5 ms·

Self driving cars and beyond

145 points by yogrish 9y ago

letscavort22 9y ago
It’s great to explore this topic. You can have a lot of fun in picking a random industry and imagining the effect that self driving will have. Health - beyond the obvious effects on the emergency room, what else? Ambulances willl quite clearly be affected. Why would someone wait minutes for one to arrive when they can just hop in an autocar to go the hospital? Or would the entire emergency room itself be on wheels? (Less likely.) Will seniors stay at home for longer? Absolutely. How will this affect the need for aged care nurses? Will their doctors come to them? But we can go even deeper. How will autocars affect people’s desire to exercise? Will more people ride bikes as a result of the increased safety of the roads? Education - at first glance, it’s hard to see. But this is the one I’m currently most excited about. Primary and high school education are both built on cars - we just don’t realise it, but a crucial underpinning factor for parents using a local school is its convenience for them in dropping their kids off and picking them up. When that goes away, what happens next? The demand for better public high schools will explode as the friction in going to a high school 25 minutes away in an awkward direction evaporates... This makes for much more fertile territory for new schooling concepts - if I want to start a new kind of high school, one where the kids spend a bit of time each day tending to farm animals or perhaps studying entrepreneurship, it now becomes 10x easier to build critical mass. And given how much people care about their kids educations, I expect the movements in this space to be highly disruptive. Those are two. On health, I’ve barely scratched the surface. Then there is - tourism - logistics - distribution (imagine Amazon’s FBA on steroids) - housing (what happens to all those garages? Do we build shipping-container sizes homes that fold it wherever they park?) The best way to understand the depth of the upcoming changes is to pick a seemingly unrelated industry and explore how current car-related assumptions underpin it. It becomes clear, to me, that the internet of vehicles will be even more disruptive then the internet itself.
- Eridrus 9y ago
  People already take.an Uber rather than wait for an ambulance if they are stable enough. You call an ambulance when moving is dangerous.
- jaclaz 9y ago
  >Health - beyond the obvious effects on the emergency room, what else? Ambulances willl quite clearly be affected. Why would someone wait minutes for one to arrive when they can just hop in an autocar to go the hospital? Besides ambulances (which should be used for emergencies where medical/paramedical assistance is needed on the spot),I mean you can take a taxi (or Uber) to go to the hospital if you can move and don't need immediate assistance, consider the amount of "periodic" (daily, weekly or bi-weekly) transporting of (otherwise healthy, but not enough to be self-sufficient) patients that cannot drive or walk for long distances, like - as an example - people under dialysis or chemioterapy. Right now (at least here in Italy) usually the service is assured by volunteers that drive an ordinary car supplied by the (public or private) assistance, in most (not all) cases the patient can get into the car (and get out of it) without any assistance, and the time the volunteers provide could well be used for a number of other (needed) chores in assistance.
- brudgers 9y ago
  Every and each of the proposed benefits of vast public policy initiatives supported by a generous public purse in support of autonomous cars could be as easily derived from a similar public policy initiative to create public transit infrastructure.
  - jsloss 9y ago
    I’m not convinced that’s true. The friction involved with public transit (limitations schedules, routes, and sharing of vehicles) are enough to limit much of the usage outlined in the above comment.
    - brudgers 9y ago
      Vehicle fleets don't solve the spatial and temporal realities that are reflected in the schedules and routes of public transit. A fleet of vehicles has to be staged to meet fluctuating demands. Mathematically, on demand vehicles are probably harder to schedule because of random variation in queuing. Consider a population of workers each of which sometimes works from home. Some days an unusually high, but not statistically unlikely, number of riders all stay home: the idling vehicles need to sit somewhere. Other days, a statistically likely but atypical number of riders don't work from home and there are not enough vehicles to go around. Public transit addresses fluctuation with a low nominal cost of providing surplus capacity to normal operation in the form of standing room. Public transit can be sized more closely to peak demand. On the other hand, from 20:00 to 06:00 the peak demand capacity of an autonomous car fleet needs to be parked somewhere. Between 06:00 and 08:00 and again between 18:00 and 20:00 the fleet needs to be moved to storage.
  - jahewson 9y ago
    Sure, in a city. But I really question that in places likes Southern California with its endless, winding suburbs. The place is built for cars.
    - brudgers 9y ago
      The A16Z utopia proposes strong public policies based conclusions drawn from Denmark (about the size of Rhode Island) and the Netherlands (smaller than Delaware). Anywhere a car can go, a bus can go. To put it another way, a premise that autonomous cars will work in places like Southern California is that an autonomous car will be at your doorstep whenever you need to leave. The ideal fleet to achieve this is one car dedicated to only serving your schedule. Anything else has all the drawbacks of party line telephone service.
- eclipxe 9y ago
  At least where I am in the US (SoCal) distance to school is not a primary concern. The barrier to choice is not distance but school district boundaries and assignments.
- mrisoli 9y ago
  I remember seeing a concept video ages ago that touch on many the things that self-driving can change(from Audi I think). I always think in a fully self-driving world there would be huge shifts in the real estate market, living further from your workplace/school won't be such a problem if the commute is easy and the time is consistent, but also in a way that is more convenient than public transportation, similar to how there's higher demand for living close to good transportation links. Also, if the car can drive itself then you don't have to park it close to you when you don't need it, it can stay at a remote location while you work then "pick you up" when needed. I also wonder if that could have any effect on car ownership, one of the biggest hassles of living just with uber is that it might just fail you when you need it, either because of surge pricing or lack of drivers, such as late hours or major events, if Uber eliminates the need for drivers it can deploy its fleet at 24 hours a day besides maintenance and therefore could guarantee it's users a minimum supply in a certain area at all times. Then again, would Uber own those cars? Does it make sense for them to lease unutilized car time from owners similar to what people do with idle CPUs for crypto mining? Thus allowing owners to have some passive revenue.
