23 ms·

There's no need. This transition will be slow. A few cities first with a limited number of cars. And then it grows organically and probably initially quite slow

There's no need. This transition will be slow. A few cities first with a limited number of cars. And then it grows organically and probably initially quite slowly. It would take many years to upgrade all taxis world wide. The production capacity to produce the vehicles simply does not exist yet. So, the grid won't collapse. Drivers won't starve overnight. Legal issues will sort themselves out as early adopters encounter them, etc. Plenty of time for everybody to adapt.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago
The cities that do make the transition quicker will have economic advantages, so I'm not so sure that the transition will be slow once a few cities make it. And we aren't just talking about the USA, we have to contend with large cities in Asia with worse traffic and more incentives to adopt the technology before American ones do.
- dwighttk 5y ago
  Economic advantages along with a huge number of jobs destroyed
  - jliptzin 5y ago
    Huge number of *shitty jobs destroyed Isn't that kind of the point of technological progress?
    - bufferoverflow 5y ago
      Shitty or not, they are jobs. You failed to address what will happen to these drivers. Average age: 46.
      - burrows 5y ago
        They will lose their jobs and will have to find new sources of incomes.
        chii 5y ago
        The horses that used to pull carriages were slaughtered for meat or glue after the advent of the car.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - kadoban 5y ago
      Yes, but since we live in a bootstrappy wonderland, the current holders of those shitty jobs will be ~destroyed as well.
      - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        The Luddites did ok. Why would it be different this time?
        carlmr 5y ago
        Actually a lot of them didn't, hence the protests. Innovation can take away your job in a span of ten years while not creating new jobs for generations to come.
        seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        > Innovation can take away your job in a span of ten years while not creating new jobs for generations to come. That case isn't true. The new generations had jobs well enough (increased productivity grew the economy much faster than before), they weren't committed to weaving clothes by hand. The Luddites themselves didn't fair as well in the short term, but many of them would have aged out of the work force in a few years anyways (manual weaving is pretty unforgiving on the body). Truck drivers are rapidly aging as well, if self driving vehicles move retirement up by 5 or so years, it isn't going that huge of a deal (we can rely even on America's social safety net), and their kids didn't want to be truck drivers anyways.
        carlmr 5y ago
        >Truck drivers are rapidly aging as well, if self driving vehicles move retirement up by 5 or so years, it isn't going that huge of a deal That's quite optimistic. When did politicians ever talk about moving up the retirement age in the last decades. The internet brought insane growth through productivity gains in all industries. Even more than I'd expect from self-driving cars. And we haven't talked about moving up the retirement age. Also the question is what these people do now? In the next twenty years of unemployment until they reach the current retirement age?
    - dfxm12 5y ago
      Yes, but, it unfortunately only leads to social progress if everything else keeps up - you'd be surprised how many social programs currently have work requirements ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Unemployment benefits, some type of UBI, education/job training affordability, social security, etc. are all things that need to be reevaluated if a whole job category is going to be removed. Job automation is great, but there are externalities that should be accounted for ahead of time. You can ask, "who pays for this?" Well, the obvious answer is the companies that will be enriching themselves due to society's sacrifice. Although, that has happened during the pandemic, so it's clear corporations aren't going to do so out of some sense of civic duty.
  - munk-a 5y ago
    This argument didn't stop cab driving from transitioning from a serious employment opportunity to employment as a service contractors - so I don't know if that's enough to hold back the tide for the taxi side of things... on the trucking side I think there will probably be a big reckoning at some point though. Teamsters unions mean business.
- jeromegv 5y ago
