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Speaking of dumb and short-sighted, how do you fail to see that robotic drivers can make vastly more efficient use of existing infrastructure than humans? How d

by alexqgb 14y ago

Speaking of dumb and short-sighted, how do you fail to see that robotic drivers can make vastly more efficient use of existing infrastructure than humans? How do you not see that reducing traffic jams lowers the amount of gasoline burnt idling, and carbon emitted to no effect? How do you not see that the same technology can be the basis for a very different transportation system? Can you not imagine a world where few people own cars (which are parked most of the the time) and, instead, rely on fleets of robotic taxis simply pick people up and drop them off where and when they're called? If crashes were a thing of the past, do you see how dramatically engineering would change? How much smaller and lighter cars could become? How much less fuel they'd use? I mean, I'm all for envisioning better ways of living. I'm even more in favor of the guys who are not only envisioning it, they're actually building the means. What are you building?

philwelch 14y ago
autophil probably goes too far, but he isn't entirely wrong--even perfectly efficient robotic cars powered by pixie dust are inefficient and not a panacea for the problems of traffic and pollution that car-centric infrastructure has caused.
- kkowalczyk 14y ago
  True but assuming the future is that of mostly robo-taxi companies (and not individually owned self-driving cars), there will tremendous business pressure on robo-taxi companies to make their cars as efficient as possible, as the cost of gas (or other energy) will be part of their cost of providing the service. Today car companies sell cars based on many criteria. Fuel efficiency is one of them but when gas prices aren't too high, individual customers don't care about that very much. Someone who operates a fleet of 10.000 cars will make fuel efficiency their top-most priority because that will drive down the cost of their service and the cost will be a major reason why customers will pick one provider over another, not how stylish the car is or how fast it goes from 0 to 60. E.g. if they realize that by putting solar panel on the roof of the car they can save money in the long term, they'll immediately put solar panel in every car. The progress in making cars more efficient will be much faster.
  - philwelch 14y ago
    Anything like a car is always going to be space and weight inefficient. A Smart car has an order of magnitude more weight than a person, and occupies two orders of magnitude more space on the ground--you're not going to get significantly below that, so propelling those cars and fitting them all on the street already adds a bunch of overhead on top of the original problem of people-moving. That's before tackling engine efficiency or energy sources. This isn't to say self-driving cars are useless. They might be just the kick needed to get people out of car ownership, which will enable the fundamental land use and infrastructure changes necessary to make more sustainable improvements. But they aren't the endgame for sustainability.

by alexqgb 14y ago

philwelch 14y ago

autophil probably goes too far, but he isn't entirely wrong--even perfectly efficient robotic cars powered by pixie dust are inefficient and not a panacea for the problems of traffic and pollution that car-centric infrastructure has caused.

kkowalczyk 14y ago
True but assuming the future is that of mostly robo-taxi companies (and not individually owned self-driving cars), there will tremendous business pressure on robo-taxi companies to make their cars as efficient as possible, as the cost of gas (or other energy) will be part of their cost of providing the service. Today car companies sell cars based on many criteria. Fuel efficiency is one of them but when gas prices aren't too high, individual customers don't care about that very much. Someone who operates a fleet of 10.000 cars will make fuel efficiency their top-most priority because that will drive down the cost of their service and the cost will be a major reason why customers will pick one provider over another, not how stylish the car is or how fast it goes from 0 to 60. E.g. if they realize that by putting solar panel on the roof of the car they can save money in the long term, they'll immediately put solar panel in every car. The progress in making cars more efficient will be much faster.
- philwelch 14y ago
  Anything like a car is always going to be space and weight inefficient. A Smart car has an order of magnitude more weight than a person, and occupies two orders of magnitude more space on the ground--you're not going to get significantly below that, so propelling those cars and fitting them all on the street already adds a bunch of overhead on top of the original problem of people-moving. That's before tackling engine efficiency or energy sources. This isn't to say self-driving cars are useless. They might be just the kick needed to get people out of car ownership, which will enable the fundamental land use and infrastructure changes necessary to make more sustainable improvements. But they aren't the endgame for sustainability.