  - visarga 9y ago
    > Does it make sense for them to lease unutilized car time from owners similar to what people do with idle CPUs for crypto mining? I wouldn't want to find a used condom on the floor of my car when it picks me up, or vomit after a night of transporting party goers.
    - rimliu 9y ago
      Yeah, I imagine using shared self-driving cars would be as fun as using public toilets.
      - yazaddaruvala 9y ago
        Lyft cars do not feel like public toilets.
        9y ago
- ctdonath 9y ago
  Assuming "hard" self-driving... Education: more kids "driving" themselves to school. There's an age where a kid could be trusted to walk alone, but not ready to "drive" there. Get in car, car takes kid to school & back. The one thing stopping my kids from going to a preferred school is we can't drive 'em there at that time; give me a trustworthy car and I'll let it take them there. Play: like above, parents will be more likely to let the kid travel a non-trivial, non-walkable distance to play with friends. No longer bound by parental availability, parents can just authorize the kid to get in and be taken somewhere. Parking: there will be a "Napster"-type stage of anarchy where self-driving cars won't park, they'll just slowly roam around until the owner calls it back. I've spent a whole day in NYC driving in circles (while the family enjoyed scenic stops) in lieu of finding & paying for expensive parking; would be nice to just get out and let the car wander, using roads as "parking in motion". This will lead to legislation & new solutions requiring aimless vehicles to actually get off the roads, albeit into more compact storage. Tourism: lots of people dislike dealing with taxis. I'd certainly be more comfortable with an automated "pick your destination on a map" UI, evolution of getting rid of elevator operators. Travel: huge hit on travel industry. My family rarely flies anywhere, opting instead for painful overnight 1000+ mile drives. Many people will be far more likely to do such trips when they can get on a major long-haul freeway and completely ignore the driving process. No more trying to stay awake on a boring overnight drive, just doze off completely, waking up only for refueling or nearing destination. I'll happily drive the complex parts at start/end, but it's that 700 mile stretch that's agonizing as driver. Housing: longer commutes will be more tolerable. I will live in an acre+ site, and let the car deal with traffic while reading/working/napping. So long as I can ignore the commute, I'll put up with a much longer one.
  - yazaddaruvala 9y ago
    Similar to "parking in motion" we might even see "housing in motion"
    - ctdonath 9y ago
      Good point. Short term parking gets leveraged, car moving to a new spot every few hours while occupants sleep.
- CM30 9y ago
  > Health - beyond the obvious effects on the emergency room, what else? Ambulances willl quite clearly be affected. Why would someone wait minutes for one to arrive when they can just hop in an autocar to go the hospital? Or would the entire emergency room itself be on wheels? (Less likely.) Well, the car can't go through red lights or overtake in certain locations to get to the hospital more quickly. That could be an easily ignored issue in some cases (if traffic is light or if it's easy to get to the hospital from your current location), but good luck if there's a traffic jam or the car needs to ignore certain laws to save your life.
  - jdminhbg 9y ago
    That depends on how far out you're projecting. In a hypothetical all-self-driving future, a car with a sick occupant could broadcast its emergency mode to the rest of traffic to let it through.
  - tossaway1 9y ago
    Ambulances do a lot more than transport patients. It's already the case that you can usually get someone to the hospital faster than waiting for an ambulance. Typically if you're using an ambulance you're going to need someone to provide medical assistance on location and/or help load you onto a stretcher.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  Ambulances do a lot more than just move people around, they carry doctors who stabilize the patient prior to transportation so that a relatively small problem does not turn into a critical one.
- emanreus 9y ago
  > Why would someone wait minutes for one to arrive when they can just hop in an autocar to go the hospital? If you can just hop in and go to the hospital by yourself you don't need an ambulance.
  - andrewmunsell 9y ago
    You can have a non-life threatening injury that prevents you from operating a car yourself, and without access to something like Uber or having another person to drive you, could necessitate calling an ambulance. A study was done (I haven't read the whole thing) that seemed to indicate cities with UberX had a reduction in ambulance use: http://www2.ku.edu/~kuwpaper/2017Papers/201708.pdf http://www2.ku.edu/~kuwpaper/2017Papers/201708.pdf (Though the wording of the GP was slightly ambiguous and seemed to compare a time-sensitive emergency to being able to take some other vehicle to the hospital)
  - dominotw 9y ago
    Or use Uber or a taxi
- YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
  >> It’s great to explore this topic. You can have a lot of fun in picking a random industry and imagining the effect that self driving will have. Yes, it will be interesting to see the public's reaction in a few years, when the promised revolution fails to materialise. ______________ [1] I say this with some insight borrowed from people in the automotive industry. A commenter in another thread has recommended the following Medium post: We’re still very much in the early days of making self-driving cars a reality. Those who think fully self-driving vehicles will be ubiquitous on city streets months from now or even in a few years are not well connected to the state of the art or committed to the safe deployment of the technology. For those of us who have been working on the technology for a long time, we’re going to tell you the issue is still really hard, as the systems are as complex as ever. https://medium.com/self-driven/a-decade-after-darpa-our-view-on-the-state-of-the-art-in-self-driving-cars-3e8698e6afe8 https://medium.com/self-driven/a-decade-after-darpa-our-view...
brudgers 9y ago
