4 ms·

I'll (sadly) take the over on that. I'll bet you $1k that fully autonomous cars will not be: (1) legal to ride on at least 90% of public roads AND (2) availabl

I'll (sadly) take the over on that. I'll bet you $1k that fully autonomous cars will not be: (1) legal to ride on at least 90% of public roads AND (2) available for sale to the general public AND (3) for under $250,000 in 2015 dollars AND (4) in the state of California AND (5) on or before June 5 2020. Deal? (If I were richer, I'd bet more, in order to up my chances of being happy either way. I want to lose, but don't think I will.)

toomuchtodo 11y ago
I think we're going to quibble on 2 and 3. It doesn't matter what the capital cost of the vehicle is if you no longer need to own the vehicle and can order it on demand from Google, Uber, etc. If you want to hammer out details, my email is in my profile. We'd use LongBets [1] to keep track, and under the condition that the loser has to donate the amount chosen to a charity of the winner's choice. [1] http://longbets.org/ http://longbets.org/
- zanny 11y ago
  I don't see how autos could realistically cost $250k each anyway. They are not using significantly more raw resources. Electric cars are an accurate comparison, because they also have top of the line tech in a specific domain - batteries. And volume batteries are a much bigger manufacturing problem than radar systems, which have been assembled (but not at auto-fleet scale) for decades, albeit not with current tech, but much more closer to current assembly than what Teslas LI batteries are. I imagine something like this Google car could go to market for around $80k today, and thats factoring in huge amounts of per-unit overhead for building factories to assemble them en masse in the first place. An auto upgrade kit to a traditional car probably won't cost more than 20k if they permit the retrofitting of old vehicles when the ball starts rolling.

4 ms·

I'll (sadly) take the over on that. I'll bet you $1k that fully autonomous cars will not be: (1) legal to ride on at least 90% of public roads AND (2) availabl

by jaredhansen 11y ago

toomuchtodo 11y ago
I think we're going to quibble on 2 and 3. It doesn't matter what the capital cost of the vehicle is if you no longer need to own the vehicle and can order it on demand from Google, Uber, etc. If you want to hammer out details, my email is in my profile. We'd use LongBets [1] to keep track, and under the condition that the loser has to donate the amount chosen to a charity of the winner's choice. [1] http://longbets.org/ http://longbets.org/
- zanny 11y ago
  I don't see how autos could realistically cost $250k each anyway. They are not using significantly more raw resources. Electric cars are an accurate comparison, because they also have top of the line tech in a specific domain - batteries. And volume batteries are a much bigger manufacturing problem than radar systems, which have been assembled (but not at auto-fleet scale) for decades, albeit not with current tech, but much more closer to current assembly than what Teslas LI batteries are. I imagine something like this Google car could go to market for around $80k today, and thats factoring in huge amounts of per-unit overhead for building factories to assemble them en masse in the first place. An auto upgrade kit to a traditional car probably won't cost more than 20k if they permit the retrofitting of old vehicles when the ball starts rolling.