5 ms·

I think once we have automated cars people in major cities will stop owning cars. Membership to a "club" makes a ton more sense if you can call up a car on an a

I think once we have automated cars people in major cities will stop owning cars. Membership to a "club" makes a ton more sense if you can call up a car on an app and it drives itself o your location.

kylehotchkiss 9y ago
I'm very curious. How will people react when people start smoking in these cars? I really can't wrap my mind around these cars having a well maintained interior without a driver to ask rule violators to leave.
- Lio 9y ago
  I know you're really talking about the state of the interior in general but with regard to smoke they could be fitted with immobilising smoke alarms. If the smoke alarm goes off the car pulls over and stops at the side of the road. The rental company will already knows who in the car at any one time (or at least who has rented it) and they can just issue a massive cleaning fine. Like setting off an airline toilet smoke detector.
- DanBC 9y ago
  The car will take photos of the occupants, stop the journey, send them a bill for cleaning, and add them to a banned user list.
6d6b73 9y ago
Unfortunately this will make the pollution worse. For example if I drive my car to work, my car does 6 miles round trip . If someone else does the same in total we did 12 miles. However if we share one car and the car needs to go even a mile between two places, it will have to drive significantly more.
- petercooper 9y ago
  If automated cars are billed per mile, you could still arrange the same sort of multi pickup trip you would ordinarily, I'd hope.
- headhunter 9y ago
  Well, that's an interesting problem to solve. In the situation you propose, you have would-be car owners who now share a car. That eliminates the pollution involved in the manufacturing of one car from the story. And yes, if the car had to make back and forth trips from a central location, that would be inefficient. But I think the idea is to have a network of shared infrastructure (similar to uber), so that if someone needs a car, they can have access to the closest available one.
  - 6d6b73 9y ago
    Even for uber-like car sharing/pooling, each car will have to travel more, and occasionally will be driving empty (when autonomous).
- DiThi 9y ago
  How about renting the cars with shared cost per mile? That would encourage users to always share them when possible.
- revelation 9y ago
  You're driving a 3 mile distance? This is exactly why electric cars are not the messiah of transportation.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - 6d6b73 9y ago
    Well, I can't walk on the highway so yes I have to drive.
- DanBC 9y ago
  Cars pollute significantly more at the start of the journey. One long journey is better than 2 short journeys.
pvaldes 9y ago
A fancy idea, but I see several problems with assurance companies and laws. Will you agree for example to be billed more for your assurance company because one of the co-proprietaries of your car is a bad driver? And there is also the real use time, ie: you buy a car that is crashed each month when used by other guys and must remain in boxes to be repaired four months/year.
- felipeko 9y ago
  Both your problems (bad driving, buying a car) seems to completely ignore the 'autonomous' and 'club' parts of the idea.
  - pvaldes 9y ago
    If does not matter if your car is autonomous when you use it in different roads, streets or contexts. Two people will use it and one of them will have more accidents or more wear than the other. Each street has different probability to having a crash or get your tires stoled. And 'club' means that you pay an average, you'll pay for both your errors and the other's errors. The idea that "everybody will want to share their car with strangers" is probably just this, a marketing desire IMHO. Bad drivers will want to share the car for sure, but a lot of common people would probably frown at the idea.
vorpalhex 9y ago
I go back and forth on this idea. It sounds very convenient, but then I also think about the crap I keep in my own vehicle that I like having close at hand: a serious first aid kit, some food and water, a cheap picnic style blanket, flash light, multitool. Stuff that I'm probably not going to carry on me but that I want nearby in case there's an accident or someone gets hurt or if I get stuck somewhere for a few hours without warning.
- d3ad1ysp0rk 9y ago
  Any reason that couldn't be in the trunk of a shared car? Each piece could have a sensor in it to know when it was removed/returned, and things like bottled water/snacks could simply be charged with the ride. Additionally, if you're concerned about recycling/$ for the water, you could carry a bottle with you, which is not an unusual change of habit.
  - Sharlin 9y ago
    Yeah. Around here cars are required by law to have first-aid kits anyway.
    - paulmd 9y ago
      OT, but this is very sensible. In addition to the usual stuff you'd find in a kit, I threw in a four-pack of single-serve Krazy Glue (cyanoacrylate superglue), which is useful for controlling bleeding (a spray might even be nicer). Since I live in a climate that sees actual winters, I also included a pair of mylar emergency blankets (they also make a "sleeping bag" style), and I of course keep the usual extra set of boots/gloves/hat in the trunk during winter as well (totally standard around here). I'd be interested to hear any other "unorthodox" additions to the usual kit, if anyone has suggestions.
    - vorpalhex 9y ago
      That's a good idea. What's the locality?
  - sokoloff 9y ago
durgiston 9y ago
Then, maybe we can use this data to find some popular routes and just have cars driving along them, stopping at popular locations for pick up and drop off. Now, stop me if you heard this one before, but maybe if lots of people use a route, we'll have bigger cars, with like a ~50 person capacity, go less frequently, you know, for efficiency.
- baldfat 9y ago
  Automated cars are not a replacement for buses (I used a bus today in fact) but for the need to drive out of town.
  - Sharlin 9y ago
    And for transporting things that are not feasible to transport by bus.
- barrkel 9y ago
  Personal vehicles eliminate waiting. Waiting is the biggest problem with mass transit. It's preferable to have slightly longer journey times as long as your expected wait time is less. The tube runs every few minutes on popular lines, and don't suffer from congestion (when there isn't problems on the line), so they're acceptable. Trains running on a timetable less so (they make you pay much more attention to the time, and they're frequently delayed and increasingly often cancelled), while buses just feel like a massive waste of time.
giobox 9y ago
I think this, plus e-bikes are probably going to feature hugely in future of transport in many major urban areas. e-bikes are starting to get really good, much cheaper and usually don't require anything like the regulatory approvals, driver licencing or running costs cars do. I can certainly imagine myself using a hypothetical autonomous car club augmented with an e-bike for shorter ad-hoc journeys ("crap I'm out of milk" etc) very happily.
- 6DM 9y ago
  We can probably expect licensing, stickers and taxes to arrive once bicycles are a main source of transportation. Oregon already floated the idea: https://taxfoundation.org/oregon-bike-tax/ https://taxfoundation.org/oregon-bike-tax/
- Sharlin 9y ago
  Why e-bike just for "short ad-hoc journeys"? I mean, people already use regular non-electric bikes for far more than that.
  - giobox 9y ago
    It was just one example. Of course you could use any kind of bike for many types of journey.
  - simonbarker87 9y ago
    My business partner is a perfect example of this. He tried cycling to work on a normal bike but hated it as he always arrived clammy or sweaty and felt gross for the rest of the day. He then picked up a GTech electric bike and has since all but ditched his car for journeys less than 5 miles (which is most of his journeys). He, like most people, would not consider himself a cyclist and as such is less willing to put up with the post exercise issues of using a bike as a primary mode of transport. I'm a keen cyclist and am happy to put up with the faff of a change of clothes etc but I can see how it's off putting for most people. Also, rain.
    - baldfat 9y ago