The presentation doesn't take long to leap from inevitable market forces to totalitarian restructuring of public life in the US by city planners to provide those market forces with a chance of inevitability. All those cell phones didn't require drastic changes to public space. They didn't come about by massive new principles of public policy. They came about because cell phones layered on top of existing lives and policies in a generally unobtrusive way. The cell phone created market forces that didn't require the displacement of large swaths of humanity. It was a rising tide that lifted ships other than those of venture capital.
KKKKkkkk1 9y ago
A couple of years ago there was a new article on the front page pretty much every day about the great new thing that will change our lives--3D printing. I'm worried that whatever happened to 3D printing is about to happen to self driving. What did happen to 3D printing?
- cityzen 9y ago
  I have a 3D printer and never use it simply because I have more money than time. It can take hours to print anything useful. One problem and you have to start all over.
- ebbv 9y ago
  It’s the same thing that’s happening to VR and lots of other things that are getting hyped before the hard problems are solved. There’s been a serious epidemic in the last decade or so of mistaking solving the low hanging fruit for being “almost there.” 3D printing works ok for prototyping in certain scenarios, but it got hyped up for things it was nowhere near doing. Similarly everyone jumped all over VR assuming solving the hard problems that have always plagued it were just around the corner. Willfully ignorant over-optimism has been way too prevelant and I hope it is replaced with measured, informed pragmatism with lofty goals instead.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    > There’s been a serious epidemic in the last decade or so of mistaking solving the low hanging fruit for being “almost there.” Wonder how much can be blamed on 24/7 news cycles, and how much can be blamed on pump and dump VCs (And now i noticed how close VC is to WC...).
  - JohanByttner 9y ago
    I agree that VR got a bit hyped. AM, however, is alive and well. The biggest issues are cost and time - AM takes a long time and requires an expensive machine. Thus you can print super-intricate structural parts of an airplane, but not brake pedals for common cars.
- danmaz74 9y ago
ilovecars2 9y ago
This is kind of a meta comment, but I’ve been lurking on HN for a while on car posts in particular. I have the impression that HN in general doesn’t like cars all that much, and in fact we would be much better of without them. I can’t argue with the facts: congestion and pollution in large cities, such as London, have never been higher where almost all on-road public transport is still run on diesel. However, I think driving for a lot of people is a liberating and pleasurable experience. and, before we go there, I’m not talking about being stuck in traffic, which is often a issue with poor planning and lack of infrastructure investment rather than an issue with cars themselves, but the pure pleasure of driving. I’m quite concerned that self driving cars will take this simple pleasure and satisfaction from us, and perhaps that’s just a selfish opinion. I don’t know?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  Being stuck in traffic is a problem with cars, we can't build our way out of that problem, more roads just generate more traffic as longer commutes become viable. I suspect self driving cars will make this worse not better, if a 60 minute commute is OK with you then perhaps 90 minutes is if you can read a book on the way.
  - ilovecars2 9y ago
    I agree, more roads are not the solution. That said, there are definitely poorly thought out roads in cities all over the world that actively create traffic because they unnecessarily disrupt traffic flow. But, more generally I believe the solution to traffic is to provide compelling alternatives. It’s all about creating a balance. In London we have the opposite issue, there are too many people trying to take the tube and mainline rail, leading to massive overcrowding. Now, is waiting 20 minutes to get on a Northern Line train, because the last four have been packed to the doors, a problem with people, or is it a problem with planning and infrastructure?
- iraphael 9y ago
zerostar07 9y ago
Nobody talks about the infrastructure though. Roads, signs etc can't stay the same, they have to adapt to facilitate autonomous vehicles
- dmix 9y ago
  I guess you didn't watch it before commenting...this video series mentions infrastructure multiple times throughout. Almost a whole video in this series talks about infrastructure financing and taxation. As gas taxes, driver's licenses, traffic tickets, parking fines, etc will be eliminated. And 30% of court time currently dedicated to traffic will be eliminated. It mentions taxing each Uber/Lyft/Waymo fleet ride or automated toll roads with surge pricing instead... It's going to be a GREAT time to be a city traffic engineer in the next decade....
  - dsfyu404ed 9y ago
    >It's going to be a GREAT time to be a city traffic engineer in the next decade.... No. It's gonna suck. The people who drive Teslas are the people the politicans will be leaning on you to please. Reality will still have 1995 Camrys and E-series.
wannadub2 9y ago
Roads...where we're going we don't need... roads https://youtu.be/flge_rw6RG0 https://youtu.be/flge_rw6RG0 #crashfunction.com kubernetes generators of virtual autonomous drones?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
patman81 9y ago
On the Tesla earnings call last week, Elon Musk stated that a software update coming in 3-6 months will allow Tesla cars with Autopilot HW2 to drive fully autonomous. At least on highways. He's predictions are always late, so it may not be ready in August. But his predictions seem to come thru in end. If he can deliver by the end of the year or even next year, he would still beat all other car manufactures schedules.
Animats 9y ago
We'll probably see self-driving before widespread electric car use. Self-driving is an auto accessory. It's going to come from companies like Continental and Delco, which make auto parts for manufacturers. The big players are targeting 2020 as the year self-driving becomes a more or less standard option. That may slip; Volvo's big Level 4 demo with 100 real users has been pushed back to 2021. But it's getting close. The hardware is here; it's now a software problem. Electric cars need more infrastructure. Many more charging stations. Cheaper batteries. More lithium and cobalt mines. That will take a bit longer. Self-driving cars and electric cars are independent technologies. Uber's self driving cars are gasoline-powered Volvos.
- dmix 9y ago