  Labor is cheaper in Asia so I'm not sure why the transition would happen faster there. Lots of jobs exists there for the sole purpose that the price of a robot/automation is way higher than paying someone to do it.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    Traffic jams and limited road infrastructure (with no space for more, so use needs to be optimized) are a PITA in Asia. It isn't really the cost of the taxi drivers (who are increasingly becoming scarce as young people choose better careers). Coupled with authoritarian governments that can push changes more readily than western governments, and Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo are easily on their way in this direction.
    - tobijkl 5y ago
      As long as there are still some vehicles with human drivers on the roadways, congestion will not change.
      - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        > As long as there are still some vehicles with human drivers on the roadways You understand. If the government can tell you that you can only drive even or odd days, tell you that you can't drive at all (and must use self driving cars inside the 4th or even 5th ring road) is a very distinct possibility.
      - pengaru 5y ago
        > congestion will not change. Congestion arguably will worsen first.
      - darepublic 5y ago
        why would congestion change if all the drivers were fully autonomous? It's one thing to have a fully autonomous driver, but having them coordinate perfectly to have good throughput even in dense traffic conditions is another altogether. I think this second goal is much farther off and if the articles I've read on autonomous vehicles is any indication I expect they will drive more cautiously and slowly than most human drivers when they finally "go live" in a widespread fashion
bufferoverflow 5y ago
The transition will not be slow. As soon as there's an addon to an existing truck or a taxi, they will be switched over very quickly. Businesses aren't stupid, they understand human drivers are expensive and get tired and cause accidents. Millions of jobs will be lost within a few years. And your comment didn't address of where these drivers will go in any way. "Adapt" is not an answer. Your average 46 year old truck driver will not be learning Javascript.
- breadzeppelin__ 5y ago
  they definitely already have this for tractors / farming https://www.agleader.com/blog/ag-leader-unveils-new-geosteer-automated-steering-system/?locale=en https://www.agleader.com/blog/ag-leader-unveils-new-geosteer...
  - logifail 5y ago
    > they definitely already have this for tractors / farming As in, a significant % of tractors are without human drivers, or as in, a significant % of tractors with human drivers have GPS-based assistance? I live in a rural area and see several dozens of tractors every day, and FWIW, I've never seen a tractor without a human driver. Yet.
    - breadzeppelin__ 5y ago
      As in the technology is available to make many 'off the shelf' tractors self-driving. I have no info on actual uptake just that there are components available to make 'normal' driving in to self-driving using third party modules
- supportlocal4h 5y ago
  How fast has warehouse automation occurred? What has happened to all the former warehouse workers? Fully autonomous warehouses has been a reasonable thing way before autonomous driving in the wild. It carries all the cost-saving and safety arguments. It might affect more people's jobs. What can we learn from that?
greggman3 5y ago
I think when it really works it will be more like the transition from feature phones to smart phones. very very quick. If they actually work it's just too compelling. Further, I expect the number of cars on the road to go way up because suddenly so many more people can use a car. For example, every one without a license. Kids, elderly, disabled. I also suspect it means there will be lots more long distance drives as suddenly it becomes "hey, wanna go to this place 3 hours away, we can play games and drink while the car drives us" I'd certainly consider visiting my family 9hrs drive away more often if Friday at say 12am I could just climb in the backseat and go to sleep and arrive at 8am vs having to drive myself (usually 7am to 4pm)
- aardvarkr 5y ago
  The phone -> smartphone transition stretched out over the course of a decade. It’s fast relative to the adoption of the automobile for example but nowhere near as quickly as you make it sound. Even in modern times we still have a surprising amount of Americans still use feature phones. The Pew Research Center found in 2018 that 17% of Americans still use feature phones. https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/02/19/a-foolish-take-17-of-americans-use-feature-phones.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/02/19/a-foolish-take-17-...
