5 ms·

I think this is one of those technologies that will go from "science fiction" to "everyone uses one every day" very, very quickly. Until a few months ago, I ha

by jes5199 15y ago

I think this is one of those technologies that will go from "science fiction" to "everyone uses one every day" very, very quickly. Until a few months ago, I had no idea that the technology was as far along as it is; it seems like they've cracked the hard problems already. That means it's a social problem now - and there's reason to believe that the biggest motivator in adoption of automobile technology (and related public policy) is the insurance industry. As soon as these cars are statistically safer than human drivers (and my expectation is that they may already be safer - humans are crap at driving) then there will be strong incentives to get them to the public.

veb 15y ago
Random question, but if every car was driven by a robot, would that mean we could start building cars that don't have to follow safety as much? Like, could I have a wooden box and shove some wheels on it and let that drive me around? I know there'll still be accidents, but interesting thought nevertheless. If they keep making cars the way we are making the hybirds (http://www.greencarcongress.com/2011/06/lowcvp-20110608.html http://www.greencarcongress.com/2011/06/lowcvp-20110608.html) then how will we get to the future? It would be pretty awesome to use whatever materials that are lying around to make a car/transport device.
- Tuna-Fish 15y ago
  While robotic cars have very little reason to crash into each other, there will still always be some non-robotic things on the roads -- wildlife and drunken pedestrians for one. But while some cutback in safety features would be possible, I honestly think that the society will take the other option. Robots have no trouble making driving reasonably safe at much faster speeds than humans can. The advantages to society for raising normal road speeds past 200mph vastly eclipse that of reducing the cost of manufacturing the cars. So I think the future will perhaps see even sturdier cars than today, just to be able to survive hitting a deer (or even a cat) at high speed.
  - ericd 15y ago
    Keep in mind that the reason for 55mph speed limits is not about safety so much as it is about energy efficiency (set during the oil crises of the 70s, never raised again in many places). Going faster increases energy loss due to drag with the cube of the speed, so I don't think we're going to see 200 MPH speed limits until we get something much more energy efficient. This could make some of the political problems with upping the speed limit that much go away, though.
    - leot 15y ago
      ... something like having every car slipstream the car in front of it?
      - ericd 15y ago
        Yeah, potentially, but you're not going to reach the efficiency of a train as long as you have individual cars with a bunch of different use cases/designs.
        LockeWatts 15y ago
        Put the largest one in front?
        ericd 15y ago
        I never opted to take any courses in aerodynamics, unfortunately, but my understanding is that establishing a laminar flow ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laminar_flow http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laminar_flow ) is vital at those kinds of speeds, which requires a surface that the air can flow along smoothly. With a biggest-in-front arrangement, you get some slipstream benefit, but you also get a whole mess of turbulence, and there's no way you're going to rival the speed of a bullet train without a lot more energy spent. You want a mostly smooth/unbroken surface that the air can flow along.
        philwelch 15y ago
waterlesscloud 15y ago
I haven't seen much on how they handle inclement weather. That's a key requirement for becoming more than an experiment.
- timClicks 15y ago
  Thurn mentioned that Google's cars can't drive in snow, but they can drive through rain.
greeneggs 15y ago
Isn't cost a problem? I think that these cars have hundreds of thousands of dollars of hardware. Surely mass production can bring costs down, but how far? Are there any solid estimates out there?
- EwanG 15y ago
  There was an article recently (one version at http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/04/27/self_driving_cars_the_price_of_an_autonomous_vehicle_.html?wpisrc=slate_river http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/04/27/self_driv...) that talked about a study asking folks if they wanted a self-driving vehicle if it cost $3K more - which supposedly was based on Ford and GM estimates of what it would add to the cost of a mass-produced model. Personally I'd pay twice as much to have it today, but I appear to be in the minority...
  - jes5199 15y ago
    but if I own a fleet of taxi cabs, then $3K sounds like a great price for replacing my drivers.
  - timClicks 15y ago
    I think it would be fairly sizeable minority. There are so many benefits to this: - Safety. CPUs don't get distracted. - Far less stress. You wont worry about being cut off when you're reading. - Imaging able to go to sleep and wake up in a new city. Your ride is extremely smooth. - More time. Your trips are much quicker, because each path around each of the corners is perfectly optimized.
MaxGabriel 15y ago
I think you're right about insurance companies playing a big role, we've already seen 20% discounts for having Adaptive Cruise Control in Europe. But I don't think this will be a quick change. First, people take awhile to replace their cars. I don't know the stats for this, but 10-year old vehicles don't seem atypical. The good news is that gives a chance for reducing costs. It was back-of-the-envelope calculation based on parts only, but one article I read estimated 5-10k would be added to Cadillac's self driving car if they introduced it by 2015. [1] Second, there are still some hard problems to solve. According to Thrun, they don't have a solution for snowy roads that block the car's vision of the lane markers, and Cadillac's vehicle has the same problem. That'll also be a problem in areas of construction where line markers aren't accurately marking the road. There's also some major regional challenges. In Pittsburgh, per a convention known as the Pittsburgh Left, a driver stopped at a red light will pause after the light turns green to allow the “first driver in the oncoming traffic... to make a left turn.” Thrun's team is working on collecting massive amounts of data to overcome niche issues like that, but is that something every car manufacturer will have access to? I think we can also expect some legal barriers to be a problem. I don't have the best grasp on this, but from a RAND report I read it sounds like state tort law, combined with the complete lack of state or federal laws concerning autonomous cars, could create liability issues for manufacturers. Maybe that would necessitate some lobbying and court battles before manufacturers risk masses of autonomous cars? It's hard for me to tell how important these issues are because the biggest player, Google, isn't focused on the market now. Ultimately you're clearly right, autonomous cars are definitely the future, but I'm feeling more of a gradual shift as problems are ironed out and the prices of sensors are reduced. [1]http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/126841-cadillac-promises-self-driving-cars-by-2015 http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/126841-cadillac-promises-...
- smokinn 15y ago
  I think you're making OP's point quite well albeit inadvertently. Personal ownership of a self-driving car is a ridiculous concept. Why would the car have to wait around in the parking lot all day while you're at work? It could easily keep running around ferrying people places. And yet many people will want to own one simply because they think they should own a car. I think the real future is a market for renting car time. Prices will be high during peak periods (morning and evening commuters) but cheap during the mid-afternoon. The lack of a large up-front cost will likely drive adoption faster than many expect, especially given the new resistance to car ownership coming from younger people: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/why-dont-young-americans-buy-cars/255001/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/why-dont... I live in a city, as do pretty much all my friends. I walk almost everywhere and occasionally take a taxi when going out in the evenings. On rare occasions a friend with a ZipCar membership will ferry us out of town if we're going somewhere far. None of us actually own a car. We're the target market for the self-driving cars since we've already made the social adjustments.