  True, this (great) video series doesn't make a clear distinction between electric/AI. But the key evolutionary shift in the next 10yrs is the massive shift towards fleet-based cars, delivery drones, and the post-car-ownership era... it's not just about plugging sensors+AI into today's cars: - self-driving fleet cars can drop you off and go automatically pick up next person OR recharge at base stations eliminating need for most parking spots (currently 14% of city real estate) - reduction in average car size, as cars with single occupants no longer need 4-5 seats + cars can drive very close together + synchronized higher speeds... meaning less roads per car & less cars per road - cars automatically linking up like trains on highways to conserve energy - repurpose above unused lanes for dedicated high speed delivery drone lanes + drop-off/pick-up zones replacing of parking spots - removal of traffic barriers in the middle of all multi-lane roads (so middle lanes can automatically be shifted to the opposite direction depending on traffic load) ala SF Golden Gate Bridge https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hMkLcAstxgA/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hMkLcAstxgA/maxresdefault.jpg ..but with software, and not just for rush hour - redesigns of car interiors to support leisure time and work activity (swivel chairs, tables, screens, etc) - eventual elimination of traffic signs/lights Both electric/AI requires completely rethinking how traffic, infrastructure, and cars are designed, and both often compliment each other...so why not do it simultaneously?
indescions_2018 9y ago
Great analysis from A16Z as always. I love seeing the myriad form factors. How they map to different use cases. And how pipelines of these vehicles and drones could be used to transport to any place on the globe! A good place to get started with the tech details of EV design is with the Tesla, Inc patents themselves: US Patent Application for Integrated Electric Motor Assembly Patent Application (Application #20170291482) https://patents.justia.com/patent/20170291482 https://patents.justia.com/patent/20170291482
chairmanwow 9y ago
The final video [1] has a pretty compelling argument for the conversion to self-driving cars happening quicker than expected: Chen shows a picture of Easter morning in NYC in 1900 and asks the viewer to play "Where is the car?". After several seconds he highlights the one car in the frame surrounded entirely by house-and-buggy carts. He then shows a picture of the Easter morning in NYC in 1913 and asks the reverse question: "Where is the horse?", as there is only 1 horse visible in the picture. Obviously this is a carefully selected anecdote, but this is a really compelling argument that forward progress will be faster than expected. [1] https://youtu.be/YSdspVJgSFE https://youtu.be/YSdspVJgSFE
- Avshalom 9y ago
  It's remarkably hard to find 40 year old used horse though.
stillsut 9y ago
The most interesting phenomenon is "sleepers": people who sleep Friday night as their car drives to some scenic overlook sunrise and drive them home from retreat on Sunday night. Rural back roads will be moving at full stream in the dead of night with 'ghost cars' when they were once were completely quiet; zoning will limit noise, speed, illumination, toll's win go up, but airbnb's will flourish. In the urban zone, there will be competition for scarce roadway as businesses no longer paying a driver, go increasingly JIT, and elite commuters value door to door service. No city gov't will be able to resist the right to tax per mile, tax rush hour surge charges, and tax luxury idle vehicles. This will push the middle and lower market into on demand rentals. And without the driver as an informal superintendent of the vehicle, there will be a very annoying problem of getting into a car that a gross person knew they were never going to be in again. Enter the eye in the sky. Except for customer with a 4-star reputation or higher. This will create a race to the bottom for anyone who can't or won't establish reputation to get passage on an autonomous vehicle. I think we can't even fully contemplate yet how alienating and de-humanizing self-driving cars are going to large parts of our society, and how amazing they're going to be for others.
- Treegarden 9y ago
  I think the part about gross cars is a trivial problem. You pay a 100$ deposit for the account and if you puke in the car you lose the deposit. If that happens to often you get banned or whatever.
  - stillsut 9y ago
    The problem is you can't cut people off of the only form of urban transportation available. Who is banned from the subway? And the other problem is there are a lot of people who want to get around without getting their identity associated or reputation checked by a centralized system.
SemiTom 9y ago
The ecosystems that will be disrupted by self driving cars are vast https://semiengineering.com/giant-auto-industry-disruption-ahead/ https://semiengineering.com/giant-auto-industry-disruption-a...
ehnto 9y ago
I am an advocate for autonomous cars, but I have to wonder if tech behemoths aren't forgetting a huge portion of people live outside of cities. It's important to note that rural people will be needing and buying new non-autonomous cars for decades yet and I don't know that there is actually a way to integrate autonomy into rural driving habits.
- joshhart 9y ago
  I'm not so sure. I bet the suburbs will spread out into rural areas when people don't have to drive and can just hang out and watch Netflix on the way to work.
  - ehnto 9y ago
    America is huge, it would take hundreds of kilometers of suburbia to reach many towns. And there are tens of thousands of small towns that are themselves hundreds of kilometers away from the nearest burb. Part of my comment about rural driving habits involves lifestyles in towns too, getting to work isn't such a big deal. Work is only 5 minutes away but they will still drive because after work they might need to drive 30km down some dirt track to get the kids from a friends house. Parking at the football club which is actually just a grass patch requires communication between humans about who is leaving first or maybe Stuart needs to get out to the jetty by 5 so we need leave room for him at the back. That kind of stuff is hard to solve autonomously. Driving in the country is just a bit more socially aware I guess. The thought of autonomous cars on thin country roads is hard too. Sometimes there are dips or parts of the road that you know are dangerous through tribal knowledge and experiencing it previously. The car would have to have full geometry of the road for one. Second it would have to know that people sometimes pull out of this blind corner driveway and that if you continue doing 110kmph past it assuming it's a sealed highway you will one day have a head on no matter how quickly your car can react. The conclusion I come to is that fully autonomous, no controls in the car, is unlikely to happen at all, as there will always people needing non-autonomous or semi-autonomous driving.

