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A single occupancy car will be more commercially lucrative once we have full self-driving technology. If you hail a self-driving cab for yourself, the fleet wil

A single occupancy car will be more commercially lucrative once we have full self-driving technology. If you hail a self-driving cab for yourself, the fleet will send a single-occupancy car. If you’re with a few others, it’ll send a sedan. Etc...all under a tiered subscription model. Not sending a sedan every time saves on hardware, electricity, and maintenance costs. Some of the savings would in turn be passed onto the consumer. The single occupancy car will also be more safe at that point, because it’ll only drive on lanes dedicated to self-driving vehicles.

J0_k3r 6y ago
we have self-driving cars already, they're called trains
- Talanes 6y ago
  Show me a train that can show up at my grandmother's door and drop her at the doctor's.
  - jdavis703 6y ago
    There’s a train outside my front door that will drop me off at the front of UCSF. But that’s about 10 stops away and requires a transfer. If one doesn’t mind the bus, there’s one that picks up in front of my door and drops off at the hospital (the bus stop is even closer to the main entrance than the parking garage!)
    - ncallaway 6y ago
      That's great! How soon can that train get to Talanes' grandmother's house?
  - nsl73 6y ago
    I’ve seen plenty of elderly people use trains.
  - izacus 6y ago
    Swiss somehow manage to use trains in massive numbers even if grandmothers need car assistance occasionally. You don't need to poison the atmosphere every day with a car on your commute just because your grandmother might need a pick her up for her doctors checkup (having a medical facility come to pick someone up is not an uncommon service either). Why do some of you think that finding a wierd edge case is enough to invalidate a whole infrastructure? This isn't derivation of a mathematical proof where counter-example invalidates the hypothesis.
    - ovi256 6y ago
      >poison the atmosphere every day with a car So you won't mind electric cars then, which fix that problem ?
      - globular-toast 6y ago
        They don't fix the problem. Nowhere on earth is there a sustainable electrical grid that doesn't pollute the atmosphere, let alone one that supports electric cars for every household. Not only that but electric cars create local pollution in the form of particular matter from brakes and tyres and they are worse than internal combustion engine cars in that regard.
        Firadeoclus 6y ago
        > and they are worse than internal combustion engine cars in that regard. Regenerative braking means less wear on the brakes, and there's no particulate matter from the exhaust pipe. In what way are electric cars worse?
        globular-toast 6y ago
        Regenerative braking does not replace traditional brakes. In particular it is only really efficient at high speeds and doesn't do much in cities. EVs have no tailpipe emissions, but particulate emissions from the tailpipe of modern ICEs is very low anyway. But EVs do produce significantly more emissions from the tyres and brakes compared with ICE vehicles because they are heavier. https://www.emissionsanalytics.com/news/2020/1/28/tyres-not-tailpipe https://www.emissionsanalytics.com/news/2020/1/28/tyres-not-...
- jmchuster 6y ago
  i think you mean taxis? To the end customer, the only difference would be cost, and if you are rich enough, or the service is subsidized enough by investor cash, or the cost of living in your area is low enough, then it all ends up roughly the same.
  - keenmaster 6y ago
    >subsidized enough by investor cash Investors have no reason to subsidize costlier transportation modalities that customers may not even prefer half the time. As for the verbiage, I don’t think self-driving car subscription services will brand themselves as taxi fleets. They will replace the vehicle that you own and that sits on your driveway 97% of the time (that’s a general “you”). However, Americans like the feeling of ownership over their vehicle. The name of the service should take that into account.
  - gambiting 6y ago
    Yep, that's what I post every single time. Taxis are already self driving cars, so any argument for a self driving car should apply to them as well, yet people still prefer owning their own car than being "automatically" driven everywhere. It would already be cheaper for me to take a taxi to work every day than pay for my own car, yet.....I would rather pay a bit more and have a car that is mine and that I can do whatever I want with. The self driving aspect is just not appealing in the slightest.
    - keenmaster 6y ago
      I think most Americans will choose the subscription service over ownership. Subscribers will have instant access to any type of vehicle at any time. The subscription cost will be lower than the cost of ownership. The whole fleet will always be new and incorporate the latest technology. Robotocized cleaning centers and user ratings will mitigate “tragedy of the commons.” I think even at the high end people will use luxury subscription services more often than whatever car they may own as a backup. It’s not cheaper vs. better. Subscriptions will be both cheaper and better.
      - 6y ago
- m463 6y ago
  What's always been amusing to me is that trains should be self-driving, but they always have a human in charge. I mean it's not like they have a steering wheel.
  - globular-toast 6y ago
    They don't always. There are self-driving trains operating full time in London and Paris as well as many other cities around the world. But they are low-speed trains operating at only around 30mph. High-speed trains run in excess of 180mph and heavy goods trains are often a mile long and weigh more than 10,000 tons. While much of the signalling is automatic these days, I think it will be a long time before we could think about running something so dangerous without a skilled human in the front ready to override the controls if necessary.
  - majewsky 6y ago
    I believe the main reason is the long tail of unexpected events. For instance: I regularly use the tram. Every few months or so, the driver has to get out to manually operate a railroad switch that does not react to the wireless control signal. If you had a driverless tram, the tram would have to wait for personnel to arrive at the switch for the manual override. Extrapolating from my experience manual overrides are probably necessary a few times a day across the entire city's tram network, so we'd be looking at massive interruptions multiple times a day that cause cascading delays throughout the whole system. So unless you put in a lot of engineering effort to get rid of these unlikely-but-still-common problems, running a driverless operation is going to be more disruptive and less cost-efficient than paying the driver salaries.
