When it comes to predictions it is often easiest just to take some really popular new technology and point out the obvious time it will take to be actually adopted. You could say I’m doing that here with drone deliveries and driverless cars, but I like to think my value-added is explaining why these will take so much longer than some people expect.
Amazon.com has been making a lot of noise about using small helicopter drones to deliver packages. I’m not here to say this is an impossible task or that drones won’t at some point be used for this purpose, but what I am saying is that it won’t happen this year, won’t happen next year, and in any true volume won’t happen even five or 10 years from now.
Here’s an interesting story about the economics of drone delivery. It points out that Amazon loses $2 billion per year on second-day delivery to its Amazon Prime customers. This doesn’t mean Prime isn’t profitable for Amazon, just that actual shipping charges are $2 billion more than what Prime members are imputed to be paying for that part of the service. The story and a paper linked within it also drop facts like the energy cost of electric drone delivery will average $0.10 per package, drone purchase, upkeep and maintenance will be another $0.10 per delivery based on a 10 year drone lifespan and six deliveries per drone per day. And so they say the cost per delivery will be something around $0.20 for up to two kilograms. Eighty percent of Amazon packages are under two kilograms and so drones are declared “economically viable.”
Not.
Do you have a drone or did you used to have one? If you no longer have it, did your drone last 10 years? Based on our Christmas drone experiences the past couple years in the Cringely household I’d say our typical drone lifespan is one week. Amazon’s will probably be longer, but 10 years? And when that inevitable crash happens, how will they account for the loss of the drone and its cargo? How much should be added to the delivery cost to cover insurance?
Even more damning is the labor economics involved. Commercial delivery drones will require FAA licensed pilots and Amazon expects those to cost $100,000 per year each, though for some reason they don’t bother to use that number in their cost calculations. If Amazon drone pilots are fully employed and never take a break, based on their economic model’s 20 minute roundtrip time, they’ll be able to fly 6,000 deliveries per year for a per-delivery labor cost of $100,000/6000=$16.67. Remember Amazon’s present Prime deliveries cost around $8 each so to save money the company is proposing a new solution that will cost at least double that amount for labor alone, and that doesn’t include labor to load the drone.
Labor costs aren’t going down. If the eventual plan is to make the drones autonomous nobody at Amazon or the FAA says that’s in the works. Then there’s the very complexity of such an operation at scale, which brings me to this picture of telephone wires in New York City circa 1887. 
Imagine every delivery truck and bicycle messenger replaced by something that could easily smash into your head. By the way, these telephone wires disappeared in New York the very next year, destroyed by the Great Blizzard of 1888. After that blizzard the wires were put underground where drones cannot go.
So is Amazon crazy or do they know something about drone delivery that we don’t? After all, Amazon paid $775 million in cash to buy a drone company. My friend John Dreese thinks he has the answer. John is a professional aerodynamicist (you can buy his desktop software here) and a novelist (you can buy his book Red Hope here — it’s about Mars and very good). John thinks Amazon isn’t going to buy all those drones after all… we are.
I don’t think Amazon will deliver packages via a limited number of super-drones. Instead, if I was a betting man, they will lease/rent/sell drones -to- customers, which will then fly to a centralized Amazon distribution site and pick up the packages to return to the owners house – and stay at the house.
Or perhaps there will be one drone designated per street/block?
Not only can Amazon charge for the devices themselves, but they can charge a recurring fee for what is going to be almost immediate delivery.
Advantages for Amazon:
1) Selling/leasing the drones to the consumer will be a line of income.
2) Drone repair warranties will be an extra line of income.
3) Instead of a single drone learning how to approach/deliver packages to all houses in an area, each Amazon Prime HomeAir drone will only have to memorize the path between the house and the Amazon distribution site.
4) When a drone fails, it doesn’t knock out an entire zone for delivery.
John is assuming drones will fly autonomously, which we’re so far told they won’t, but in the longer run who knows? In any case I see mass drone delivery being a decade or more away. Before then we’ll have to go through drone registration, which I don’t expect to be bad at all since it looks almost exactly like the “licenses” we used to get for using CB radios. Remember those? The drones of the 1970s.