145 points by yogrish 9y ago

It’s great to explore this topic. You can have a lot of fun in picking a random industry and imagining the effect that self driving will have. Health - beyond the obvious effects on the emergency room, what else? Ambulances willl quite clearly be affected. Why would someone wait minutes for one to arrive when they can just hop in an autocar to go the hospital? Or would the entire emergency room itself be on wheels? (Less likely.) Will seniors stay at home for longer? Absolutely. How will this affect the need for aged care nurses? Will their doctors come to them? But we can go even deeper. How will autocars affect people’s desire to exercise? Will more people ride bikes as a result of the increased safety of the roads? Education - at first glance, it’s hard to see. But this is the one I’m currently most excited about. Primary and high school education are both built on cars - we just don’t realise it, but a crucial underpinning factor for parents using a local school is its convenience for them in dropping their kids off and picking them up. When that goes away, what happens next? The demand for better public high schools will explode as the friction in going to a high school 25 minutes away in an awkward direction evaporates... This makes for much more fertile territory for new schooling concepts - if I want to start a new kind of high school, one where the kids spend a bit of time each day tending to farm animals or perhaps studying entrepreneurship, it now becomes 10x easier to build critical mass. And given how much people care about their kids educations, I expect the movements in this space to be highly disruptive. Those are two. On health, I’ve barely scratched the surface. Then there is - tourism - logistics - distribution (imagine Amazon’s FBA on steroids) - housing (what happens to all those garages? Do we build shipping-container sizes homes that fold it wherever they park?) The best way to understand the depth of the upcoming changes is to pick a seemingly unrelated industry and explore how current car-related assumptions underpin it. It becomes clear, to me, that the internet of vehicles will be even more disruptive then the internet itself.