  - Kye 5y ago
    I didn't get a smartphone until 2014. It was frustrating how so many people in the tech bubble acted like everyone had one long before most people did and just didn't bother with web sites anymore, leaving me out of so many new things. The failure to peek outside one's own experience is a continuing problem among the people deciding what the world will look like tomorrow. See also: the internet. People still discussed seriously whether or not it had staying power as recently as 2008. It didn't really take off until the 2008 election pushed so many people to participate in new mediums. 2004 was kind of a prelude with Howard Dean's campaign, but he mostly reached the already online set. I was already on in the 1990s, and it still surprises me when I meet people my own age who didn't get on until the 2000s or 2010s even though it's the more common experience.
babypuncher 5y ago
Also Oregon will probably just ban autonomous vehicles in the name of protecting jobs, like they do with gas pumps.
iancmceachern 5y ago
I agree, it will be slow. These Waymo cars cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. A local pizza place in the middle of a small community will not be able to support the cost of a driverless car as compared to the cost of a local high school kid with a $500 Civic. Same with semis, companies invest in their truck fleets expecting millions of miles out of each truck. It will take time to change all that over, and the cost/benefit will take time to tip towards self driving. It will happen, but like seat belts, lead free gas and air bags it will take decades before they are the majority of vehicles on the road.
- mupuff1234 5y ago
  > These Waymo cars cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Any source on that claim? I thought they reduced the costs of lidar to be in the order of a few k.
  - cowvin 5y ago
    https://www.motortrend.com/news/self-driving-cars-faq-can-i-buy-one/ https://www.motortrend.com/news/self-driving-cars-faq-can-i-... Waymo claims they will cost somewhere in the 150k range.
    - mupuff1234 5y ago
      Sounds like the Jaguar (without the waymo tech) is a large chunk of that 150k.
      - iancmceachern 5y ago
        Those Jags start at $40k, to regular people. No doubt cheaper if you buy hundreds at a time. So the self driving tech is $100k+.
        mupuff1234 5y ago
        From checking now it seems like the base price for consumers is 70k. But regardless, I think even 100k is still quite different than "hundreds of thousands".
throwawaylinux 5y ago
Governments are incapable of "planning" for something like this. Even if it was likely to happen quickly. It would cost a vast amount of money and almost certainly be a bad solution, whatever they came up with. You really don't want the "expert" bureaucrats spending billions of dollars coming up with some hare brained initiative by committee that probably involves the usual mega corps who own their politicians being given vast amounts of money to do something that probably just gets in people's way.
me_me_me 5y ago
Slow? This is going to be singularly the biggest money making vector for any car/delivery business. Whoever is first will be able to go to ford or any other car manufacture and buy/rent their business to 100% switch to their full-auto cars at whatever cost. There will be no way to compete with autonomous vehicles, unless you are a train. Even given transition would be slower 5-10years, you are still talking about massive support sector of the drivers' related economy wiped. How do you recon all of those businesses and people adopt?
sam_goody 5y ago
Even when self driving gets to a certain level, it won't be able to compete with the safety of a street that ONLY allows self driving cars. As soon as a tipping point is hit, major areas will open roads to self driving cars only. Add to that that the latest generation of cars are electric (quiet, cleaner, more efficient, longer lasting), and as more people move to that there will be fewer gas stations, more ICE hate, etc. The result will be a very sudden shift to electric self-driving cars. Which will create a loop, and perhaps a shift much more faster than one might think. My guess is two years from when Waymo is convinced their vehicles can go anywhere to where such cars are mainstream, and another two years till ICE are outlawed on all major roads. Maybe living in lala land with that, but even if it takes 8 years - that will still throw a lot of people out of a job.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago

The cities that do make the transition quicker will have economic advantages, so I'm not so sure that the transition will be slow once a few cities make it. And we aren't just talking about the USA, we have to contend with large cities in Asia with worse traffic and more incentives to adopt the technology before American ones do.

dwighttk 5y ago
Economic advantages along with a huge number of jobs destroyed
- jliptzin 5y ago
  Huge number of *shitty jobs destroyed Isn't that kind of the point of technological progress?
  - bufferoverflow 5y ago
    Shitty or not, they are jobs. You failed to address what will happen to these drivers. Average age: 46.
    - burrows 5y ago
      They will lose their jobs and will have to find new sources of incomes.
      - chii 5y ago
        The horses that used to pull carriages were slaughtered for meat or glue after the advent of the car.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - kadoban 5y ago
    Yes, but since we live in a bootstrappy wonderland, the current holders of those shitty jobs will be ~destroyed as well.
    - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
      The Luddites did ok. Why would it be different this time?
      - carlmr 5y ago
        Actually a lot of them didn't, hence the protests. Innovation can take away your job in a span of ten years while not creating new jobs for generations to come.
        seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        > Innovation can take away your job in a span of ten years while not creating new jobs for generations to come. That case isn't true. The new generations had jobs well enough (increased productivity grew the economy much faster than before), they weren't committed to weaving clothes by hand. The Luddites themselves didn't fair as well in the short term, but many of them would have aged out of the work force in a few years anyways (manual weaving is pretty unforgiving on the body). Truck drivers are rapidly aging as well, if self driving vehicles move retirement up by 5 or so years, it isn't going that huge of a deal (we can rely even on America's social safety net), and their kids didn't want to be truck drivers anyways.
        carlmr 5y ago
        >Truck drivers are rapidly aging as well, if self driving vehicles move retirement up by 5 or so years, it isn't going that huge of a deal That's quite optimistic. When did politicians ever talk about moving up the retirement age in the last decades. The internet brought insane growth through productivity gains in all industries. Even more than I'd expect from self-driving cars. And we haven't talked about moving up the retirement age. Also the question is what these people do now? In the next twenty years of unemployment until they reach the current retirement age?
  - dfxm12 5y ago
    Yes, but, it unfortunately only leads to social progress if everything else keeps up - you'd be surprised how many social programs currently have work requirements ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Unemployment benefits, some type of UBI, education/job training affordability, social security, etc. are all things that need to be reevaluated if a whole job category is going to be removed. Job automation is great, but there are externalities that should be accounted for ahead of time. You can ask, "who pays for this?" Well, the obvious answer is the companies that will be enriching themselves due to society's sacrifice. Although, that has happened during the pandemic, so it's clear corporations aren't going to do so out of some sense of civic duty.
- munk-a 5y ago
  This argument didn't stop cab driving from transitioning from a serious employment opportunity to employment as a service contractors - so I don't know if that's enough to hold back the tide for the taxi side of things... on the trucking side I think there will probably be a big reckoning at some point though. Teamsters unions mean business.
jeromegv 5y ago
Labor is cheaper in Asia so I'm not sure why the transition would happen faster there. Lots of jobs exists there for the sole purpose that the price of a robot/automation is way higher than paying someone to do it.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  Traffic jams and limited road infrastructure (with no space for more, so use needs to be optimized) are a PITA in Asia. It isn't really the cost of the taxi drivers (who are increasingly becoming scarce as young people choose better careers). Coupled with authoritarian governments that can push changes more readily than western governments, and Beijing, Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo are easily on their way in this direction.
  - tobijkl 5y ago
    As long as there are still some vehicles with human drivers on the roadways, congestion will not change.
    - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
      > As long as there are still some vehicles with human drivers on the roadways You understand. If the government can tell you that you can only drive even or odd days, tell you that you can't drive at all (and must use self driving cars inside the 4th or even 5th ring road) is a very distinct possibility.
    - pengaru 5y ago
      > congestion will not change. Congestion arguably will worsen first.
    - darepublic 5y ago
      why would congestion change if all the drivers were fully autonomous? It's one thing to have a fully autonomous driver, but having them coordinate perfectly to have good throughput even in dense traffic conditions is another altogether. I think this second goal is much farther off and if the articles I've read on autonomous vehicles is any indication I expect they will drive more cautiously and slowly than most human drivers when they finally "go live" in a widespread fashion

bufferoverflow 5y ago

The transition will not be slow. As soon as there's an addon to an existing truck or a taxi, they will be switched over very quickly. Businesses aren't stupid, they understand human drivers are expensive and get tired and cause accidents. Millions of jobs will be lost within a few years. And your comment didn't address of where these drivers will go in any way. "Adapt" is not an answer. Your average 46 year old truck driver will not be learning Javascript.

breadzeppelin__ 5y ago
they definitely already have this for tractors / farming https://www.agleader.com/blog/ag-leader-unveils-new-geosteer-automated-steering-system/?locale=en https://www.agleader.com/blog/ag-leader-unveils-new-geosteer...
- logifail 5y ago
  > they definitely already have this for tractors / farming As in, a significant % of tractors are without human drivers, or as in, a significant % of tractors with human drivers have GPS-based assistance? I live in a rural area and see several dozens of tractors every day, and FWIW, I've never seen a tractor without a human driver. Yet.
  - breadzeppelin__ 5y ago
    As in the technology is available to make many 'off the shelf' tractors self-driving. I have no info on actual uptake just that there are components available to make 'normal' driving in to self-driving using third party modules
supportlocal4h 5y ago
How fast has warehouse automation occurred? What has happened to all the former warehouse workers? Fully autonomous warehouses has been a reasonable thing way before autonomous driving in the wild. It carries all the cost-saving and safety arguments. It might affect more people's jobs. What can we learn from that?