Now to autonomous cars, which I do believe will eventually be hugely successful. There are just too many advantages to a technology that replicates a horse that knows its way back to the barn. Self-driving cars have many safety advantages and can clearly be more network-efficient than human drivers, but the big gains in that regard won’t happen until most cars — probably all cars — are self-driving. That’s when they’ll operate at high speed going down the road only a meter or less apart. This sounds more dangerous than it is because if you are driving down the freeway and the self-driving car in front of you slams on the brakes it won’t have time to decelerate enough to even damage your car, coming-up from behind. Running at the speed limit and only one meter apart highways will be able to accommodate up to six times as many cars and they’ll be going faster, too.
But it only works that way if all the cars are autonomous. Or you are being driven by The Stig.
At normal attrition rates, replacing 90 percent of the auto fleet will take 30 years — 30 years to realize the full benefit of self-driving cars. I don’t think it will actually take that long, though, because the government will find ways to accelerate this trend to save on infrastructure and pollution. But the best they’ll be able to do is probably doubling the rate of adoption meaning self-driving cars will become an overnight sensation 15 years from now, not in 2016.
Can’t wait until a drone highway man (highwaydrone??) takes down a delivery drone.
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First Fast and the Furious had delivery truckers fighting back against Dom and his gang. With drones, there is no one to fight back.
Both drones and self-driving cars are a security nightmare. Just wait until either one gets piloted into the world trade center by chinese/russian hackers, an intelligence agency, or some sociopaths teens.
Therefore, my prediction is neither one becomes mainstream for at least 3 decades. An entirely new network infrastructure is required to run them safely.
What happened to prediction #4? The previous article was #2 (and 3?) and this one is 5 & 6. Am I missing something here?
I guess that #4 is hidden in the sentence “President Hillary is unlikely to give such a gift to Apple …” 🙂
I predict non-linearity, in Bob’s predictions as well as in the adoption of autonomous vehicles. I five years anyone who remembers Tesla calling their present features ‘autopilot’ will chuckle at what an overstatement that is. Also, autonomous cars in urban use are going to depend on better mapping, or need to be able to read and understand one way signs (in the dark and rain) – as I had to do recently, instead of following the directions my phone was issuing.
(Some say) The first early adopters of automated cars will be 3rd strike DUI drivers, this will be mandated by law.
Seeing how the government is keen on the money the many traffic/speeding tickets generate each year I doubt they will make self-driving cars mandatory. Unless they increase the road tax dramatically.
I would bet that the increase in productivity, since people won’t be stuck in traffic, will offset any loses in speed tickets and whatnot.
I think that the first drones would do better for delivery from the truck to the door, with the drivers teaching it wear to drop of the package. Then the next time it would know where to drop the packages off at that location. Then you go to the other prediction and the truck is self driving with the drone making the delivery.
“Running at the speed limit and only one meter apart [on] highways … only works that way if all the cars are autonomous.”
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AND the roads are maintained extremely well and kept super-clean, because the road grit and debris thrown up by a car at 50+ MPH on current freeways is going to quickly start doing damage to any car following it at only one meter apart.
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I once needed to get my car towed from Milpitas to Cupertino, and unwisely tried to go the cheap route by getting a tow cable from an auto supply store and having a buddy tow my car. I found out the hard way why they recommend using a tow cable only at very low speeds. I think we were on one stretch of road where the speed limit was 45 MPH (and we were still keeping it low, at barely above 35), with about three meters of distance between the two cars, and a rock got kicked up from the towing car that was big enough to smash the windshield of my car.
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Even aside from that big rock my car was getting pelted with loads of other, smaller grit.
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Proper tow trucks can get away with what they do because the car being towed is up at an angle, with the underside exposed to any road grit being thrown up. (You’ll notice that the underside of any car just being driven around normally gets covered pretty quickly in a layer of dirt and grit.) I’ll bet tow truck companies factor in customer claims of car damage from road debris during towing when deciding whether to buy or switch to flat bed tow trucks vs. the simpler/older ones that only lift up one end of a car to tow it.