by jes5199 15y ago

veb 15y ago

Random question, but if every car was driven by a robot, would that mean we could start building cars that don't have to follow safety as much? Like, could I have a wooden box and shove some wheels on it and let that drive me around? I know there'll still be accidents, but interesting thought nevertheless. If they keep making cars the way we are making the hybirds (http://www.greencarcongress.com/2011/06/lowcvp-20110608.html http://www.greencarcongress.com/2011/06/lowcvp-20110608.html) then how will we get to the future? It would be pretty awesome to use whatever materials that are lying around to make a car/transport device.

Tuna-Fish 15y ago
While robotic cars have very little reason to crash into each other, there will still always be some non-robotic things on the roads -- wildlife and drunken pedestrians for one. But while some cutback in safety features would be possible, I honestly think that the society will take the other option. Robots have no trouble making driving reasonably safe at much faster speeds than humans can. The advantages to society for raising normal road speeds past 200mph vastly eclipse that of reducing the cost of manufacturing the cars. So I think the future will perhaps see even sturdier cars than today, just to be able to survive hitting a deer (or even a cat) at high speed.
- ericd 15y ago
  Keep in mind that the reason for 55mph speed limits is not about safety so much as it is about energy efficiency (set during the oil crises of the 70s, never raised again in many places). Going faster increases energy loss due to drag with the cube of the speed, so I don't think we're going to see 200 MPH speed limits until we get something much more energy efficient. This could make some of the political problems with upping the speed limit that much go away, though.
  - leot 15y ago
    ... something like having every car slipstream the car in front of it?
    - ericd 15y ago
      Yeah, potentially, but you're not going to reach the efficiency of a train as long as you have individual cars with a bunch of different use cases/designs.
      - LockeWatts 15y ago
        Put the largest one in front?
        ericd 15y ago
        I never opted to take any courses in aerodynamics, unfortunately, but my understanding is that establishing a laminar flow ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laminar_flow http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laminar_flow ) is vital at those kinds of speeds, which requires a surface that the air can flow along smoothly. With a biggest-in-front arrangement, you get some slipstream benefit, but you also get a whole mess of turbulence, and there's no way you're going to rival the speed of a bullet train without a lot more energy spent. You want a mostly smooth/unbroken surface that the air can flow along.
      - philwelch 15y ago

waterlesscloud 15y ago

I haven't seen much on how they handle inclement weather. That's a key requirement for becoming more than an experiment.