greggman3 5y ago

I think when it really works it will be more like the transition from feature phones to smart phones. very very quick. If they actually work it's just too compelling. Further, I expect the number of cars on the road to go way up because suddenly so many more people can use a car. For example, every one without a license. Kids, elderly, disabled. I also suspect it means there will be lots more long distance drives as suddenly it becomes "hey, wanna go to this place 3 hours away, we can play games and drink while the car drives us" I'd certainly consider visiting my family 9hrs drive away more often if Friday at say 12am I could just climb in the backseat and go to sleep and arrive at 8am vs having to drive myself (usually 7am to 4pm)

aardvarkr 5y ago
The phone -> smartphone transition stretched out over the course of a decade. It’s fast relative to the adoption of the automobile for example but nowhere near as quickly as you make it sound. Even in modern times we still have a surprising amount of Americans still use feature phones. The Pew Research Center found in 2018 that 17% of Americans still use feature phones. https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/02/19/a-foolish-take-17-of-americans-use-feature-phones.aspx https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/02/19/a-foolish-take-17-...
- Kye 5y ago
  I didn't get a smartphone until 2014. It was frustrating how so many people in the tech bubble acted like everyone had one long before most people did and just didn't bother with web sites anymore, leaving me out of so many new things. The failure to peek outside one's own experience is a continuing problem among the people deciding what the world will look like tomorrow. See also: the internet. People still discussed seriously whether or not it had staying power as recently as 2008. It didn't really take off until the 2008 election pushed so many people to participate in new mediums. 2004 was kind of a prelude with Howard Dean's campaign, but he mostly reached the already online set. I was already on in the 1990s, and it still surprises me when I meet people my own age who didn't get on until the 2000s or 2010s even though it's the more common experience.

babypuncher 5y ago

Also Oregon will probably just ban autonomous vehicles in the name of protecting jobs, like they do with gas pumps.

iancmceachern 5y ago

I agree, it will be slow. These Waymo cars cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. A local pizza place in the middle of a small community will not be able to support the cost of a driverless car as compared to the cost of a local high school kid with a $500 Civic. Same with semis, companies invest in their truck fleets expecting millions of miles out of each truck. It will take time to change all that over, and the cost/benefit will take time to tip towards self driving. It will happen, but like seat belts, lead free gas and air bags it will take decades before they are the majority of vehicles on the road.

mupuff1234 5y ago
> These Waymo cars cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Any source on that claim? I thought they reduced the costs of lidar to be in the order of a few k.
- cowvin 5y ago
  https://www.motortrend.com/news/self-driving-cars-faq-can-i-buy-one/ https://www.motortrend.com/news/self-driving-cars-faq-can-i-... Waymo claims they will cost somewhere in the 150k range.
  - mupuff1234 5y ago
    Sounds like the Jaguar (without the waymo tech) is a large chunk of that 150k.
    - iancmceachern 5y ago
      Those Jags start at $40k, to regular people. No doubt cheaper if you buy hundreds at a time. So the self driving tech is $100k+.
      - mupuff1234 5y ago
        From checking now it seems like the base price for consumers is 70k. But regardless, I think even 100k is still quite different than "hundreds of thousands".

throwawaylinux 5y ago

Governments are incapable of "planning" for something like this. Even if it was likely to happen quickly. It would cost a vast amount of money and almost certainly be a bad solution, whatever they came up with. You really don't want the "expert" bureaucrats spending billions of dollars coming up with some hare brained initiative by committee that probably involves the usual mega corps who own their politicians being given vast amounts of money to do something that probably just gets in people's way.

me_me_me 5y ago

Slow? This is going to be singularly the biggest money making vector for any car/delivery business. Whoever is first will be able to go to ford or any other car manufacture and buy/rent their business to 100% switch to their full-auto cars at whatever cost. There will be no way to compete with autonomous vehicles, unless you are a train. Even given transition would be slower 5-10years, you are still talking about massive support sector of the drivers' related economy wiped. How do you recon all of those businesses and people adopt?

sam_goody 5y ago

Even when self driving gets to a certain level, it won't be able to compete with the safety of a street that ONLY allows self driving cars. As soon as a tipping point is hit, major areas will open roads to self driving cars only. Add to that that the latest generation of cars are electric (quiet, cleaner, more efficient, longer lasting), and as more people move to that there will be fewer gas stations, more ICE hate, etc. The result will be a very sudden shift to electric self-driving cars. Which will create a loop, and perhaps a shift much more faster than one might think. My guess is two years from when Waymo is convinced their vehicles can go anywhere to where such cars are mainstream, and another two years till ICE are outlawed on all major roads. Maybe living in lala land with that, but even if it takes 8 years - that will still throw a lot of people out of a job.