    - iso1631 6y ago
      It's also a cautionary tale for self-driving car advocates. Running a driverless train on segregated track with signalling is far easier than running a driverless car on a mixed street with lidar. Yet it still has enough edge cases to mean it's not worthwhile
  - fab13n 6y ago
    If there's between 100 and 1000 people in a train, getting rid of the driver saves between 1% and 0.1% of an hourly salary by ticket. The economic pressure to do so is very low, compared to the difficulty and legal liabilities. Automating out a taxi/Über driver saves 50× to 1000× more money per traveler. And the infrastructure for a car ride cost way less than train + track + catenary lines + stations + antiquated ticketing system etc., so salaries represent a higher percentage of total costs.
- trhway 6y ago
  the trains and other forms of public transportation may have to go the way of the other things impacted by covid. The new reality calls for individual, ideally autonomous, vehicles. Especially in the dense cities. Small, electric, may be even 3-wheelers. Sidenote: i wonder whether the lockdown may work as a selection pressure on the covid to produce the more viral, like long living on surfaces, etc., mutation of the virus.
  - icebraining 6y ago
    It's a bit early to say, but in my opinion (as a non-specialist, based on reading them), there will be no "new reality". Covid is a big thing while it spreads, but it won't be a large concern in 2-3 years even if it becomes endemic, especially with better hygiene practices and treatments. Not even bicycles can even approach the density of a train/metro/bus, which is required to have cities with the density we currently have, and I don't think covid-19 is nearly enough of a threat to make us give up on that.
- usrusr 6y ago
  Single-occupancy trains are a terrible idea though.. Jokes aside, the dependence on self-driving OP was alluding to is wildly exaggerated in my eyes, because the other kind of self-driving (user drives a short-term rental) works just as well. And with short term rentals, physical footprint is making an actual difference because their availability is bounded by storage. There used to be a wave of microcar concepts that were trying to solve parking by folding up a little. Back then those never made sense because they were still intended as personal vehicles and those end up taking up a one-size-fits-all spot anyways. But combined with the innovation of micro-rentals (modeled after docked bike-share) those fold-up tricks could turn from a gimmick into a key enabling technology. All you need is self-parking to store them in a compact FIFO and self-parking is beyond solved. Once you have that, all minor extension of the unparking range (from unparking just enough to unfolding at the storage dock to dedicated pickup locations nearby to pickup anywhere) would be incremental improvements to service quality that would require much less than full autonomy.
  - VBprogrammer 6y ago
    > because the other kind of self-driving (user drives a short-term rental) works just as well User drives short term rental gave me all kinds worries which I don't have driving my own car. Being responsible for checking damage when picking it up, worrying about minor (as in accidentally kerbing a wheel) damage while I'm driving, having someone hit it while it is parked somewhere, getting caught in traffic while returning it and being fined for going over the allotted time. Writing this down has just made me realise how nice it would be if there was a car rental company which worked on a first come first served basis with rental charged per minute. If they also had some kind of automatic photo booth to take detailed before and after photos that would be almost perfect.
gxon 6y ago
Depends on whether you want the non shared experience or not. Shared rides in a dense area are probably more efficient. Our new post-pandemic reality might make shared rides less desirable. Or more desirable as a marginally safer alternative to public transit.
- keenmaster 6y ago
  There is a long tail of routes where single occupancy is not just more desirable, but also more efficient. Think of all the time and energy wasted idling and searching for the second or third car pooler. Self-driving cars also drive more efficiently, negating some of the benefits of carpooling. Another factor in cities is that tiny cars are more pedestrian friendly. Cities can and should tax vehicle size as a negative externality. A single ride hailer should be sent a sedan when they are on a more conventional route with easy pickup and drop off points. That would make more sense from both a unit cost and quality perspective than pooling every time. Augmented reality could also highlight and fill open seats quickly, including when that second carpooler can’t be found.
ehnto 6y ago
You're banking on full autonomy from a vehicle you can just plonk into any old city with no alteration to infrastructure, that would be served entirely by commercialized hail services for people who can afford it. We should be hoping for ubiquitous public transport infrastructure that everyone can utilize and afford.
- maxsilver 6y ago
  > We should be hoping for ubiquitous public transport infrastructure that everyone can utilize and afford. This is a form of ubiquitous public transport infrastructure. Automobiles and roads are already the most inclusive form of public transportation ever invented (measured as percent of public served), and have the cheapest per-rider cost to maintain for any government out of any infrastructure ever invented to date, while still supporting full distances and high service rates. And while cost of vehicles and driver requirements are currently barriers -- reducing the cost of vehicles and improving their ability to self drive, would let everyone utilize and afford it.
- marcosdumay 6y ago
  Mass transportation gets incredibly wasteful once you cross under some population density. And on many places most of the people live on areas under that density. That means that any attempt of pushing everybody at mass transportation at those places will fail, even if executed perfectly. But small cars are perfect for feeder routes.

