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No tech that requires a special type of road will ever get successful, whether it's aids for autonomous driving aids, electric roads for on the go charging, or
by sorenjan 8y ago
No tech that requires a special type of road will ever get successful, whether it's aids for autonomous driving aids, electric roads for on the go charging, or similar. The world already have countless of kilometers of roads, and all you need to drive a regular car is a relatively hard and flat piece of dirt. The cost and time required would be immense, and there will always be a need to use cars outside any built up road network.
Sure, for commuting in large cities anything is possible, but then cars still need to be able to do both old an new navigation.
- jniedrauer 8y ago> No tech that requires a special type of road will ever get successful Except, y'know, those newfangled automobile things that they had to build special roads for.
- fullshark 8y agoWhat if China does it first and the western world sees it as another Sputnik moment?
- copperx 8y agoIt doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing proposition. For example, just augmenting interstate highways to enable reliable autonomous driving would be a complete game changer for commerce, let alone personal use. Let the driver drive the car manually for the last mile of travel. Most of the problems of autonomous driving are on the last mile (pedestrians, unmarked roads, poor lighting, school crossings, train crossings, etc.). The last mile is the most expensive to outfit and maintain, too. I wouldn't be disappointed at all to find that in the future, cars drive by themselves 80% of the time, and humans take over for the tricky 20%. If the roadway isn't autonomous-ready the car shouldn't become a brick. You just drive it manually.
- CaptainZapp 8y agoWho pays for that? You would either have to add massive taxes to road usage (not just gas), heavily tax automobile ownership or use general purpose taxes for such very expensive upgrades. As a non-owner of a car I would balk at the last option.
- ex3ndr 8y agoRoads already refreshed regularly, may be some specific color will be enought.
- magduf 8y ago>Roads already refreshed regularly You don't live in the US, do you?
- copperx 8y agoYou're assuming the upgrades will be extraordinarily expensive. What if what is required is something as simple as radar-reflecting paint, and somehow encoding additional information in the markings? Or maybe all cars should have an RFID-like thing on their bumpers to make car detection more reliable. The gov't could distribute that bumper sticker along with the car registration sticker. You could enforce that in the annual inspection. Sure, a car that doesn't need any aids is much cooler. But if you look at the history of technology, especially in the PC world, there were a lot of clever hacks and external aids that had to be used in order to make the tech feasible. Then with time, they were rendered unnecessary.
- weregiraffe 8y ago>No tech that requires a special type of road will ever get successful I'm reading this from inside a train.
- glenneroo 8y agoTrams are also very popular in Europe and cars can still drive on roads with tram tracks.
- imtringued 8y agoThat's exactly why trains are not as successful as cars.
- mrguyorama 8y agoNotice how few miles of train tracks there are in comparison to roadways.