3 ms·
This article seems to assume that we're all excited about the prospect of buying our very own self-driving car. On the contrary, I'm more excited about the new
by huebnerob 9y ago
This article seems to assume that we're all excited about the prospect of buying our very own self-driving car. On the contrary, I'm more excited about the newfound practicality of a decentralized car ownership model that driverless vehicles gives to us.
Speaking boldly, the difference between a taxi cab and a driverless car is just an implementation detail. No surprises here, Uber and Lyft are investing heavily in trying to get the cabbie out of the cab for just this reason.
So where things get interesting is when you start reaping the benefits of almost eliminating the variable cost of a car ride. This doesn't matter much for personal car ownership, because you don't charge yourself to be your own driver.
- IntronExon 9y agoIn this coming utopia, how clean are the cars? Public anything always seems to become pretty nasty. A fleet of automated vehicles, especially at nights and on weekends, could get messy.
- huebnerob 9y agoI use car2go frequently in Brooklyn, it's true that cleanliness is problematic. Perhaps some form of computer vision in the car could recognize if a user left anything in disarray and penalize appropriately. It wouldn't catch everything, but most of these problems are just people leaving garbage behind.
- IntronExon 9y agoThat’s a good idea, and I wonder if you could automate cleaning the cars? Not a full shampoo and detailing, but maybe a robot arm with brush and suction and ML vision?