4 ms·

The next step is cars that can park themselves.

• kylec 12y ago
  The biggest advantage to self-driving cars that I see is that I can drive a car into a city center, drop myself off, then have the car wander aimlessly through the streets until I need to be picked up. The cost of the gas is almost certainly cheaper than the cost to park would be.
  • batbomb 12y ago
    The biggest advantage to self-driving cars is that you don't have to buy a car, so the car doesn't wander aimlessly, it just picks somebody else up and taxis them around.
    • qq66 12y ago
      Because of rush hour, a large fraction of self-driving cars will still need to park. However, they can drive themselves out of the city center and park in the cheaper outskirts.
    • DasIch 12y ago
      In most cases that's not really an advantage at all. We already have a system like this: public transport. Public transport seems to be generally rather bad in the US, which might make self-driving cars seem useful but other parts of the world often have better public transport and self-driving cars seem a lot less exciting here.
    • gambiting 12y ago
      Why would I want to use the same car as other people? It will be dirty, because people will do all sorts of things in there,and I would feel very uncomfortable.
    • sokoloff 12y ago
      A car, as currently used, is not just a transport mechanism. It's also a storage mechanism. (Umbrella, sunglasses, kids' car seats, emergency diapers, emergency cash, emergency feminine products, OTC meds (ibuprofen, antacids, etc), a reasonably secure place to keep my backpack if I don't want to carry it, mints/candy, etc.) Automating a taxi service doesn't 100% replace the utility of a personal car.
  • semanticist 12y ago
    You don't want it to drive around, that's pointless. (Also, petrol's not cheap everywhere.) It could just zoom off to an out of/edge of town car park, and presumably plug itself in to charge while it waits.
• Cthulhu_ 12y ago
  Annnd reality surpassed your idea already; some cars have a system using cameras and such that automatically parallel-parks it. One of my colleagues has a car like that, it's quite fun to sit in a self-parking car.
• semanticist 12y ago
  My car (a 2010 VW Tiguan) parallel-parks itself - well, in as much as it operates the steering while I handle the pedals and gear changes - current models also reverse into parking bays. This is also a standard feature on the top-end model of the Ford Focus, and probably a bunch of other cars. They don't even need reversing cameras for it - just some carefully positioned 'parking sensors'.