Eridrus 9y ago
People already take.an Uber rather than wait for an ambulance if they are stable enough. You call an ambulance when moving is dangerous.
jaclaz 9y ago
>Health - beyond the obvious effects on the emergency room, what else? Ambulances willl quite clearly be affected. Why would someone wait minutes for one to arrive when they can just hop in an autocar to go the hospital? Besides ambulances (which should be used for emergencies where medical/paramedical assistance is needed on the spot),I mean you can take a taxi (or Uber) to go to the hospital if you can move and don't need immediate assistance, consider the amount of "periodic" (daily, weekly or bi-weekly) transporting of (otherwise healthy, but not enough to be self-sufficient) patients that cannot drive or walk for long distances, like - as an example - people under dialysis or chemioterapy. Right now (at least here in Italy) usually the service is assured by volunteers that drive an ordinary car supplied by the (public or private) assistance, in most (not all) cases the patient can get into the car (and get out of it) without any assistance, and the time the volunteers provide could well be used for a number of other (needed) chores in assistance.
brudgers 9y ago
Every and each of the proposed benefits of vast public policy initiatives supported by a generous public purse in support of autonomous cars could be as easily derived from a similar public policy initiative to create public transit infrastructure.
- jsloss 9y ago
  I’m not convinced that’s true. The friction involved with public transit (limitations schedules, routes, and sharing of vehicles) are enough to limit much of the usage outlined in the above comment.
  - brudgers 9y ago
    Vehicle fleets don't solve the spatial and temporal realities that are reflected in the schedules and routes of public transit. A fleet of vehicles has to be staged to meet fluctuating demands. Mathematically, on demand vehicles are probably harder to schedule because of random variation in queuing. Consider a population of workers each of which sometimes works from home. Some days an unusually high, but not statistically unlikely, number of riders all stay home: the idling vehicles need to sit somewhere. Other days, a statistically likely but atypical number of riders don't work from home and there are not enough vehicles to go around. Public transit addresses fluctuation with a low nominal cost of providing surplus capacity to normal operation in the form of standing room. Public transit can be sized more closely to peak demand. On the other hand, from 20:00 to 06:00 the peak demand capacity of an autonomous car fleet needs to be parked somewhere. Between 06:00 and 08:00 and again between 18:00 and 20:00 the fleet needs to be moved to storage.
- jahewson 9y ago
  Sure, in a city. But I really question that in places likes Southern California with its endless, winding suburbs. The place is built for cars.
  - brudgers 9y ago
    The A16Z utopia proposes strong public policies based conclusions drawn from Denmark (about the size of Rhode Island) and the Netherlands (smaller than Delaware). Anywhere a car can go, a bus can go. To put it another way, a premise that autonomous cars will work in places like Southern California is that an autonomous car will be at your doorstep whenever you need to leave. The ideal fleet to achieve this is one car dedicated to only serving your schedule. Anything else has all the drawbacks of party line telephone service.
eclipxe 9y ago
At least where I am in the US (SoCal) distance to school is not a primary concern. The barrier to choice is not distance but school district boundaries and assignments.
mrisoli 9y ago
I remember seeing a concept video ages ago that touch on many the things that self-driving can change(from Audi I think). I always think in a fully self-driving world there would be huge shifts in the real estate market, living further from your workplace/school won't be such a problem if the commute is easy and the time is consistent, but also in a way that is more convenient than public transportation, similar to how there's higher demand for living close to good transportation links. Also, if the car can drive itself then you don't have to park it close to you when you don't need it, it can stay at a remote location while you work then "pick you up" when needed. I also wonder if that could have any effect on car ownership, one of the biggest hassles of living just with uber is that it might just fail you when you need it, either because of surge pricing or lack of drivers, such as late hours or major events, if Uber eliminates the need for drivers it can deploy its fleet at 24 hours a day besides maintenance and therefore could guarantee it's users a minimum supply in a certain area at all times. Then again, would Uber own those cars? Does it make sense for them to lease unutilized car time from owners similar to what people do with idle CPUs for crypto mining? Thus allowing owners to have some passive revenue.
- visarga 9y ago
  > Does it make sense for them to lease unutilized car time from owners similar to what people do with idle CPUs for crypto mining? I wouldn't want to find a used condom on the floor of my car when it picks me up, or vomit after a night of transporting party goers.
  - rimliu 9y ago
    Yeah, I imagine using shared self-driving cars would be as fun as using public toilets.
    - yazaddaruvala 9y ago
      Lyft cars do not feel like public toilets.
      - 9y ago
ctdonath 9y ago
Assuming "hard" self-driving... Education: more kids "driving" themselves to school. There's an age where a kid could be trusted to walk alone, but not ready to "drive" there. Get in car, car takes kid to school & back. The one thing stopping my kids from going to a preferred school is we can't drive 'em there at that time; give me a trustworthy car and I'll let it take them there. Play: like above, parents will be more likely to let the kid travel a non-trivial, non-walkable distance to play with friends. No longer bound by parental availability, parents can just authorize the kid to get in and be taken somewhere. Parking: there will be a "Napster"-type stage of anarchy where self-driving cars won't park, they'll just slowly roam around until the owner calls it back. I've spent a whole day in NYC driving in circles (while the family enjoyed scenic stops) in lieu of finding & paying for expensive parking; would be nice to just get out and let the car wander, using roads as "parking in motion". This will lead to legislation & new solutions requiring aimless vehicles to actually get off the roads, albeit into more compact storage. Tourism: lots of people dislike dealing with taxis. I'd certainly be more comfortable with an automated "pick your destination on a map" UI, evolution of getting rid of elevator operators. Travel: huge hit on travel industry. My family rarely flies anywhere, opting instead for painful overnight 1000+ mile drives. Many people will be far more likely to do such trips when they can get on a major long-haul freeway and completely ignore the driving process. No more trying to stay awake on a boring overnight drive, just doze off completely, waking up only for refueling or nearing destination. I'll happily drive the complex parts at start/end, but it's that 700 mile stretch that's agonizing as driver. Housing: longer commutes will be more tolerable. I will live in an acre+ site, and let the car deal with traffic while reading/working/napping. So long as I can ignore the commute, I'll put up with a much longer one.
- yazaddaruvala 9y ago
  Similar to "parking in motion" we might even see "housing in motion"
  - ctdonath 9y ago
    Good point. Short term parking gets leveraged, car moving to a new spot every few hours while occupants sleep.
CM30 9y ago
> Health - beyond the obvious effects on the emergency room, what else? Ambulances willl quite clearly be affected. Why would someone wait minutes for one to arrive when they can just hop in an autocar to go the hospital? Or would the entire emergency room itself be on wheels? (Less likely.) Well, the car can't go through red lights or overtake in certain locations to get to the hospital more quickly. That could be an easily ignored issue in some cases (if traffic is light or if it's easy to get to the hospital from your current location), but good luck if there's a traffic jam or the car needs to ignore certain laws to save your life.
- jdminhbg 9y ago
  That depends on how far out you're projecting. In a hypothetical all-self-driving future, a car with a sick occupant could broadcast its emergency mode to the rest of traffic to let it through.
- tossaway1 9y ago
  Ambulances do a lot more than transport patients. It's already the case that you can usually get someone to the hospital faster than waiting for an ambulance. Typically if you're using an ambulance you're going to need someone to provide medical assistance on location and/or help load you onto a stretcher.
jacquesm 9y ago
Ambulances do a lot more than just move people around, they carry doctors who stabilize the patient prior to transportation so that a relatively small problem does not turn into a critical one.
emanreus 9y ago
> Why would someone wait minutes for one to arrive when they can just hop in an autocar to go the hospital? If you can just hop in and go to the hospital by yourself you don't need an ambulance.
- andrewmunsell 9y ago
  You can have a non-life threatening injury that prevents you from operating a car yourself, and without access to something like Uber or having another person to drive you, could necessitate calling an ambulance. A study was done (I haven't read the whole thing) that seemed to indicate cities with UberX had a reduction in ambulance use: http://www2.ku.edu/~kuwpaper/2017Papers/201708.pdf http://www2.ku.edu/~kuwpaper/2017Papers/201708.pdf (Though the wording of the GP was slightly ambiguous and seemed to compare a time-sensitive emergency to being able to take some other vehicle to the hospital)
- dominotw 9y ago
  Or use Uber or a taxi
YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
>> It’s great to explore this topic. You can have a lot of fun in picking a random industry and imagining the effect that self driving will have. Yes, it will be interesting to see the public's reaction in a few years, when the promised revolution fails to materialise. ______________ [1] I say this with some insight borrowed from people in the automotive industry. A commenter in another thread has recommended the following Medium post: We’re still very much in the early days of making self-driving cars a reality. Those who think fully self-driving vehicles will be ubiquitous on city streets months from now or even in a few years are not well connected to the state of the art or committed to the safe deployment of the technology. For those of us who have been working on the technology for a long time, we’re going to tell you the issue is still really hard, as the systems are as complex as ever. https://medium.com/self-driven/a-decade-after-darpa-our-view-on-the-state-of-the-art-in-self-driving-cars-3e8698e6afe8 https://medium.com/self-driven/a-decade-after-darpa-our-view...

brudgers 9y ago

The presentation doesn't take long to leap from inevitable market forces to totalitarian restructuring of public life in the US by city planners to provide those market forces with a chance of inevitability. All those cell phones didn't require drastic changes to public space. They didn't come about by massive new principles of public policy. They came about because cell phones layered on top of existing lives and policies in a generally unobtrusive way. The cell phone created market forces that didn't require the displacement of large swaths of humanity. It was a rising tide that lifted ships other than those of venture capital.