kylehotchkiss 9y ago

I'm very curious. How will people react when people start smoking in these cars? I really can't wrap my mind around these cars having a well maintained interior without a driver to ask rule violators to leave.

Lio 9y ago
I know you're really talking about the state of the interior in general but with regard to smoke they could be fitted with immobilising smoke alarms. If the smoke alarm goes off the car pulls over and stops at the side of the road. The rental company will already knows who in the car at any one time (or at least who has rented it) and they can just issue a massive cleaning fine. Like setting off an airline toilet smoke detector.
DanBC 9y ago
The car will take photos of the occupants, stop the journey, send them a bill for cleaning, and add them to a banned user list.

6d6b73 9y ago

Unfortunately this will make the pollution worse. For example if I drive my car to work, my car does 6 miles round trip . If someone else does the same in total we did 12 miles. However if we share one car and the car needs to go even a mile between two places, it will have to drive significantly more.

petercooper 9y ago
If automated cars are billed per mile, you could still arrange the same sort of multi pickup trip you would ordinarily, I'd hope.
headhunter 9y ago
Well, that's an interesting problem to solve. In the situation you propose, you have would-be car owners who now share a car. That eliminates the pollution involved in the manufacturing of one car from the story. And yes, if the car had to make back and forth trips from a central location, that would be inefficient. But I think the idea is to have a network of shared infrastructure (similar to uber), so that if someone needs a car, they can have access to the closest available one.
- 6d6b73 9y ago
  Even for uber-like car sharing/pooling, each car will have to travel more, and occasionally will be driving empty (when autonomous).
DiThi 9y ago
How about renting the cars with shared cost per mile? That would encourage users to always share them when possible.
revelation 9y ago
You're driving a 3 mile distance? This is exactly why electric cars are not the messiah of transportation.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- 6d6b73 9y ago
  Well, I can't walk on the highway so yes I have to drive.
DanBC 9y ago
Cars pollute significantly more at the start of the journey. One long journey is better than 2 short journeys.

