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If you are saying that people will still be driving cars in 10 years, then yes you are right. I wouldn't be surprised if 100 years from now there were still roa

If you are saying that people will still be driving cars in 10 years, then yes you are right. I wouldn't be surprised if 100 years from now there were still roads where it was legal for humans to drive cars. But we should expect that this transition will be very similar to the transition from horses to cars. The first cars were unreliable and unsafe and didn't work well on roads designed for horses. But as cars improved the advantages quickly became huge and demand for horses dropped quickly. The same situation is happening with Tesla. FSD is unreliable and unsafe today but once it hits an inflection point the advantages are so big more and more people become willing to accept the downsides.

rootusrootus 5y ago
I remain skeptical. The differences between horse and car were dramatic. An automated car is still a car. I suspect it may have as many downsides as upsides, to be honest (similar to things like Uber making traffic worse, not better, counterintuitively).
- gitfan86 5y ago
  True, the first order effects can be worse in some ways. Horses can easily go off road and step over obstructions and cars cannot. The big deal is the second order effects. Cars can driver 50 MPH so we build highways and now we can have suburbs. For autonomy it means that logistics systems can be centrally planned and programmed like never before with no need to factor in the human costs or restraints around sleeping, stopping for food, etc. Then the third order effects of that are very hard to predict
- spideymans 5y ago
  >An automated car is still a car Early cars were designed as [carriages with the horses removed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseless_carriage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseless_carriage). It would not be until many years later until we saw car designs that leveraged the unique technological advantages of horseless cars to deliver designs that looked and functioned nothing like horse-drawn carriages. We're still at this stage with automated driving. As automated vehicles become more commonplace, we'll see designs that leverage the inherent benefits of automaton. For example, we might see designs that essentially function as moving living rooms, bedrooms or meeting rooms on wheels. We might see other designs that resemble small busses, where groups of people travelling to geographically proximate locations can carpool into a single automated vehicle. Heck, we might even see something like moving diners on wheels (potentially serving several clients at once), because why wouldn't you want to eat a hot breakfast in the "car" while on the way to the airport or work. Once these new designs and use cases become commonplace, people in the future will view our car designs as increasingly archaic and restrictive (just like how we view horse-drawn carriages today).
  - whakim 5y ago
    None of the things you're describing actually require automation. If people actually wanted "diners on wheels" then we'd all be taking diner buses to the airport. A driverless car just frees up a bit of space; it doesn't fundamentally change the physics of how vehicles work (like cars did for horses)
    - ISL 5y ago
      Autonomous cars are going to reshape the motel market and commuting. If you can sleep comfortably as your car drives you from SF to LA, it is a game-changer. If you can WFH from your car as you commute to the office for mid-morning meetings, you can live farther from town. Removing the labor costs of having a driver allows everyone to experience the transformative benefits of having a chauffeur. Rich people like chauffeurs because they buy time, the most-precious commodity.
      - whakim 5y ago
        If this were true, rich people would already have cars with chaffers and beds in them. They don't because the form factor isn't practical without compromising all the other things that you'd want to use your car for. The second scenario basically already exists in the form of bay area tech shuttlesbuses; most people who use them find them a (barely) tolerable tradeoff for living in San Francisco rather than something to be relished.
  - bobthepanda 5y ago
    No, a horse and car were like night and day. You have to feed a horse, a lot. Horses poop, a lot. And horses get stressed, they die in intensive use fairly regularly. The poop and the dying were the public health crises of their day. It’s annoying to drive a car, but a self driving car isn’t going to massively change things. The bottleneck in most road systems are where they interface with pedestrians and cyclists (one can only cross the street so fast); self driving cars might improve highway capacities but the bottleneck is usually a backup from too many people coming or going on the same ramp into a traffic light.
megablast 5y ago
Hopefully cars are banned soon. So we can put an end to all the death they cause, and the pollution they create.
- QuizzicalCarbon 5y ago
  That’s ignoring all the convenience cars provide. Not to mention the utility, freedom and independence they represent to many handicapped people.
  - hedora 5y ago
    Also, cars allow cities to scale further than was possible without them. If cars are banned, inner cities will start hollowing out due to labor / supply shortages, etc.
    - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
      Surely you just mean the USA right? Because that statement is not true in almost any other country that I can think of.
darepublic 5y ago
seems like waymo is ahead of tesla now, just gleaning from the articles I read on HN. and because tesla only uses cameras and not lidar I don't know if this is a temporary situation or something more fundamental
- jdlshore 5y ago
  They’ve always been ahead of Tesla.
_carbyau_ 5y ago
Minor point:"If you are saying that people will still be driving cars in 10 years" Motorbikes are a thing. Apart from weight/balance relationships to control, many riders are "take control from my dead hands" types so I don't think the market will easily convert to self-driving. It'll be interesting to see what happens. Maybe motorcycles will fade out or be banned. I will enjoy mine while I can.