Actually the reason for more flat bed towing is the increased number of full time 4 wheel drive vehicles on the road. Most of those can’t be towed on two wheels.
Drones, driver less cars… boring! When is the west coast going to have something really futuristic….like say a high sped train linking Seattle, San Francisco and LA? 😉
When things go badly, how do autonomous cars decide between sacrificing themselves (and potentially their occupants) and sacrificing those outside of the vehicle. Example – Another car has a mechanical failure and suddenly swerves into your lane. The autonomous car traveling at 45 MPH must now choose between hitting the car that is suddenly in its lane or swerving to the right onto the shoulder. Unfortunately the normally deserted shoulder is occupied by 3 children riding their bikes. What will the autonomous car do?
Brake hard and activate the Fervent Prayer to Autonomous God subroutine.
In situations where a driver (human or otherwise) needs to avoid an accident the default action should NEVER be to keep going — it’s ALWAYS to hit the brakes, stay in-lane and come to a complete stop. Anything else is silly.
Folks behind are obligated to do likewise, and failure to do so carries with it liability for damage, injury or death.
This is basic Driver Ed. stuff.
So you should hit the car in front of you when swerving would avoid doing so?
This is your basic driver’s ed?
You’re assuming that the guy in front of you won’t also choose to swerve. So you don’t increase your odds of avoiding an accident by swerving.
Autonomous cars actually have an advantage in this case because they can communicate to decide which vehicle swerves right, which swerves left and which stays in lane. Vehicles who aren’t in the direct path of the accident can also be notified to change lanes to make room.
But as Bob says, that feature won’t be available until the fully autonomous systems are widely deployed. One option for accelerating this once the autonomous vehicles are widely deployed would be to only allow autonomous vehicles in express lanes of freeways/tollways.
I’ll leave aside the wider autonomous car debate but I will focus on this point:
“That’s when they’ll operate at high speed going down the road only a meter or less apart.”
There is a benefit from knowing what the car in front is about to do e.g. apply the brakes to slow down for a turn. Autonomous cars would be able to communicate this info between themselves based on the programmed route so cars behind one that is slowing to turn, can also slow down in sync.
However the problem comes from the unexpected. Lets say this line of cars is cruising down the highway at the speed limit, each only 1 metre from the car in front. An unexpected hazard appears – perhaps a human runs into the road or a wheel falls off a car some way in front. For simplicity lets assume the time taken for the car to detect the hazard’s presence and realise it IS a hazard is the same as a human. The front car slams on the brakes to avoid hitting the hazard on the basis evasive action (swerving) isn’t possible – the cars behind then plough into it and each other. Not only does that leave a massive pile up, but if you’ve not got as much distance from the car in front you’re going faster when you hit it; the larger amount of metal in the shorter distance makes the compression higher and survival less likely.
Leaving a good stopping distance isn’t just because we can’t read the mind of the driver in front, it’s also because 1. things go off script all too often and 2. stopping takes time, with the distance covered in that time is proportional to speed!
I think you will see communication between cars being mandated like break lights, anti-lock brakes, etc… England was already working on automated cars that have line of sight laser communication for this close driving, where the first car would send the brake signal on the laser to anyone behind to be ready for the sudden braking, then it would apply the brakes. This would give the cars behind time to react as the transmission would be close to the speed of light, then processed. Also, normal cars may be mandated to have this, to tell autonomous cars what the human driver is doing.
Laser communication between cars?!? Yah, that should work; as long as there’s no snow, mud, rain, leaves, road dirt, etc., etc., etc.
Bluetooth?
I think you’ve missed my point. Even if information can be passed between cars very quickly with decisions made faster than a human could, having cars closer together when things go wrong makes the resultant pile up much worse!
I can see things should work fine with everything happening in an orderly fashion when it all goes to plan. The problem is when things go off script and an unexpected hazard appears. There are various examples in this thread along with mine so I won’t repeat them. The point is with cars only a metre apart if something goes wrong like that the resultant pile up will be an order of magnitude worse than if cars kept a proper distance apart, as they [should] do now with human drivers. Having a robo driver doesn’t change the laws of physics regarding braking systems and friction!
