4 ms·

And you can use it like a taxi service and send a non-driving human as a passenger. Or no passenger and just send it to an address to retrieve or deliver a pack

by jvm___ 4y ago

And you can use it like a taxi service and send a non-driving human as a passenger. Or no passenger and just send it to an address to retrieve or deliver a package.

ghaff 4y ago
It's probably reasonable to expect that there are some asterisks like paved roads only and can't drive in literally all weather conditions. But, yeah, no human supervision needed.
- a1369209993 4y ago
  > some asterisks like paved roads only Some asterisks like non-paved roads will cause poor and potentially dangerous performance, technically. If I tell it to drive into a volcano, and getting it to do so is significantly harder than five minutes of repeating various variations on "Yes, I know it's a volcano and will likely destroy the car and everything in it; do so anyway.", it's defective. (Preferably it also should not be significantly easier, of course, at least not to the point of being able to do so accidentally.)
fbdab103 4y ago
My ultimate dream is to be able to more or less avoid flying. Hop in my car at 11pm, punch in address, pull out the lay-flat seat, go to sleep, wake-up 7-8 hours away. If I make it a day trip, I can do the entire thing in reverse never having had to pay for a hotel. Living on the coast, I would still have to resort to flying, but there are many places I would enjoy that are reachable in an eight hour drive.
- govg 4y ago
  You can do this in practically every EU country, not to mention Asia (I don't know about other parts of the globe) via trains. I don't get why it has to be a car. It's just that the US has zero infrastructure for both inter city as well as intra city public transport outside of like 4 cities.
  - fbdab103 4y ago
    I am an American, so lacking the ability to reverse 80 years of public policy decisions, I want the sleeper-car-car.
  - googlryas 4y ago
    For one, pull up a satellite view and look at the US anywhere 150 miles away from the west coast. And we have buses that go between lots of cities(greyhounds). They just suck compared to driving yourself or flying, which is why you'll pretty much only find poor and desperate people on them.
  - rootusrootus 4y ago
    The US has one of the most extensive rail networks in the world. What we do differently than Europe is use the rail network almost exclusively for freight. If we followed Europe's lead and did a lot more freight via long haul truck, we could free up a bunch of infrastructure for passengers, but would the end result be a net win? Or would we actually increase emissions by doing that?
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      There is absolutely no reason to make that tradeoff. If a rail line is hitting maximum capacity, then that means there's plenty of money going around to expand it. Adding more passenger trains does not require decreasing the amount of freight trains. That's not the reason we're bad at doing passenger rail.
      - fbdab103 4y ago
        Freight rail has significantly different requirements than passenger. People want to move quickly, with frequent daily trips (eg 24 trips per day, moving at 90mph). Freight does not care about train speed so long as it is reliable (eg 1 trip per day moving at 50mph). Logistics networks can plan around reliability.
  - ilyt 4y ago
    Well, it's a bit more PITA to get your ass to station with all the baggage, then also possibly changeover to another line. But yeah, to the airplane it's an altenative.

by jvm___ 4y ago

And you can use it like a taxi service and send a non-driving human as a passenger. Or no passenger and just send it to an address to retrieve or deliver a package.

ghaff 4y ago

It's probably reasonable to expect that there are some asterisks like paved roads only and can't drive in literally all weather conditions. But, yeah, no human supervision needed.

a1369209993 4y ago
> some asterisks like paved roads only Some asterisks like non-paved roads will cause poor and potentially dangerous performance, technically. If I tell it to drive into a volcano, and getting it to do so is significantly harder than five minutes of repeating various variations on "Yes, I know it's a volcano and will likely destroy the car and everything in it; do so anyway.", it's defective. (Preferably it also should not be significantly easier, of course, at least not to the point of being able to do so accidentally.)

fbdab103 4y ago

My ultimate dream is to be able to more or less avoid flying. Hop in my car at 11pm, punch in address, pull out the lay-flat seat, go to sleep, wake-up 7-8 hours away. If I make it a day trip, I can do the entire thing in reverse never having had to pay for a hotel. Living on the coast, I would still have to resort to flying, but there are many places I would enjoy that are reachable in an eight hour drive.

govg 4y ago
You can do this in practically every EU country, not to mention Asia (I don't know about other parts of the globe) via trains. I don't get why it has to be a car. It's just that the US has zero infrastructure for both inter city as well as intra city public transport outside of like 4 cities.
- fbdab103 4y ago
  I am an American, so lacking the ability to reverse 80 years of public policy decisions, I want the sleeper-car-car.
- googlryas 4y ago
  For one, pull up a satellite view and look at the US anywhere 150 miles away from the west coast. And we have buses that go between lots of cities(greyhounds). They just suck compared to driving yourself or flying, which is why you'll pretty much only find poor and desperate people on them.
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  The US has one of the most extensive rail networks in the world. What we do differently than Europe is use the rail network almost exclusively for freight. If we followed Europe's lead and did a lot more freight via long haul truck, we could free up a bunch of infrastructure for passengers, but would the end result be a net win? Or would we actually increase emissions by doing that?
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    There is absolutely no reason to make that tradeoff. If a rail line is hitting maximum capacity, then that means there's plenty of money going around to expand it. Adding more passenger trains does not require decreasing the amount of freight trains. That's not the reason we're bad at doing passenger rail.
    - fbdab103 4y ago
      Freight rail has significantly different requirements than passenger. People want to move quickly, with frequent daily trips (eg 24 trips per day, moving at 90mph). Freight does not care about train speed so long as it is reliable (eg 1 trip per day moving at 50mph). Logistics networks can plan around reliability.
- ilyt 4y ago
  Well, it's a bit more PITA to get your ass to station with all the baggage, then also possibly changeover to another line. But yeah, to the airplane it's an altenative.