pvaldes 9y ago

A fancy idea, but I see several problems with assurance companies and laws. Will you agree for example to be billed more for your assurance company because one of the co-proprietaries of your car is a bad driver? And there is also the real use time, ie: you buy a car that is crashed each month when used by other guys and must remain in boxes to be repaired four months/year.

felipeko 9y ago
Both your problems (bad driving, buying a car) seems to completely ignore the 'autonomous' and 'club' parts of the idea.
- pvaldes 9y ago
  If does not matter if your car is autonomous when you use it in different roads, streets or contexts. Two people will use it and one of them will have more accidents or more wear than the other. Each street has different probability to having a crash or get your tires stoled. And 'club' means that you pay an average, you'll pay for both your errors and the other's errors. The idea that "everybody will want to share their car with strangers" is probably just this, a marketing desire IMHO. Bad drivers will want to share the car for sure, but a lot of common people would probably frown at the idea.

vorpalhex 9y ago

I go back and forth on this idea. It sounds very convenient, but then I also think about the crap I keep in my own vehicle that I like having close at hand: a serious first aid kit, some food and water, a cheap picnic style blanket, flash light, multitool. Stuff that I'm probably not going to carry on me but that I want nearby in case there's an accident or someone gets hurt or if I get stuck somewhere for a few hours without warning.

d3ad1ysp0rk 9y ago
Any reason that couldn't be in the trunk of a shared car? Each piece could have a sensor in it to know when it was removed/returned, and things like bottled water/snacks could simply be charged with the ride. Additionally, if you're concerned about recycling/$ for the water, you could carry a bottle with you, which is not an unusual change of habit.
- Sharlin 9y ago
  Yeah. Around here cars are required by law to have first-aid kits anyway.
  - paulmd 9y ago
    OT, but this is very sensible. In addition to the usual stuff you'd find in a kit, I threw in a four-pack of single-serve Krazy Glue (cyanoacrylate superglue), which is useful for controlling bleeding (a spray might even be nicer). Since I live in a climate that sees actual winters, I also included a pair of mylar emergency blankets (they also make a "sleeping bag" style), and I of course keep the usual extra set of boots/gloves/hat in the trunk during winter as well (totally standard around here). I'd be interested to hear any other "unorthodox" additions to the usual kit, if anyone has suggestions.
  - vorpalhex 9y ago
    That's a good idea. What's the locality?
- sokoloff 9y ago

durgiston 9y ago

Then, maybe we can use this data to find some popular routes and just have cars driving along them, stopping at popular locations for pick up and drop off. Now, stop me if you heard this one before, but maybe if lots of people use a route, we'll have bigger cars, with like a ~50 person capacity, go less frequently, you know, for efficiency.

baldfat 9y ago
Automated cars are not a replacement for buses (I used a bus today in fact) but for the need to drive out of town.
- Sharlin 9y ago
  And for transporting things that are not feasible to transport by bus.
barrkel 9y ago
Personal vehicles eliminate waiting. Waiting is the biggest problem with mass transit. It's preferable to have slightly longer journey times as long as your expected wait time is less. The tube runs every few minutes on popular lines, and don't suffer from congestion (when there isn't problems on the line), so they're acceptable. Trains running on a timetable less so (they make you pay much more attention to the time, and they're frequently delayed and increasingly often cancelled), while buses just feel like a massive waste of time.

giobox 9y ago

I think this, plus e-bikes are probably going to feature hugely in future of transport in many major urban areas. e-bikes are starting to get really good, much cheaper and usually don't require anything like the regulatory approvals, driver licencing or running costs cars do. I can certainly imagine myself using a hypothetical autonomous car club augmented with an e-bike for shorter ad-hoc journeys ("crap I'm out of milk" etc) very happily.

6DM 9y ago
We can probably expect licensing, stickers and taxes to arrive once bicycles are a main source of transportation. Oregon already floated the idea: https://taxfoundation.org/oregon-bike-tax/ https://taxfoundation.org/oregon-bike-tax/
Sharlin 9y ago
Why e-bike just for "short ad-hoc journeys"? I mean, people already use regular non-electric bikes for far more than that.
- giobox 9y ago
  It was just one example. Of course you could use any kind of bike for many types of journey.
- simonbarker87 9y ago
  My business partner is a perfect example of this. He tried cycling to work on a normal bike but hated it as he always arrived clammy or sweaty and felt gross for the rest of the day. He then picked up a GTech electric bike and has since all but ditched his car for journeys less than 5 miles (which is most of his journeys). He, like most people, would not consider himself a cyclist and as such is less willing to put up with the post exercise issues of using a bike as a primary mode of transport. I'm a keen cyclist and am happy to put up with the faff of a change of clothes etc but I can see how it's off putting for most people. Also, rain.
  - baldfat 9y ago