Anyway, even if transmission between cars is at the speed of light the processing certainly isn’t! Don’t forget human drivers already receive information into their eyes at the speed of light – it’s the processing in the organ behind their eyes and subsequent muscle reaction that takes time.
USC had proof of concept cars following each other 10+ years ago.
No. Not true at all.
First of all, as Google has mentioned in an autonomous car network, the cars in a subset based on proximity would use a flocking algorithm. So a pile up would not happen. And the larger the network, the better the algorithm would be at determining the vector and velocity of the cars. So imagine say a group of 50 cars rolling down a highway. Out of these, lets say half are autonomous.
These half would seek each other out and form a flock. The ones in front would dictate how the ones in back react. The flock would also maintain a safe distance from non-autonomous cars (obviously). So, lets say all other 25 non-autonomous cars get into a simultaneous pileup. Since the flock is grouped, only the fringe autonomous cars would be expected to crash.
Also, just to point out, the main problem with autonomous vehicles is not the software. Its the reliability of the network computation. So far, all FULLY autonomous cars rely heavily on offsite computation, that is, the computation required is too much for the onboard computer to handle alone. The RELIABILITY of the network is the main hurdle. Will it always work? If it fails, what safeguards are in place? Will the network handle more-than-intended capacity?
Strangely enough, the flocking algorithm helps immensely with network capacity. Imagine that in a flock, only the fringe cars have to rely on heavy computation, the rest just piggyback. However, it will always come down to reliability. You have to imagine that a software glitch could result in some heinous accidents, and the legality involved would be insane.
I suspect that liability for autonomous vehicles “at fault” in an accident will be handled similarly to one of the current “autonomous” sources of liability: dogs. If a dog bites someone, the owner is liable. So, if an autonomous vehicle causes an accident, most likely the owner of the vehicle will be liable. This can be mitigated by indemnification clauses in purchase contracts for autonomous vehicles, but those probably won’t be available until mandated by law – and the law won’t change until there’s either consumer outrage or insurance industry lobbying (or both).
Most of the current rules (of thumb) for maintaining distance between vehicles are related to human reaction time in the 100’s of milliseconds range plus human errors like driver distraction and not recognizing the severity of the braking ahead. If autonomous vehicles are able to communicate and in 100’s of microseconds (say 1 millisecond), the distance required between vehicles goes down dramatically.
Also there’s nothing to prevent the autonomous algorithms from allowing a greater distance between vehicles under adverse braking conditions or poor communication conditions.
I can’t imagine paying Amazon any amount of money for nearly instant delivery, as opposed to one or two day service for free. Being old, I’ve learned to plan ahead and be patient. My orders always select the cheapest delivery cost and (to Amazon’s credit) usually arrive in no more than 2 days anyway.
Sure, it’s possible Amazon might try to game the system by doing something like deliberately delaying shipments so as to increase the value of paying extra for faster deliveries, but that example is the way to upset customers and harm one’s reputation — not really a long term solution.
So leasing the drone to the customer and then charging said customer for the maintenance and delivery cost is one of those things that sound good in theory but in practice probably won’t fly (pun intended).
While I agree with your sentiment on not paying for expedited delivery, we are a minority. It amazes me how many people pay to have things a day or two sooner. Amazon will be successful if this is the route they take.
I think the transition to fully autonomous cars will happen over a series of incremental steps. This is to prove out the technology, get people comfortable with it, and deal with the legal aspects. Step 1 we are already seeing with automatic lane guidance on highways and adaptive cruise control. Step 2 will be HOV-like lanes dedicated to fully autonomous cars. Then we will start to transition more lanes over to fully autonomous. Only after that is common place will “last-mile” autonomous driving start to be common.
“I don’t think it will actually take that long, though, because the government will find ways to accelerate this trend to save on infrastructure and pollution.”
I think you’re really missing the boat on this one. A) When has the government ever created more efficiency? B) It won’t be an “overnight” thing. Like all other new features, it will be available first as a premium, then work its way down to become standard in most if not all cars.
