7 ms·

If self driving cars go mainstream, people's attitude and thinking of the car as only a transport vehicle may change. Even in congested traffic one may view it

• beobab 9y ago
  I really like this idea. I have had dreams of small self-drive RV's taking me to and from work whilst I read or play games for years.
• sgc 9y ago
  That will happen immediately for sure. Super tinted windows and a nice work setup in the vehicle will make society significantly more efficient. It will probably get sucked into corporate profit rather than improvement of lifestyle, but there is room for hope.
  • volkk 9y ago
    i just wonder how that will affect the people (i.e me) that get very nauseous in cars, especially when looking down/reading something. i dont know the science but its a lot worse when it's stop and go traffic. can self driving cars be programmed to drive and react much smoother to help us folk that are sensitive to this?
• matte_black 9y ago
  Personally I'm not convinced. I wish we could just skip the self driving car phase and go straight to personal self flying drones. Less edge cases to deal with, and since most people are not pilots the drone must be 100% automated, turning it into something more like a horse-drawn carriage from days of old. Since air traffic is more tightly controlled they do not have to compete much with piloted aircraft. No pedestrians to worry about, minimal possibilities for accidents. Flying away and parking somewhere away from your location is not just a feature – it's mandatory since our world has no accommodations for consumer aircraft parking. Since most landings can be done on the rooftops of tall buildings, it's conceivable that we may reduce the amount of time we spend walking on dangerous or dirty streets, and also opens the door for more creative skyward architecture and retail. And of course there's the magnificent views you'll get of a city even in a boring daily commute. I will probably not own a self driving car given current technology, but I can't wait to see the age of true flying transports for the masses.
  • janlaureys 9y ago
    I find this a really interesting concept but really hard to pull off on a big scale. First of all I thinkg battery energy density will have to multiply a few times. Traffic will have to be actively monitored 24/7 to avoid collisions, avoid vehicles going through no-fly zones. Crashes would also be a lot worse, possibly crashing into houses, schools, hospitals. Not trying to be overly critical, just a fun thing to think about.
  • ng-user 9y ago
    > Less edge cases to deal with I believe this is wildly inaccurate. We already have the infrastructure for self-driving vehicles. How do you handle a mechanical failure of your personal flying drone? Does it drop you to the ground or on a group of pedestrians nearby? This surely only increases anxiety of people walking below. What is the recommended height for a self-flying drone? 100's of ft above ground? Not to mention there are no drones (to my knowledge) that can legally transport a human today in 2018, how long until we develop/regulate that technology? (I understand it's the same with self-driving vehicles but we've been working on this for _years_ already and things have improved significantly in that time period) While I like your outside the box thinking, I disagree with the notion that there are less edge cases than self-driving cars, at minimum it's on par with the same amount of edge cases as self-driving vehicles.
    • freehunter 9y ago
      I also believe there are far more edge cases to deal with: specifically the edge of the blades on the propellers. Whirling blades with an engine powerful enough to lift and transport a human plus cargo whizzing through downtown areas, and everyone owns one? It only makes sense in sci-fi movies.
    • matte_black 9y ago
      If your drone fails catastrophically such that it no longer has enough working propellers to land safely, then you crash and die. Simple as that. The same can happen in a vehicle, or any other aircraft. In the end, the loss of life amounts to somewhat of a handful of people. No worse than car accidents which kill people daily and all the time. Recommended height? It's already laid out, just look at aeronautical maps. The technology will come. What we require is more battery density and perhaps better materials. Prototype drones for human transport are already out there. It is certainly a lot less edge cases. But again, when it comes to aircraft people seem to exaggerate dangers and make it seem like a big deal. Aircraft are safer than cars when you know what you're doing. Because humans also don't currently fly drones to get around, you don't have to deal with all the human cultural and behavioral quirks that come with traffic. Good luck with your self-driving car on India's streets. I have come to believe that by the time self-driving tech is truly viable at level 5 autonomy, personal drone transports would have long been viable before that.
• ggregoire 9y ago
  Would be better to fix traffic congestion. Like building alternatives to cars...
  • ansgri 9y ago
    Like electric trains. And to make infrastructure costs low, make virtual trains of self-driving electric cars on dedicated lanes. I really believe the US will get self-driving cars first, as a first form of pervasive public transportation. I call it a second-world technology effect: just like we in Eastern Europe have much better internet and cellular service (not to speak of online banking) because it was built after the first-world countries already heavily invested in obsolete technology, the US can use the latest technology (SDC) in building its first public transportation system.
    • eloff 9y ago
      The US has public transportation, it's just not as effective as it could be because most of the cities are designed around cars. SDC could solve the last mile problem (especially if paired with Musk's idea of underground high-speed sleds for cars.)
• czechdeveloper 9y ago
  It will create group of hyper-commuters who travel to work longer than it standard today because it will become slightly more convenient. Nothing I'm looking forward to.
