are terrifyingly close to a world in which cyclists and pedestrians are forbidden to use the road network. As self-driving cars increase in popularity, we'll see more thoroughfares from which we're banned for our own safety.
  - lolc 10y ago
    I agree but I had a cynical chuckle there. Pedestrians and cyclists will not be banned "for their own safety". They will be banned for holding up traffic. Autonomous cars have to go slower whenever autonomous humans are nearby. Unpredictable humans slow the flow of traffic.
  - a_imho 10y ago
    I don't think pedestrians are allowed on the roads and cyclists can only use them if there are no separate bicycle paths. We are already there.
  - Doxin 10y ago
    That's an awfully americentric view though. Compare for example to the netherlands. Over here people would probably look at you like you are a little batty for not owning a bicycle.
mattmanser 10y ago
There's nothing insightful in the quote from John Zimmer or this article. Not owning what you use has been possible for centuries and technology hasn't suddenly enabled it. Renting houses has been done for millenia, Libraries has been around for centuries, Radio has been around for a century and TV has allowed you to watch films and videos for decades. Renting a car as you need it has been possible for decades too. It's just inconvenient and expensive at the moment. Why do people still buy houses? Why did they buy records? Why did they buy books? People like owning things, having control over them. Owning a car grants you independence, a mobile base, that a self-drive rental can't grant. Are all rented cars going to come with pre-setup kiddy seats? What about the dog cage in the back? I can see families using a self-drive rental for a secondary car, but not their primary car. And sharing has negatives, especially if automated. How long before shared cars stink of McDonalds as the previous rider just bought one? Or skunk because the last occupant was on a munchie run? Cars aren't prohibitively expensive, owning one is a status statement, the future of cars isn't going to be like Spotify without heavy penalties happening for owning a car.
- ghthor 10y ago
  I personally enjoy owning and taking care of things because it only takes one lazy person to break something or one person that doesn't wash properly to make something gross. I'd see myself as a caretaker of equipment and belongings using my own judgement to loan the right tool to the right person. Someone that shows care and returns items in the condition they were given vs. someone who returns items broken with excuses, consistently, over and over. Yeah, that second person, they're getting the shit end of the share stick at my shop. It's sort of terrifying this idea, that we'll share more, is breaching now. I feel(anecdotal) that individuals in this society are becoming LESS responsible and and giving less care to the items they are responsible for which is a bad combination with a sharing model. Here is where I'd adopt a shared ownership of large items with perhaps a web of trust(ala kernal development style) to manage high quality time sharing of tools. But maybe this concern is moot once recycling, manufacturing, and cleaning become sufficiently automated that people can be lazy gross slobs that can't be bothered to clean and take care of shared space. Disclaimer, I'm incredibly cynical after watching the newly cleaned NYC subway tunnels and tracks accumulate litter within hours. Also having troublesome roommates that live like slobs, are having trouble with infections but don't seem to understand that their living space needs to be cleaned...
falcolas 10y ago
> With Netflix and streaming services, DVD ownership became obsolete. Spotify has made it unnecessary to own CDs and MP3s. Funny, I still own quite a few DVDs. They're really nice, since I can watch them at any time, and I don't have to worry about Netflix losing the license to distribute that movie to watch it. I also don't have to worry about distribution algorithms ensuring that I (as a loyal customer) am last in line to watch new DVDs. There's also more than a few DVD's in my binder which aren't available on any streaming or DVD sharing service. The same value is provided by with CDs and MP3's. I listen to a lot of music which isn't available on any streaming service. I also listen to it offline; something which is only marginally available on streaming services. Why would I ever want to do this with my car? How would I handle emergencies, when the hospital is about 30 miles away (and an Ambulance is thus a 60 minute trip)? How would I get to work on time on a daily basis? What happens when the internet is out? What happens if/when the automated driving is not sufficient to drive in the snowstorms that are regular occurrences in my part of the country?