rootusrootus 5y ago

I remain skeptical. The differences between horse and car were dramatic. An automated car is still a car. I suspect it may have as many downsides as upsides, to be honest (similar to things like Uber making traffic worse, not better, counterintuitively).

gitfan86 5y ago
True, the first order effects can be worse in some ways. Horses can easily go off road and step over obstructions and cars cannot. The big deal is the second order effects. Cars can driver 50 MPH so we build highways and now we can have suburbs. For autonomy it means that logistics systems can be centrally planned and programmed like never before with no need to factor in the human costs or restraints around sleeping, stopping for food, etc. Then the third order effects of that are very hard to predict
spideymans 5y ago
>An automated car is still a car Early cars were designed as [carriages with the horses removed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseless_carriage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseless_carriage). It would not be until many years later until we saw car designs that leveraged the unique technological advantages of horseless cars to deliver designs that looked and functioned nothing like horse-drawn carriages. We're still at this stage with automated driving. As automated vehicles become more commonplace, we'll see designs that leverage the inherent benefits of automaton. For example, we might see designs that essentially function as moving living rooms, bedrooms or meeting rooms on wheels. We might see other designs that resemble small busses, where groups of people travelling to geographically proximate locations can carpool into a single automated vehicle. Heck, we might even see something like moving diners on wheels (potentially serving several clients at once), because why wouldn't you want to eat a hot breakfast in the "car" while on the way to the airport or work. Once these new designs and use cases become commonplace, people in the future will view our car designs as increasingly archaic and restrictive (just like how we view horse-drawn carriages today).
- whakim 5y ago
  None of the things you're describing actually require automation. If people actually wanted "diners on wheels" then we'd all be taking diner buses to the airport. A driverless car just frees up a bit of space; it doesn't fundamentally change the physics of how vehicles work (like cars did for horses)
  - ISL 5y ago
    Autonomous cars are going to reshape the motel market and commuting. If you can sleep comfortably as your car drives you from SF to LA, it is a game-changer. If you can WFH from your car as you commute to the office for mid-morning meetings, you can live farther from town. Removing the labor costs of having a driver allows everyone to experience the transformative benefits of having a chauffeur. Rich people like chauffeurs because they buy time, the most-precious commodity.
    - whakim 5y ago
      If this were true, rich people would already have cars with chaffers and beds in them. They don't because the form factor isn't practical without compromising all the other things that you'd want to use your car for. The second scenario basically already exists in the form of bay area tech shuttlesbuses; most people who use them find them a (barely) tolerable tradeoff for living in San Francisco rather than something to be relished.
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  No, a horse and car were like night and day. You have to feed a horse, a lot. Horses poop, a lot. And horses get stressed, they die in intensive use fairly regularly. The poop and the dying were the public health crises of their day. It’s annoying to drive a car, but a self driving car isn’t going to massively change things. The bottleneck in most road systems are where they interface with pedestrians and cyclists (one can only cross the street so fast); self driving cars might improve highway capacities but the bottleneck is usually a backup from too many people coming or going on the same ramp into a traffic light.

megablast 5y ago

Hopefully cars are banned soon. So we can put an end to all the death they cause, and the pollution they create.

QuizzicalCarbon 5y ago
That’s ignoring all the convenience cars provide. Not to mention the utility, freedom and independence they represent to many handicapped people.
- hedora 5y ago
  Also, cars allow cities to scale further than was possible without them. If cars are banned, inner cities will start hollowing out due to labor / supply shortages, etc.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    Surely you just mean the USA right? Because that statement is not true in almost any other country that I can think of.

darepublic 5y ago

seems like waymo is ahead of tesla now, just gleaning from the articles I read on HN. and because tesla only uses cameras and not lidar I don't know if this is a temporary situation or something more fundamental

jdlshore 5y ago
They’ve always been ahead of Tesla.

_carbyau_ 5y ago

Minor point:"If you are saying that people will still be driving cars in 10 years" Motorbikes are a thing. Apart from weight/balance relationships to control, many riders are "take control from my dead hands" types so I don't think the market will easily convert to self-driving. It'll be interesting to see what happens. Maybe motorcycles will fade out or be banned. I will enjoy mine while I can.