  • dmix 9y ago
    That has interesting implications for real estate. It might singlehandedly revert the trend of living in dense urban areas. It wouldn't be as bad if cars become fully electrified and cars become smaller as they shift from individual car ownership (where you buy a 4-5 seater for edge cases but only use 1-2 seats 95% of the time). When you order your automated fleet car to pick you up you can say I only need one seat, which will massively reduce car sizes and energy expenditures. Self driving cars can potentially link up like trains on highways to further reduce congestion and reduce energy use.
    • ryandrake 9y ago
      My commute is currently around 2 hours each way. If I had a self driving car Im still probably not moving much further away, even though it would be a significant cost of living difference. On the other hand I could see people whose commutes are 30 minutes tolerating a 1 hour self driving commute especially if it means they are paying 1/2 their rent.
      • dmix 9y ago
        > My commute is currently around 2 hours each way. I will never understand how people do this... especially so many of them without car pooling, which means they have to focus the whole time. I'd easily trade those hours for 100% the rent costs and half the living space.
        • illegalsmile 9y ago
          I don't and won't understand either. My job is ~5 minutes by car, 15 by bike and I did that on purpose. To spend 4 waking hours essentially unable to do anything other than listen to music/podcasts/books while putting up with other drivers and weather would drive me insane. I have to imagine that there are extenuating circumstances that force people into these absurd commutes.
• martinald 9y ago
  What, like an incredibly space inefficient train or bus? It will also cause insane traffic congestion if people cared less about the congestion. At a certain level of congestion people think it will take too long and avoid the journey. All this will do is move the threshold even higher. Most metro areas need to look at transit as the solution. Self driving vehicles may play a role in feeder routes but the idea suddenly congestion will be solved because of self driving vehicles is crazy; and IMO will actually be the opposite.
  • adamnemecek 9y ago
    Train or bus are pretty annoying. Like quite a few times, the bus is packed.
    • martinald 9y ago
      Yes but you've probably got 100 people on the bus if it's packed in a few square metres of road space. If you had a self driving vehicle that was comfortable, you'd need probably 100s of square m of road space to take all the people. Which means even more immense congestion.
  • RandallBrown 9y ago
    That's kinda like saying your yard is a space inefficient park. There are good reasons people don't want to be crammed on a bus or train with other people all of the time.
    • martinald 9y ago
      Buy first class train tickets then? On DB you can even get a private office on ICE trains. They're really expensive; because that amount of space is by its nature expensive.
      • walshemj 9y ago
        if I could afford that I wouldn't need to work - get real mate
• hammock 9y ago
  Not sure we have space for everyone to have a mobile home on the road. We hardly have enough space on the roads for the cars/commuters we already have.
• adrianN 9y ago
  Even though this is what car manufacturers might want, I think it's more likely that autocars greatly reduce the rate of car ownership. Why own a car when you can just call one whenever you need it? In this scenario autocars are more like Taxis or buses, i.e. not secondary homes.
  • yndoendo 9y ago
    Actually a self-driving RV is quite luring if one can work remotely. Traveling cross-country while not actually having to drive. Could see people making them their primary home.
• soheil 9y ago
  I don't think it'll be fundamentally different than taking a black car for example or any uber for that matter. If you think you can dine and work in black car then you can in a self-driving car too, but I haven't seen that happening yet. There are challenges to that that are not just the fact you are not driving, like the fact that the car moves constantly, making turns, etc. are things that are not very friendly to a dining experience or getting work done. Perhaps if there was a dedicated lane where self-driving cars would move slowly like a train that would be more plausible. Or maybe even freeway driving, no stop and go traffic though.
  • mattmanser 9y ago
    Once self driving cars are a thing, won't the design change? No need for a driver's seat, no need to put in a gear stick or parking break partition. If I own my own self driving car, rather than summoning one, I think you'll see a big shift in designs because it will be your or your family's space.
    • drdeadringer 9y ago
      I recently finished watching the anime "Legend of Galactic Heroes". In an early episode, a character summons a roaming [empty] driverless hover-car taxi [hailed with a transmitting credit-card-sized hailing device no less] to help an injured compatriot on his way. Watching the scene was surreal; when it first aired no doubt it was totally SF, but now it's actually within the grasp of reality. The entire vehicle's interior was, basically, Limo seating. No room for any driver at all. The car lands, they get in and close the doors, and the car takes off all 5th Element but driverless to their destination -- one character laid out injured, the other consoling and helping whilst sitting upright. I just have to believe that interior configurations are going to change similar to this.
  • 282883392 9y ago
    Current cars aren't exactly designed for "leisure." In the future we will probably see more car designs centered around leisure such as sleeping, working, or eating.
  • 9y ago
• drdeadringer 9y ago
  There is the short story "The Roads Must Roll" by Robert Heinlein which -- as a plot device or similar -- has these vast roads which enable such things as mobile restaurants. Some characters commute over a business dinner, for example. We can see the beginnings of this for those of us who ride transit. Reading, "sleeping", A/V media on tablets/phones... and then to make-up and phone calls... anything reasonable and semi-reasonable in public that's not active driving [and non-reasonable for some of the fringes].