4 ms·

> Will car ownership be killed with self-driving cars? Probably. It seems way more convenient and efficient to be able to summon a car to any location on deman

by Ajedi32 10y ago

> Will car ownership be killed with self-driving cars? Probably. It seems way more convenient and efficient to be able to summon a car to any location on demand than to have just one car that you use for everything. No more parking, no more refueling, no more vehicle maintenance; just push a button and a car shows up within minutes (or in some cases, seconds) to pick you up, and step out of the vehicle when you reach your destination. Want a specific model or paint color? It's just a couple taps on your phone away. Car breaks down and needs a tow? Replacement gets summoned automatically, and the car company credits a couple bucks to your account for the inconvenience. If that kind of service becomes available at a reasonable price point, I suspect it won't be long before car ownership becomes much less common.

vkou 10y ago
It's also more convenient to always eat out, but the world won't become a better place if home-cooking dies. Under the no-private ownership model, you are going to get screwed by surge pricing.
- Qwertious 10y ago
  Presumably slightly less screwed if you reserve beforehand, though, and I suspect what would actually happen is massive carpooling during peak times (also, small one-person cars that are cheaper)
plopz 10y ago
How do you solve the issue of extreme demand M-F at 8am and 5pm and low demand any other time?
- Ajedi32 10y ago
  Same way any other business that has brief periods of high demand (electric companies, ISPs, restaurants, etc) does; you anticipate the demand and make sure you have enough capacity available at those times to meet it. With a self-driving car fleet there are probably lots of other little tricks you can do too, like offer discounts for sharing a vehicle with another passenger, or use machine learning to predict what locations will have the highest demand during particular parts of the day and move portions of the fleet to cover those areas.
  - vkou 10y ago
    My non-ML prediction of which locations will have the biggest demand in Seattle: People on the West Side who want to get to the East Side, and people on the East Side who want to get to the West Side. (You'd figure that maybe optimizing this would bring more value to society then making a car drive itself...) 8am-9am, 4pm-6pm. You don't need ML to figure this out - just look at a Google Maps traffic heatmap in rush hour. Carpools, vanpools, already exist. For some reason, though, the vast majority of the cars parked on the freeway are single-occupant vehicles. I can't imagine why people aren't keen on sharing their vehicle with a stranger, or pay triple surge pricing to get home when it starts raining. This community is highly opposed to relying on web services that they don't control... Yet it is perfectly OK with ditching their car, and instead relying on a car-on-demand service to get to and from work?
- MarkMc 10y ago
  Same as Uber does now - surge pricing and car pooling.
Noos 10y ago
No, it won't be efficient. People here simply are not thinking realistically. I want to go out to shop. Right now, I get out in my car, drive for twenty minutes to the mall, and leave when I want to do so. My kid is with me, but on the way back he gets sick, so I have to cut short my drive and head back home. he throws up in the car. I clean it when I get home, and go back out to the store five minutes away by car to pick up some medicine for him as my wife watches him. HN "solution." I page a car. It takes maybe ten to fifteen minutes to drive to me from the last passenger, since it only is designed to head back to dispatch every so often. The car reeks of weed, because why not light up a bud? It's not like they can arrest you or anything. I punch in a complaint on the app. We get to the mall. I shop, and summon a car. This time it takes a little less, maybe five to ten minutes, because the mall is closer to dispatch or a place where a lot of cars get dumped off. I program my next shopping route. My kid gets sick mid-ride though. I have to hit the emergency button, and reroute back to my house. My kid gets sick in the car. When we get home, I have to hit another button to "rent" the car another period so I can clean it, but it still gets sent back due to the emergency button being hit, and I can hit with a nice big fee due to cleanliness issues. I now need to go back out to get medicine, but five minutes by car is 30-45 min by walking. So it's another 15 minutes to get a car. Even if all goes well, I could be looking at an additional 45 minutes just getting stuff done, as well as cost and loss of passenger quality because I don't own the vehicle. Hell, it could show up at my door full of shit, semen, and vomit, because some homeless guy is using it as his own personal hangout to sleep in. Or it could take even longer because I need to rent a driverless suv so I can bring furniture home to me, and those are relatively rare and command a premium to rent. No one here is thinking of day to day use by all kinds of people, or what benefits ownership provides. I own my car, that means I dont have to worry about it showing up in a horrid state, I don't have to worry about paying large amounts for minor cosmetic damage, I don't have to budget extra time summoning the vehicle on site (which escalates the farther out from a city hub you are...you're doubling your travel time, and this would heavily penalize rural people), and there are a host of issues eliminated as well. Just the fact that I don't need to put a destination in is one thing. I can change my mind en route, I can wander, and if my wife calls me and tells me to come home, I can do so near instantly.
- Ajedi32 10y ago

by Ajedi32 10y ago

vkou 10y ago

It's also more convenient to always eat out, but the world won't become a better place if home-cooking dies. Under the no-private ownership model, you are going to get screwed by surge pricing.