KKKKkkkk1 9y ago

A couple of years ago there was a new article on the front page pretty much every day about the great new thing that will change our lives--3D printing. I'm worried that whatever happened to 3D printing is about to happen to self driving. What did happen to 3D printing?

cityzen 9y ago
I have a 3D printer and never use it simply because I have more money than time. It can take hours to print anything useful. One problem and you have to start all over.
ebbv 9y ago
It’s the same thing that’s happening to VR and lots of other things that are getting hyped before the hard problems are solved. There’s been a serious epidemic in the last decade or so of mistaking solving the low hanging fruit for being “almost there.” 3D printing works ok for prototyping in certain scenarios, but it got hyped up for things it was nowhere near doing. Similarly everyone jumped all over VR assuming solving the hard problems that have always plagued it were just around the corner. Willfully ignorant over-optimism has been way too prevelant and I hope it is replaced with measured, informed pragmatism with lofty goals instead.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  > There’s been a serious epidemic in the last decade or so of mistaking solving the low hanging fruit for being “almost there.” Wonder how much can be blamed on 24/7 news cycles, and how much can be blamed on pump and dump VCs (And now i noticed how close VC is to WC...).
- JohanByttner 9y ago
  I agree that VR got a bit hyped. AM, however, is alive and well. The biggest issues are cost and time - AM takes a long time and requires an expensive machine. Thus you can print super-intricate structural parts of an airplane, but not brake pedals for common cars.
danmaz74 9y ago

ilovecars2 9y ago

This is kind of a meta comment, but I’ve been lurking on HN for a while on car posts in particular. I have the impression that HN in general doesn’t like cars all that much, and in fact we would be much better of without them. I can’t argue with the facts: congestion and pollution in large cities, such as London, have never been higher where almost all on-road public transport is still run on diesel. However, I think driving for a lot of people is a liberating and pleasurable experience. and, before we go there, I’m not talking about being stuck in traffic, which is often a issue with poor planning and lack of infrastructure investment rather than an issue with cars themselves, but the pure pleasure of driving. I’m quite concerned that self driving cars will take this simple pleasure and satisfaction from us, and perhaps that’s just a selfish opinion. I don’t know?

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tonyedgecombe 9y ago
Being stuck in traffic is a problem with cars, we can't build our way out of that problem, more roads just generate more traffic as longer commutes become viable. I suspect self driving cars will make this worse not better, if a 60 minute commute is OK with you then perhaps 90 minutes is if you can read a book on the way.
- ilovecars2 9y ago
  I agree, more roads are not the solution. That said, there are definitely poorly thought out roads in cities all over the world that actively create traffic because they unnecessarily disrupt traffic flow. But, more generally I believe the solution to traffic is to provide compelling alternatives. It’s all about creating a balance. In London we have the opposite issue, there are too many people trying to take the tube and mainline rail, leading to massive overcrowding. Now, is waiting 20 minutes to get on a Northern Line train, because the last four have been packed to the doors, a problem with people, or is it a problem with planning and infrastructure?
iraphael 9y ago

zerostar07 9y ago

Nobody talks about the infrastructure though. Roads, signs etc can't stay the same, they have to adapt to facilitate autonomous vehicles

dmix 9y ago
I guess you didn't watch it before commenting...this video series mentions infrastructure multiple times throughout. Almost a whole video in this series talks about infrastructure financing and taxation. As gas taxes, driver's licenses, traffic tickets, parking fines, etc will be eliminated. And 30% of court time currently dedicated to traffic will be eliminated. It mentions taxing each Uber/Lyft/Waymo fleet ride or automated toll roads with surge pricing instead... It's going to be a GREAT time to be a city traffic engineer in the next decade....
- dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  >It's going to be a GREAT time to be a city traffic engineer in the next decade.... No. It's gonna suck. The people who drive Teslas are the people the politicans will be leaning on you to please. Reality will still have 1995 Camrys and E-series.

wannadub2 9y ago

Roads...where we're going we don't need... roads https://youtu.be/flge_rw6RG0 https://youtu.be/flge_rw6RG0 #crashfunction.com kubernetes generators of virtual autonomous drones?

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patman81 9y ago

On the Tesla earnings call last week, Elon Musk stated that a software update coming in 3-6 months will allow Tesla cars with Autopilot HW2 to drive fully autonomous. At least on highways. He's predictions are always late, so it may not be ready in August. But his predictions seem to come thru in end. If he can deliver by the end of the year or even next year, he would still beat all other car manufactures schedules.