- frandroid 10y ago
  You know, some people already don't own cars do fine. :)
  - falcolas 10y ago
    Some, yes. If you live in a city with a good public transport system and affordable housing within the reach of that transport system, you can probably do it. Of course, you probably wouldn't own a car in the first place, so this doesn't offer much in the form of practical benefits. Would it work for the majority of (I'll go with US, since that's where I live and work) the country? No. I know of a few people who attempt it in my city, and they are all paying through the nose for the privilege of not owning a car. Any savings they may have had by not having to buy or maintain a car have been swallowed 3-4 times over by the increased housing costs. Plus, they get to walk or bike through blizzards to get to work. Wheee!
    - MoarCarsNeeded 10y ago
      Would it work for the _actual_ majority of the country, like, you know, the cities? Yes. Landmass is meaningless. I know of a few people who attempt to live outside the city, and they are all paying through the nose in time alone for the privilege of living far away from everything and owning/maintaining a car. Any savings they may have by cheap housing cost has been swallowed 6-8 times over by the increased wasted time to do literally anything. Plus, they get to partake in an activity highly likely to result in injury or death at least twice a day! Wheee!
tacon 10y ago
Eventually the second amendment right to bear arms will become irrelevant if you have no ability to move effectively. If nothing else, all the other self-driving cars will be commandeered by the network to box in a rouge car driven by a human. Many freedoms presume the ability to move effectively and efficiently.
- teddyh 10y ago
  I assume you meant “a rogue car”.
squozzer 10y ago
Going against my usual grain here on HN, I feel bullish about shared automobiles. There's too much financial upside to renting one if we can iron out the techincal and financial wrinkles. And sure, the wealthy, or at least those who enjoy having a personal vehicle enough to pay for maintenance, insurance, etc., will probably still be able to own one. The perfect plan -- in my mind anyway -- has the following aspects: 1) The autonomous cars have sufficient coordination among themselves to eliminate certain aggravating characteristics of human-piloted cars, e.g. the accordion/rubber-necking effect. This is not an essential feature, but might help sell the cars to an understandably skeptic public. 2) Power source is electric batteries which can be easily swapped out. 3) Home bases to keep cars close to their customers -- a good re-use for obsolete retail properties. Cars which have completed their rounds return to their home base for battery swaps, cleaning, maintenance, etc. 4) Plans for different needs -- e.g. 5-day/week commuting plan, plus on-call for weekends. Customers could craft plans to suit their needs. 5) Human-piloted cars might need certain restrictions such as limiting their access during peak traffic times. My personal inclination would be to allow unrestricted road access to nights and weekends. 6) Not all of the cars need to deliver humans -- others could deliver packages. That said, autonomous cars could be made obsolete themselves should society decide to pursue and adopt somethings such as telepresence, but my money says that those who write checks (i.e. bosses) will always be control freaks who enjoy making their serfs miserable, so autonomous cars look more viable in the near term.
edem 10y ago
What if an artist pulls his stuff from Spotify? You have to bux his stuff if you are interested. Spotify and its ilk are a leaky abstraction (sadly) and you will end up missing stuff (or live with the fact that it is unavailable). Note thet this _happened_ to me.