J0_k3r 6y ago

we have self-driving cars already, they're called trains

Talanes 6y ago
Show me a train that can show up at my grandmother's door and drop her at the doctor's.
- jdavis703 6y ago
  There’s a train outside my front door that will drop me off at the front of UCSF. But that’s about 10 stops away and requires a transfer. If one doesn’t mind the bus, there’s one that picks up in front of my door and drops off at the hospital (the bus stop is even closer to the main entrance than the parking garage!)
  - ncallaway 6y ago
    That's great! How soon can that train get to Talanes' grandmother's house?
- nsl73 6y ago
  I’ve seen plenty of elderly people use trains.
- izacus 6y ago
  Swiss somehow manage to use trains in massive numbers even if grandmothers need car assistance occasionally. You don't need to poison the atmosphere every day with a car on your commute just because your grandmother might need a pick her up for her doctors checkup (having a medical facility come to pick someone up is not an uncommon service either). Why do some of you think that finding a wierd edge case is enough to invalidate a whole infrastructure? This isn't derivation of a mathematical proof where counter-example invalidates the hypothesis.
  - ovi256 6y ago
    >poison the atmosphere every day with a car So you won't mind electric cars then, which fix that problem ?
    - globular-toast 6y ago
      They don't fix the problem. Nowhere on earth is there a sustainable electrical grid that doesn't pollute the atmosphere, let alone one that supports electric cars for every household. Not only that but electric cars create local pollution in the form of particular matter from brakes and tyres and they are worse than internal combustion engine cars in that regard.
      - Firadeoclus 6y ago
        > and they are worse than internal combustion engine cars in that regard. Regenerative braking means less wear on the brakes, and there's no particulate matter from the exhaust pipe. In what way are electric cars worse?
        globular-toast 6y ago
        Regenerative braking does not replace traditional brakes. In particular it is only really efficient at high speeds and doesn't do much in cities. EVs have no tailpipe emissions, but particulate emissions from the tailpipe of modern ICEs is very low anyway. But EVs do produce significantly more emissions from the tyres and brakes compared with ICE vehicles because they are heavier. https://www.emissionsanalytics.com/news/2020/1/28/tyres-not-tailpipe https://www.emissionsanalytics.com/news/2020/1/28/tyres-not-...
jmchuster 6y ago
i think you mean taxis? To the end customer, the only difference would be cost, and if you are rich enough, or the service is subsidized enough by investor cash, or the cost of living in your area is low enough, then it all ends up roughly the same.
- keenmaster 6y ago
  >subsidized enough by investor cash Investors have no reason to subsidize costlier transportation modalities that customers may not even prefer half the time. As for the verbiage, I don’t think self-driving car subscription services will brand themselves as taxi fleets. They will replace the vehicle that you own and that sits on your driveway 97% of the time (that’s a general “you”). However, Americans like the feeling of ownership over their vehicle. The name of the service should take that into account.
- gambiting 6y ago
  Yep, that's what I post every single time. Taxis are already self driving cars, so any argument for a self driving car should apply to them as well, yet people still prefer owning their own car than being "automatically" driven everywhere. It would already be cheaper for me to take a taxi to work every day than pay for my own car, yet.....I would rather pay a bit more and have a car that is mine and that I can do whatever I want with. The self driving aspect is just not appealing in the slightest.
  - keenmaster 6y ago
    I think most Americans will choose the subscription service over ownership. Subscribers will have instant access to any type of vehicle at any time. The subscription cost will be lower than the cost of ownership. The whole fleet will always be new and incorporate the latest technology. Robotocized cleaning centers and user ratings will mitigate “tragedy of the commons.” I think even at the high end people will use luxury subscription services more often than whatever car they may own as a backup. It’s not cheaper vs. better. Subscriptions will be both cheaper and better.
    - 6y ago
m463 6y ago
What's always been amusing to me is that trains should be self-driving, but they always have a human in charge. I mean it's not like they have a steering wheel.
- globular-toast 6y ago
