3 ms·

IMHO it's fun to think about the economics of autonomous vehicles. For example, here's a neat article on "second order effects" of electric and autonomous cars

IMHO it's fun to think about the economics of autonomous vehicles. For example, here's a neat article on "second order effects" of electric and autonomous cars [1]. (examples: Increased use of autonomous cars could mean less space lost to parking lots in cities. Higher utilization for cars could mean faster turnover (~3 years/car instead of ~10).) One thing to think about: autonomous cars might make a big difference for car-sharing services or trucking, but they're less essential when you're driving the car yourself and parking in your garage. I think traditional cars will be around for a while. (Particularly in lower-density areas where there's less demand for ride-sharing services.) This article [2] suggests regular cars may be around until 2050 or so: "According to IHS, a firm that provides automotive forecasts and insights, sales of autonomous cars, including driver control, will begin by 2025 and could reach 11.8 million in 2035; sometime after 2050, says IHS, almost all vehicles will be autonomous." So your hobby is probably good for another 30 years at least? [1] http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2017/3/20/cars-and-second-order-consequences http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2017/3/20/cars-and-second... [2] http://senseable.mit.edu/papers/pdf/20150803_Claudel_Ratti_FullSpeed_McKinsey.pdf http://senseable.mit.edu/papers/pdf/20150803_Claudel_Ratti_F...

toomuchtodo 9y ago
Can you imagine how much additional livable space is going to be available across the world if people convert their garages into another room? Assuming 12 ft by 22 ft (minimum space for a one car garage, rounding down nation wide to be conservative), that's 264 sq ft. In 2016, there were about 125.82 million households in the United States. That's 33.216 billion sq ft of additional living space! They say they're not making more land; I'd argue we're going to be way more efficient with the land we have in the future.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  You are counting households that live in apartments there. And lots of garages aren't attached (on this block there are 12 garages with 1 being attached to the house). Another way to say 30 billion square feet is 15 million to 30 million housing units. A drop in the bucket of the additional housing that will be needed globally in the coming decades.
  - toomuchtodo 9y ago
    > You are counting households that live in apartments there. Good call, my mistake. > Another way to say 30 billion square feet is 15 million to 30 million housing units. A drop in the bucket of the additional housing that will be needed globally in the coming decades. I don't think this is the case. Population is on the decline in the industrialized world. Africa, Indian, and China need a whole lot of housing though. https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth/ https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth/
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      Census predicts that the US population will grow by tens of millions just in the next 15 years. But note that I said global to begin with. I think letting people move around freely is a fine thing. This link shows a projection Census did in 2012: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/cspan/pop_proj/20121214_cspan_popproj.pdf https://www.census.gov/newsroom/cspan/pop_proj/20121214_cspa... They seem to have killed a bunch of urls, but they do tables of future expected population. The US population is very much expected to exceed 400 million before too long.
  - ghaff 9y ago
    Whether detached or attached, once you get out of denser urban areas, land isn't really the limiting factor. In many cases, a garage is a lot different from livable space. I have an attached garage and you'd probably just tear it down to make living space out of it--and that would just result in a bigger house.
  - fma 9y ago
    Also people use their garage for storage, so not so the space will be recuperated. Hell, some people have so much junk they can't even park their cars in their garage.

toomuchtodo 9y ago

Can you imagine how much additional livable space is going to be available across the world if people convert their garages into another room? Assuming 12 ft by 22 ft (minimum space for a one car garage, rounding down nation wide to be conservative), that's 264 sq ft. In 2016, there were about 125.82 million households in the United States. That's 33.216 billion sq ft of additional living space! They say they're not making more land; I'd argue we're going to be way more efficient with the land we have in the future.

maxerickson 9y ago
You are counting households that live in apartments there. And lots of garages aren't attached (on this block there are 12 garages with 1 being attached to the house). Another way to say 30 billion square feet is 15 million to 30 million housing units. A drop in the bucket of the additional housing that will be needed globally in the coming decades.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  > You are counting households that live in apartments there. Good call, my mistake. > Another way to say 30 billion square feet is 15 million to 30 million housing units. A drop in the bucket of the additional housing that will be needed globally in the coming decades. I don't think this is the case. Population is on the decline in the industrialized world. Africa, Indian, and China need a whole lot of housing though. https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth/ https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth/
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    Census predicts that the US population will grow by tens of millions just in the next 15 years. But note that I said global to begin with. I think letting people move around freely is a fine thing. This link shows a projection Census did in 2012: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/cspan/pop_proj/20121214_cspan_popproj.pdf https://www.census.gov/newsroom/cspan/pop_proj/20121214_cspa... They seem to have killed a bunch of urls, but they do tables of future expected population. The US population is very much expected to exceed 400 million before too long.
- ghaff 9y ago
  Whether detached or attached, once you get out of denser urban areas, land isn't really the limiting factor. In many cases, a garage is a lot different from livable space. I have an attached garage and you'd probably just tear it down to make living space out of it--and that would just result in a bigger house.
- fma 9y ago
  Also people use their garage for storage, so not so the space will be recuperated. Hell, some people have so much junk they can't even park their cars in their garage.