42 points by exolymph 10y ago

I think the idea of not owning a car or other personal transportation is going to take more time that the examples of DVDs/CDs/etc will. Owning your own transportation imparts freedom or the sense of it and if you look at former communist countries what exploded out the door when it was available, automobile ownership. So until driver less cars and the costs of using such transportation on a per use basis becomes so cheap as to not matter personal ownership ain't going anywhere. if anything the advent of EV or FC cars with autonomous features will let even more people own vehicles who can't or keep them longer.

pif 10y ago
> I think the idea of not owning a car or other personal transportation is going to take more time that the examples of DVDs/CDs/etc will. Especially because of the copy-ability of the songs/videos with respect to the uniqueness of a car. In other words, a song can be sent to multiple listeners in parallel, while a car, at a given instant, is either serving me of another person. I'd hate having to trust a fleet of autonomous cars on Super Bowl Sunday or Black Friday!
- VLM 10y ago
  "Black Friday" The fleet issue is critical to the failure of shared cars. The problem of the rich young urbanite traveling a few blocks on a statistically random time frame (bar hopping perhaps) is solved by car sharing services, yet they're a vanishingly small fraction of the population. For example the kind of employer that is so geologic in thinking that they don't allow remote work is going to be so backwards as to forbid flex time hours, so two hundred 9-5 jobs implies someone has to own two hundred individual cars, and if the employees don't directly own the two hundred cars all you get is a useless middleman skimming off profit. Public grade school isn't remote or flex time and observation shows roughly one parent-car per kid. No matter how time flexible life is for rich young adult urbanites, normie life isn't like that. Too much of normie life involves hundreds to tens of thousands of people running on a tight fixed schedule. Back in the bad old days of limited long distance telecom bandwidth, you couldn't financially provision to survive mothers day, for example, so on mothers day people got fast busy signals sometimes. That also made it extremely expensive and encouraged companies to set up their own LD routings. In the long run this will happen with shared cars and after enough firings for failure to get to work and enough CPS calls for failure to pick up little kids people will get tired of the expense of shared cars and save a lot of money by owning their own car.

Heliosmaster 10y ago

I also find worrying that all these developments have on the horizon an extreme individualistic view of society. Why nobody is considering the option that you might have a self-driving car whose ownership is shared among different family groups (e.g. all the people in the same apt block)?

nerdponx 10y ago
I never even thought to consider it. But now that you mention it, it's a great idea. In the United States at least, we have been indoctrinated into this idea that cars are in individual possession, when really if you look at what our car is and does that makes very little sense.
- ghthor 10y ago
  We've also been indoctrinated that living out of our car is shameful or below us, which is sad. With the current state of our tech we could build an amazingly small moving vehicle that also could operate as a 2 person, bed, kitchen, and food storage locker. Combine that with automation and a sane wireless tech and you're now equipped a fully mobile human being.
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    Doubly odd in that, if you reduce further to a backpack then you're back to a romantic figure, roughing it in the wild.
  - nerdponx 10y ago
    The current doctrines are ideal for big business: make sure they buy a house (support the Realtors), and make sure they buy a car (support the auto industry).
    - nradov 10y ago
      The current doctrines are ideal for people who enjoy having some privacy, space, and freedom to customize their environments.

d_theorist 10y ago

>YOU AND LYFT MUTUALLY AGREE TO WAIVE OUR RESPECTIVE RIGHTS TO RESOLUTION OF DISPUTES IN A COURT OF LAW BY A JUDGE OR JURY AND AGREE TO RESOLVE ANY DISPUTE BY ARBITRATION Is it actually possible to waive the right to resolution of disputes in a court of law?

throwanem 10y ago
Ironically, that question can be finally answered only by a judge.
- moomin 10y ago
  It appears that Oracle doesn't really believe in these clauses: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/26/oracle_sues_employee_undo_arbitration_loss/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/26/oracle_sues_employe... TL;DR; Arbitration clauses are for exploiting the little guy. If the arbitration goes against the big guy, he sues.
user5994461 10y ago
In the EU, it is definitely not.
- d_theorist 10y ago
  Can you explain why?
  - PeterisP 10y ago
    EU consumer rights laws state that such clauses are not valid in consumer contracts, and that's it, no contract can change that. e.g. EU directive on unfair terms in consumer contracts back from 1993 (implemented in relevant national laws separately in each country) http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:31993L0013&from=EN http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX... : Article 3-1 "A contractual term which has not been individually negotiated shall be regarded as unfair if, contrary to the requirement of good faith, it causes a significant imbalance in the parties' rights and obligations arising under the contract, to the detriment of the consumer" Article 6-1 "Member States shall lay down that unfair terms used in a contract concluded with a consumer by a seller or supplier shall, as provided for under their national law, not be binding on the consumer and that the contract shall continue to bind the parties upon those terms if it is capable of continuing in existence without the unfair terms." ... and from the examples of terms considered unfair per se: "(q) excluding or hindering the consumer s right to take legal action or exercise any other legal remedy, particularly by requiring the consumer to take disputes exclusively to arbitration not covered by legal provisions" You can have dispute resolution by arbitration in most cases, but you can't mandate dispute resolution only by arbitration, you can't waive the right to sue.

bruceb 10y ago

One could imagine a world where you get on a now fly list for all transit. The door of a autonomous vehicle will not open as you have been banned.