  They don't always. There are self-driving trains operating full time in London and Paris as well as many other cities around the world. But they are low-speed trains operating at only around 30mph. High-speed trains run in excess of 180mph and heavy goods trains are often a mile long and weigh more than 10,000 tons. While much of the signalling is automatic these days, I think it will be a long time before we could think about running something so dangerous without a skilled human in the front ready to override the controls if necessary.
- majewsky 6y ago
  I believe the main reason is the long tail of unexpected events. For instance: I regularly use the tram. Every few months or so, the driver has to get out to manually operate a railroad switch that does not react to the wireless control signal. If you had a driverless tram, the tram would have to wait for personnel to arrive at the switch for the manual override. Extrapolating from my experience manual overrides are probably necessary a few times a day across the entire city's tram network, so we'd be looking at massive interruptions multiple times a day that cause cascading delays throughout the whole system. So unless you put in a lot of engineering effort to get rid of these unlikely-but-still-common problems, running a driverless operation is going to be more disruptive and less cost-efficient than paying the driver salaries.
  - iso1631 6y ago
    It's also a cautionary tale for self-driving car advocates. Running a driverless train on segregated track with signalling is far easier than running a driverless car on a mixed street with lidar. Yet it still has enough edge cases to mean it's not worthwhile
- fab13n 6y ago
  If there's between 100 and 1000 people in a train, getting rid of the driver saves between 1% and 0.1% of an hourly salary by ticket. The economic pressure to do so is very low, compared to the difficulty and legal liabilities. Automating out a taxi/Über driver saves 50× to 1000× more money per traveler. And the infrastructure for a car ride cost way less than train + track + catenary lines + stations + antiquated ticketing system etc., so salaries represent a higher percentage of total costs.
trhway 6y ago
the trains and other forms of public transportation may have to go the way of the other things impacted by covid. The new reality calls for individual, ideally autonomous, vehicles. Especially in the dense cities. Small, electric, may be even 3-wheelers. Sidenote: i wonder whether the lockdown may work as a selection pressure on the covid to produce the more viral, like long living on surfaces, etc., mutation of the virus.
- icebraining 6y ago
  It's a bit early to say, but in my opinion (as a non-specialist, based on reading them), there will be no "new reality". Covid is a big thing while it spreads, but it won't be a large concern in 2-3 years even if it becomes endemic, especially with better hygiene practices and treatments. Not even bicycles can even approach the density of a train/metro/bus, which is required to have cities with the density we currently have, and I don't think covid-19 is nearly enough of a threat to make us give up on that.
usrusr 6y ago
Single-occupancy trains are a terrible idea though.. Jokes aside, the dependence on self-driving OP was alluding to is wildly exaggerated in my eyes, because the other kind of self-driving (user drives a short-term rental) works just as well. And with short term rentals, physical footprint is making an actual difference because their availability is bounded by storage. There used to be a wave of microcar concepts that were trying to solve parking by folding up a little. Back then those never made sense because they were still intended as personal vehicles and those end up taking up a one-size-fits-all spot anyways. But combined with the innovation of micro-rentals (modeled after docked bike-share) those fold-up tricks could turn from a gimmick into a key enabling technology. All you need is self-parking to store them in a compact FIFO and self-parking is beyond solved. Once you have that, all minor extension of the unparking range (from unparking just enough to unfolding at the storage dock to dedicated pickup locations nearby to pickup anywhere) would be incremental improvements to service quality that would require much less than full autonomy.
- VBprogrammer 6y ago
  > because the other kind of self-driving (user drives a short-term rental) works just as well User drives short term rental gave me all kinds worries which I don't have driving my own car. Being responsible for checking damage when picking it up, worrying about minor (as in accidentally kerbing a wheel) damage while I'm driving, having someone hit it while it is parked somewhere, getting caught in traffic while returning it and being fined for going over the allotted time. Writing this down has just made me realise how nice it would be if there was a car rental company which worked on a first come first served basis with rental charged per minute. If they also had some kind of automatic photo booth to take detailed before and after photos that would be almost perfect.