timClicks 15y ago
Thurn mentioned that Google's cars can't drive in snow, but they can drive through rain.

greeneggs 15y ago

Isn't cost a problem? I think that these cars have hundreds of thousands of dollars of hardware. Surely mass production can bring costs down, but how far? Are there any solid estimates out there?

EwanG 15y ago
There was an article recently (one version at http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/04/27/self_driving_cars_the_price_of_an_autonomous_vehicle_.html?wpisrc=slate_river http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/04/27/self_driv...) that talked about a study asking folks if they wanted a self-driving vehicle if it cost $3K more - which supposedly was based on Ford and GM estimates of what it would add to the cost of a mass-produced model. Personally I'd pay twice as much to have it today, but I appear to be in the minority...
- jes5199 15y ago
  but if I own a fleet of taxi cabs, then $3K sounds like a great price for replacing my drivers.
- timClicks 15y ago
  I think it would be fairly sizeable minority. There are so many benefits to this: - Safety. CPUs don't get distracted. - Far less stress. You wont worry about being cut off when you're reading. - Imaging able to go to sleep and wake up in a new city. Your ride is extremely smooth. - More time. Your trips are much quicker, because each path around each of the corners is perfectly optimized.

MaxGabriel 15y ago

I think you're right about insurance companies playing a big role, we've already seen 20% discounts for having Adaptive Cruise Control in Europe. But I don't think this will be a quick change. First, people take awhile to replace their cars. I don't know the stats for this, but 10-year old vehicles don't seem atypical. The good news is that gives a chance for reducing costs. It was back-of-the-envelope calculation based on parts only, but one article I read estimated 5-10k would be added to Cadillac's self driving car if they introduced it by 2015. [1] Second, there are still some hard problems to solve. According to Thrun, they don't have a solution for snowy roads that block the car's vision of the lane markers, and Cadillac's vehicle has the same problem. That'll also be a problem in areas of construction where line markers aren't accurately marking the road. There's also some major regional challenges. In Pittsburgh, per a convention known as the Pittsburgh Left, a driver stopped at a red light will pause after the light turns green to allow the “first driver in the oncoming traffic... to make a left turn.” Thrun's team is working on collecting massive amounts of data to overcome niche issues like that, but is that something every car manufacturer will have access to? I think we can also expect some legal barriers to be a problem. I don't have the best grasp on this, but from a RAND report I read it sounds like state tort law, combined with the complete lack of state or federal laws concerning autonomous cars, could create liability issues for manufacturers. Maybe that would necessitate some lobbying and court battles before manufacturers risk masses of autonomous cars? It's hard for me to tell how important these issues are because the biggest player, Google, isn't focused on the market now. Ultimately you're clearly right, autonomous cars are definitely the future, but I'm feeling more of a gradual shift as problems are ironed out and the prices of sensors are reduced. [1]http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/126841-cadillac-promises-self-driving-cars-by-2015 http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/126841-cadillac-promises-...

smokinn 15y ago
I think you're making OP's point quite well albeit inadvertently. Personal ownership of a self-driving car is a ridiculous concept. Why would the car have to wait around in the parking lot all day while you're at work? It could easily keep running around ferrying people places. And yet many people will want to own one simply because they think they should own a car. I think the real future is a market for renting car time. Prices will be high during peak periods (morning and evening commuters) but cheap during the mid-afternoon. The lack of a large up-front cost will likely drive adoption faster than many expect, especially given the new resistance to car ownership coming from younger people: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/why-dont-young-americans-buy-cars/255001/ http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/why-dont... I live in a city, as do pretty much all my friends. I walk almost everywhere and occasionally take a taxi when going out in the evenings. On rare occasions a friend with a ZipCar membership will ferry us out of town if we're going somewhere far. None of us actually own a car. We're the target market for the self-driving cars since we've already made the social adjustments.