VLM 10y ago
Soon people will be "no platformed" off transit for political reasons.
- bartread 10y ago
  Arguably this already happened for a while with Uber and Greyball.
undersuit 10y ago
One can also imagine a world where government can't or won't do this because the government is beholden or respectful to all citizens.
- marssaxman 10y ago
  Yes, certainly, in much the same way that one can imagine a world where everyone is entitled to a free pony.

a_imho 10y ago

And when/if that happens we will complain our streets have been stolen [1] [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13854367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13854367

sevensor 10y ago
We are terrifyingly close to a world in which cyclists and pedestrians are forbidden to use the road network. As self-driving cars increase in popularity, we'll see more thoroughfares from which we're banned for our own safety.
- lolc 10y ago
  I agree but I had a cynical chuckle there. Pedestrians and cyclists will not be banned "for their own safety". They will be banned for holding up traffic. Autonomous cars have to go slower whenever autonomous humans are nearby. Unpredictable humans slow the flow of traffic.
- a_imho 10y ago
  I don't think pedestrians are allowed on the roads and cyclists can only use them if there are no separate bicycle paths. We are already there.
- Doxin 10y ago
  That's an awfully americentric view though. Compare for example to the netherlands. Over here people would probably look at you like you are a little batty for not owning a bicycle.

mattmanser 10y ago

There's nothing insightful in the quote from John Zimmer or this article. Not owning what you use has been possible for centuries and technology hasn't suddenly enabled it. Renting houses has been done for millenia, Libraries has been around for centuries, Radio has been around for a century and TV has allowed you to watch films and videos for decades. Renting a car as you need it has been possible for decades too. It's just inconvenient and expensive at the moment. Why do people still buy houses? Why did they buy records? Why did they buy books? People like owning things, having control over them. Owning a car grants you independence, a mobile base, that a self-drive rental can't grant. Are all rented cars going to come with pre-setup kiddy seats? What about the dog cage in the back? I can see families using a self-drive rental for a secondary car, but not their primary car. And sharing has negatives, especially if automated. How long before shared cars stink of McDonalds as the previous rider just bought one? Or skunk because the last occupant was on a munchie run? Cars aren't prohibitively expensive, owning one is a status statement, the future of cars isn't going to be like Spotify without heavy penalties happening for owning a car.

ghthor 10y ago
I personally enjoy owning and taking care of things because it only takes one lazy person to break something or one person that doesn't wash properly to make something gross. I'd see myself as a caretaker of equipment and belongings using my own judgement to loan the right tool to the right person. Someone that shows care and returns items in the condition they were given vs. someone who returns items broken with excuses, consistently, over and over. Yeah, that second person, they're getting the shit end of the share stick at my shop. It's sort of terrifying this idea, that we'll share more, is breaching now. I feel(anecdotal) that individuals in this society are becoming LESS responsible and and giving less care to the items they are responsible for which is a bad combination with a sharing model. Here is where I'd adopt a shared ownership of large items with perhaps a web of trust(ala kernal development style) to manage high quality time sharing of tools. But maybe this concern is moot once recycling, manufacturing, and cleaning become sufficiently automated that people can be lazy gross slobs that can't be bothered to clean and take care of shared space. Disclaimer, I'm incredibly cynical after watching the newly cleaned NYC subway tunnels and tracks accumulate litter within hours. Also having troublesome roommates that live like slobs, are having trouble with infections but don't seem to understand that their living space needs to be cleaned...