gxon 6y ago

Depends on whether you want the non shared experience or not. Shared rides in a dense area are probably more efficient. Our new post-pandemic reality might make shared rides less desirable. Or more desirable as a marginally safer alternative to public transit.

keenmaster 6y ago
There is a long tail of routes where single occupancy is not just more desirable, but also more efficient. Think of all the time and energy wasted idling and searching for the second or third car pooler. Self-driving cars also drive more efficiently, negating some of the benefits of carpooling. Another factor in cities is that tiny cars are more pedestrian friendly. Cities can and should tax vehicle size as a negative externality. A single ride hailer should be sent a sedan when they are on a more conventional route with easy pickup and drop off points. That would make more sense from both a unit cost and quality perspective than pooling every time. Augmented reality could also highlight and fill open seats quickly, including when that second carpooler can’t be found.

ehnto 6y ago

You're banking on full autonomy from a vehicle you can just plonk into any old city with no alteration to infrastructure, that would be served entirely by commercialized hail services for people who can afford it. We should be hoping for ubiquitous public transport infrastructure that everyone can utilize and afford.

maxsilver 6y ago
> We should be hoping for ubiquitous public transport infrastructure that everyone can utilize and afford. This is a form of ubiquitous public transport infrastructure. Automobiles and roads are already the most inclusive form of public transportation ever invented (measured as percent of public served), and have the cheapest per-rider cost to maintain for any government out of any infrastructure ever invented to date, while still supporting full distances and high service rates. And while cost of vehicles and driver requirements are currently barriers -- reducing the cost of vehicles and improving their ability to self drive, would let everyone utilize and afford it.
marcosdumay 6y ago
Mass transportation gets incredibly wasteful once you cross under some population density. And on many places most of the people live on areas under that density. That means that any attempt of pushing everybody at mass transportation at those places will fail, even if executed perfectly. But small cars are perfect for feeder routes.