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It's a little strange, because another trend directly competing with automatic cars is telecommunications. If it were possible and culturally acceptable for al

It's a little strange, because another trend directly competing with automatic cars is telecommunications. If it were possible and culturally acceptable for all white-collar workers to telecommute full-time, all of a sudden there would be half as many cars on the streets. If there were efficient, cost-effective, and prompt delivery systems for local goods like groceries, there would be half as many again. It's conceivable that there won't be much private driving for reasons besides pure leisure 15 years from now. So it's not clear to me whether automatic cars or "rooms that go places" will always remain as useful as they sound today. (Practically speaking, though, I'd bet on it, since cars are pretty ingrained into American culture and since the auto industry is large and very committed to keeping individuals on the road.)

Tichy 16y ago
"If there were efficient, cost-effective, and prompt delivery systems for local goods like groceries" Wouldn't trucks work? It sounds crazy at first, but I suspect one truck making the rounds every day, like the postman, would still be more energy efficient than hundreds of cars going back and forth to the supermarket?
- mquander 16y ago
  Sure, that's more or less what I was thinking; UPS or FedEx, but local. Obviously, that would save a lot of time and energy. It's non-trivial, though, since the stores would suddenly need EDI systems that could communicate orders and shipments and statuses to these delivery guys. Big chains do this sort of thing all the time, but some local businesses would probably have a hard time making this suddenly happen out of the blue.
lars512 16y ago
Offices are cheaper per person to run and provision than individual dwellings due to the extra density of workers, so this trend depends on the tradeoff between the energy saved by reducing travel and the energy spent heating/cooling/running individual home offices. On the other hand, many countries are dealing with ageing populations. Self-driving cars will give the elderly and the disabled a level of autonomy that we take for granted. That's my bet on the big win.
- ghaff 16y ago
  But given that the homes exist anyway, from a pure monetary basis the home office ends up winning pretty much every time. (To be sure, not everyone has a home office they'd be comfortable working in full-time.) The issue, one of them anyway, is that F2F communication is a lot more interactive, higher bandwidth, and encourages unstructured interaction. I do a lot of conference calls and other forms of telecommuting but it's still enormously useful to go into the office a good chunk of the time.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]

Tichy 16y ago

"If there were efficient, cost-effective, and prompt delivery systems for local goods like groceries" Wouldn't trucks work? It sounds crazy at first, but I suspect one truck making the rounds every day, like the postman, would still be more energy efficient than hundreds of cars going back and forth to the supermarket?

mquander 16y ago
Sure, that's more or less what I was thinking; UPS or FedEx, but local. Obviously, that would save a lot of time and energy. It's non-trivial, though, since the stores would suddenly need EDI systems that could communicate orders and shipments and statuses to these delivery guys. Big chains do this sort of thing all the time, but some local businesses would probably have a hard time making this suddenly happen out of the blue.

lars512 16y ago

Offices are cheaper per person to run and provision than individual dwellings due to the extra density of workers, so this trend depends on the tradeoff between the energy saved by reducing travel and the energy spent heating/cooling/running individual home offices. On the other hand, many countries are dealing with ageing populations. Self-driving cars will give the elderly and the disabled a level of autonomy that we take for granted. That's my bet on the big win.

ghaff 16y ago
But given that the homes exist anyway, from a pure monetary basis the home office ends up winning pretty much every time. (To be sure, not everyone has a home office they'd be comfortable working in full-time.) The issue, one of them anyway, is that F2F communication is a lot more interactive, higher bandwidth, and encourages unstructured interaction. I do a lot of conference calls and other forms of telecommuting but it's still enormously useful to go into the office a good chunk of the time.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]