falcolas 10y ago

> With Netflix and streaming services, DVD ownership became obsolete. Spotify has made it unnecessary to own CDs and MP3s. Funny, I still own quite a few DVDs. They're really nice, since I can watch them at any time, and I don't have to worry about Netflix losing the license to distribute that movie to watch it. I also don't have to worry about distribution algorithms ensuring that I (as a loyal customer) am last in line to watch new DVDs. There's also more than a few DVD's in my binder which aren't available on any streaming or DVD sharing service. The same value is provided by with CDs and MP3's. I listen to a lot of music which isn't available on any streaming service. I also listen to it offline; something which is only marginally available on streaming services. Why would I ever want to do this with my car? How would I handle emergencies, when the hospital is about 30 miles away (and an Ambulance is thus a 60 minute trip)? How would I get to work on time on a daily basis? What happens when the internet is out? What happens if/when the automated driving is not sufficient to drive in the snowstorms that are regular occurrences in my part of the country?

frandroid 10y ago
You know, some people already don't own cars do fine. :)
- falcolas 10y ago
  Some, yes. If you live in a city with a good public transport system and affordable housing within the reach of that transport system, you can probably do it. Of course, you probably wouldn't own a car in the first place, so this doesn't offer much in the form of practical benefits. Would it work for the majority of (I'll go with US, since that's where I live and work) the country? No. I know of a few people who attempt it in my city, and they are all paying through the nose for the privilege of not owning a car. Any savings they may have had by not having to buy or maintain a car have been swallowed 3-4 times over by the increased housing costs. Plus, they get to walk or bike through blizzards to get to work. Wheee!
  - MoarCarsNeeded 10y ago
    Would it work for the _actual_ majority of the country, like, you know, the cities? Yes. Landmass is meaningless. I know of a few people who attempt to live outside the city, and they are all paying through the nose in time alone for the privilege of living far away from everything and owning/maintaining a car. Any savings they may have by cheap housing cost has been swallowed 6-8 times over by the increased wasted time to do literally anything. Plus, they get to partake in an activity highly likely to result in injury or death at least twice a day! Wheee!

tacon 10y ago

Eventually the second amendment right to bear arms will become irrelevant if you have no ability to move effectively. If nothing else, all the other self-driving cars will be commandeered by the network to box in a rouge car driven by a human. Many freedoms presume the ability to move effectively and efficiently.

teddyh 10y ago
I assume you meant “a rogue car”.

squozzer 10y ago

Going against my usual grain here on HN, I feel bullish about shared automobiles. There's too much financial upside to renting one if we can iron out the techincal and financial wrinkles. And sure, the wealthy, or at least those who enjoy having a personal vehicle enough to pay for maintenance, insurance, etc., will probably still be able to own one. The perfect plan -- in my mind anyway -- has the following aspects: 1) The autonomous cars have sufficient coordination among themselves to eliminate certain aggravating characteristics of human-piloted cars, e.g. the accordion/rubber-necking effect. This is not an essential feature, but might help sell the cars to an understandably skeptic public. 2) Power source is electric batteries which can be easily swapped out. 3) Home bases to keep cars close to their customers -- a good re-use for obsolete retail properties. Cars which have completed their rounds return to their home base for battery swaps, cleaning, maintenance, etc. 4) Plans for different needs -- e.g. 5-day/week commuting plan, plus on-call for weekends. Customers could craft plans to suit their needs. 5) Human-piloted cars might need certain restrictions such as limiting their access during peak traffic times. My personal inclination would be to allow unrestricted road access to nights and weekends. 6) Not all of the cars need to deliver humans -- others could deliver packages. That said, autonomous cars could be made obsolete themselves should society decide to pursue and adopt somethings such as telepresence, but my money says that those who write checks (i.e. bosses) will always be control freaks who enjoy making their serfs miserable, so autonomous cars look more viable in the near term.

edem 10y ago

What if an artist pulls his stuff from Spotify? You have to bux his stuff if you are interested. Spotify and its ilk are a leaky abstraction (sadly) and you will end up missing stuff (or live with the fact that it is unavailable). Note thet this _happened_ to me.