Qwertious 10y ago
Presumably slightly less screwed if you reserve beforehand, though, and I suspect what would actually happen is massive carpooling during peak times (also, small one-person cars that are cheaper)

plopz 10y ago

How do you solve the issue of extreme demand M-F at 8am and 5pm and low demand any other time?

Ajedi32 10y ago
Same way any other business that has brief periods of high demand (electric companies, ISPs, restaurants, etc) does; you anticipate the demand and make sure you have enough capacity available at those times to meet it. With a self-driving car fleet there are probably lots of other little tricks you can do too, like offer discounts for sharing a vehicle with another passenger, or use machine learning to predict what locations will have the highest demand during particular parts of the day and move portions of the fleet to cover those areas.
- vkou 10y ago
  My non-ML prediction of which locations will have the biggest demand in Seattle: People on the West Side who want to get to the East Side, and people on the East Side who want to get to the West Side. (You'd figure that maybe optimizing this would bring more value to society then making a car drive itself...) 8am-9am, 4pm-6pm. You don't need ML to figure this out - just look at a Google Maps traffic heatmap in rush hour. Carpools, vanpools, already exist. For some reason, though, the vast majority of the cars parked on the freeway are single-occupant vehicles. I can't imagine why people aren't keen on sharing their vehicle with a stranger, or pay triple surge pricing to get home when it starts raining. This community is highly opposed to relying on web services that they don't control... Yet it is perfectly OK with ditching their car, and instead relying on a car-on-demand service to get to and from work?
MarkMc 10y ago
Same as Uber does now - surge pricing and car pooling.

Noos 10y ago

No, it won't be efficient. People here simply are not thinking realistically. I want to go out to shop. Right now, I get out in my car, drive for twenty minutes to the mall, and leave when I want to do so. My kid is with me, but on the way back he gets sick, so I have to cut short my drive and head back home. he throws up in the car. I clean it when I get home, and go back out to the store five minutes away by car to pick up some medicine for him as my wife watches him. HN "solution." I page a car. It takes maybe ten to fifteen minutes to drive to me from the last passenger, since it only is designed to head back to dispatch every so often. The car reeks of weed, because why not light up a bud? It's not like they can arrest you or anything. I punch in a complaint on the app. We get to the mall. I shop, and summon a car. This time it takes a little less, maybe five to ten minutes, because the mall is closer to dispatch or a place where a lot of cars get dumped off. I program my next shopping route. My kid gets sick mid-ride though. I have to hit the emergency button, and reroute back to my house. My kid gets sick in the car. When we get home, I have to hit another button to "rent" the car another period so I can clean it, but it still gets sent back due to the emergency button being hit, and I can hit with a nice big fee due to cleanliness issues. I now need to go back out to get medicine, but five minutes by car is 30-45 min by walking. So it's another 15 minutes to get a car. Even if all goes well, I could be looking at an additional 45 minutes just getting stuff done, as well as cost and loss of passenger quality because I don't own the vehicle. Hell, it could show up at my door full of shit, semen, and vomit, because some homeless guy is using it as his own personal hangout to sleep in. Or it could take even longer because I need to rent a driverless suv so I can bring furniture home to me, and those are relatively rare and command a premium to rent. No one here is thinking of day to day use by all kinds of people, or what benefits ownership provides. I own my car, that means I dont have to worry about it showing up in a horrid state, I don't have to worry about paying large amounts for minor cosmetic damage, I don't have to budget extra time summoning the vehicle on site (which escalates the farther out from a city hub you are...you're doubling your travel time, and this would heavily penalize rural people), and there are a host of issues eliminated as well. Just the fact that I don't need to put a destination in is one thing. I can change my mind en route, I can wander, and if my wife calls me and tells me to come home, I can do so near instantly.

Ajedi32 10y ago