Animats 9y ago

We'll probably see self-driving before widespread electric car use. Self-driving is an auto accessory. It's going to come from companies like Continental and Delco, which make auto parts for manufacturers. The big players are targeting 2020 as the year self-driving becomes a more or less standard option. That may slip; Volvo's big Level 4 demo with 100 real users has been pushed back to 2021. But it's getting close. The hardware is here; it's now a software problem. Electric cars need more infrastructure. Many more charging stations. Cheaper batteries. More lithium and cobalt mines. That will take a bit longer. Self-driving cars and electric cars are independent technologies. Uber's self driving cars are gasoline-powered Volvos.

dmix 9y ago
True, this (great) video series doesn't make a clear distinction between electric/AI. But the key evolutionary shift in the next 10yrs is the massive shift towards fleet-based cars, delivery drones, and the post-car-ownership era... it's not just about plugging sensors+AI into today's cars: - self-driving fleet cars can drop you off and go automatically pick up next person OR recharge at base stations eliminating need for most parking spots (currently 14% of city real estate) - reduction in average car size, as cars with single occupants no longer need 4-5 seats + cars can drive very close together + synchronized higher speeds... meaning less roads per car & less cars per road - cars automatically linking up like trains on highways to conserve energy - repurpose above unused lanes for dedicated high speed delivery drone lanes + drop-off/pick-up zones replacing of parking spots - removal of traffic barriers in the middle of all multi-lane roads (so middle lanes can automatically be shifted to the opposite direction depending on traffic load) ala SF Golden Gate Bridge https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hMkLcAstxgA/maxresdefault.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/hMkLcAstxgA/maxresdefault.jpg ..but with software, and not just for rush hour - redesigns of car interiors to support leisure time and work activity (swivel chairs, tables, screens, etc) - eventual elimination of traffic signs/lights Both electric/AI requires completely rethinking how traffic, infrastructure, and cars are designed, and both often compliment each other...so why not do it simultaneously?

indescions_2018 9y ago

Great analysis from A16Z as always. I love seeing the myriad form factors. How they map to different use cases. And how pipelines of these vehicles and drones could be used to transport to any place on the globe! A good place to get started with the tech details of EV design is with the Tesla, Inc patents themselves: US Patent Application for Integrated Electric Motor Assembly Patent Application (Application #20170291482) https://patents.justia.com/patent/20170291482 https://patents.justia.com/patent/20170291482

chairmanwow 9y ago

The final video [1] has a pretty compelling argument for the conversion to self-driving cars happening quicker than expected: Chen shows a picture of Easter morning in NYC in 1900 and asks the viewer to play "Where is the car?". After several seconds he highlights the one car in the frame surrounded entirely by house-and-buggy carts. He then shows a picture of the Easter morning in NYC in 1913 and asks the reverse question: "Where is the horse?", as there is only 1 horse visible in the picture. Obviously this is a carefully selected anecdote, but this is a really compelling argument that forward progress will be faster than expected. [1] https://youtu.be/YSdspVJgSFE https://youtu.be/YSdspVJgSFE

Avshalom 9y ago
It's remarkably hard to find 40 year old used horse though.

stillsut 9y ago

The most interesting phenomenon is "sleepers": people who sleep Friday night as their car drives to some scenic overlook sunrise and drive them home from retreat on Sunday night. Rural back roads will be moving at full stream in the dead of night with 'ghost cars' when they were once were completely quiet; zoning will limit noise, speed, illumination, toll's win go up, but airbnb's will flourish. In the urban zone, there will be competition for scarce roadway as businesses no longer paying a driver, go increasingly JIT, and elite commuters value door to door service. No city gov't will be able to resist the right to tax per mile, tax rush hour surge charges, and tax luxury idle vehicles. This will push the middle and lower market into on demand rentals. And without the driver as an informal superintendent of the vehicle, there will be a very annoying problem of getting into a car that a gross person knew they were never going to be in again. Enter the eye in the sky. Except for customer with a 4-star reputation or higher. This will create a race to the bottom for anyone who can't or won't establish reputation to get passage on an autonomous vehicle. I think we can't even fully contemplate yet how alienating and de-humanizing self-driving cars are going to large parts of our society, and how amazing they're going to be for others.

Treegarden 9y ago
I think the part about gross cars is a trivial problem. You pay a 100$ deposit for the account and if you puke in the car you lose the deposit. If that happens to often you get banned or whatever.
- stillsut 9y ago
  The problem is you can't cut people off of the only form of urban transportation available. Who is banned from the subway? And the other problem is there are a lot of people who want to get around without getting their identity associated or reputation checked by a centralized system.

SemiTom 9y ago

The ecosystems that will be disrupted by self driving cars are vast https://semiengineering.com/giant-auto-industry-disruption-ahead/ https://semiengineering.com/giant-auto-industry-disruption-a...

ehnto 9y ago

I am an advocate for autonomous cars, but I have to wonder if tech behemoths aren't forgetting a huge portion of people live outside of cities. It's important to note that rural people will be needing and buying new non-autonomous cars for decades yet and I don't know that there is actually a way to integrate autonomy into rural driving habits.

joshhart 9y ago
I'm not so sure. I bet the suburbs will spread out into rural areas when people don't have to drive and can just hang out and watch Netflix on the way to work.
- ehnto 9y ago
  America is huge, it would take hundreds of kilometers of suburbia to reach many towns. And there are tens of thousands of small towns that are themselves hundreds of kilometers away from the nearest burb. Part of my comment about rural driving habits involves lifestyles in towns too, getting to work isn't such a big deal. Work is only 5 minutes away but they will still drive because after work they might need to drive 30km down some dirt track to get the kids from a friends house. Parking at the football club which is actually just a grass patch requires communication between humans about who is leaving first or maybe Stuart needs to get out to the jetty by 5 so we need leave room for him at the back. That kind of stuff is hard to solve autonomously. Driving in the country is just a bit more socially aware I guess. The thought of autonomous cars on thin country roads is hard too. Sometimes there are dips or parts of the road that you know are dangerous through tribal knowledge and experiencing it previously. The car would have to have full geometry of the road for one. Second it would have to know that people sometimes pull out of this blind corner driveway and that if you continue doing 110kmph past it assuming it's a sealed highway you will one day have a head on no matter how quickly your car can react. The conclusion I come to is that fully autonomous, no controls in the car, is unlikely to happen at all, as there will always people needing non-autonomous or semi-autonomous driving.