Also, I don’t believe self-driving cars will be “networked” very much. That is, it won’t take a central authority (government or otherwise) to tell cars where to go. Each will act autonomously based on known traffic patterns, accidents, road conditions, etc. and, therefore, create efficiency for themselves and others on the road. This also allows for lower barriers to entry, more innovation, and more rapid adoption and growth.
I read somewhere that 50% of LA is dedicated to parking.
Think how many houses you could put up if you reduced the amount of parking.
That is a huge incentive to property owners.
I think most of the car parking spaces will still be required if everyone still owns their own car. Who would want to pay for the petrol to send it home while you go shopping, for example?
I agree with Fred on the drones. The way I imagined the system working was to put 5 or so drones on top of a UPS van. The driver would stop in the neighborhood, open the doors and the drones grab packages. They fly off to the front porch.
When they reach the drop zone the local link to the truck shows video, and the driver/pilot drops points to where the package should be gently set down.
That way a single driver and truck can deliver to the suburbs without all the stop and go wear and tear on the truck. There is a local, fast data link to the truck, and someone is close by if there is a problem, accident, shotgun incident.
It does not help at all for apartment buildings and businesses where people actually go in the door.
FedEx has a business where independent contractors own their own vans and do delivery. Maybe that is the model for Amazon. An uber for drone delivery could raise a lot of money. The best business model for the founders would be “take the money and run”.
Interesting idea. I like it way more than the idea that drones would deliver the packages from a center.
But let me put a wrench in the works here and explain to everybody why drones will never ever be delivering packages in high volumes. It all comes down to the efficiency of energy.
Energy costs have been rising dramatically in this century. As we extract more resources from the globe, aka the low hanging fruit, the harder and more difficult it becomes. Essentially, its a negative feedback loop. See ‘fracking’ for an example of what happens when oil becomes scarcer.
Now, lets take a look at drones. Drones, like helicopters, are some of the most energy intensive (read inefficient) forms of travel. That’s because almost 90% of the energy goes to lifting the drone itself. Air is not very viscous, so the amount of energy needed to create a drag force of the propellers is immense.
Airplanes are much more efficient because the drag is created by the static wings, and all the energy is directed in the vector of travel.
Therefore, disregarding any of the costs mentioned in this article, the MAJOR cost will be the energy required to move the package from point A to B. That’s why for long distances, its flown by plane, and for short distances (from the post office to your door) its done by vehicle. Drones will never ever be an effective means of transportation. Have you seen how large a drone has to be to lift a human 20ft into the air? Its about the size of a car. And a human weighs about 150 lbs. So, to put it into scale, to lift a truck load (2 TONS) of packages into the air would require a drone the size of a house. How does anybody think that is economically viable? Its merely a gimmick.
Drones are great for many things, but lifting loads is absolutely not one of them.
Each drone would carry a 2 lb. package from the truck stop to the door. Heavier packages could be delivered the old fashioned way, driving to the door, while the drones are doing their thing. Keep in mind the motivation for any technology is to reduce the need for the least efficient method, cost-wise, humans.
As others have pointed out, the idea of autonomous cars following each other at 1 meter at high speed is never going to happen. A brand new SUV is almost 100% more likely to require more distance to stop than a brand new sedan. Stopping distance increases as speed increases and we’re not even taking into account worn brakes, etc. Cars simply have different handling characteristics which vary based on a wide variety of factors.
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Maybe I’m being a bit pessimistic as I actually enjoy driving. However, this 1 meter or even 5 meter distance is just never going to happen because it’s unsafe.
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It’s more likely autonomous cars will thrive in lower speed environments and rely more on their on sensors than any vehicle to vehicle communication. Autonomous vehicles will follow the same rules at high speed that sane drivers do, allowing distance to react to an unexpected situation up ahead.
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At any rate, for anything other than urban driving, I’d expect cars will be semi-autonomous at best and remain more akin to autopilots on airplanes. The car will manage most things just fine but when things get dicey a human will still have to be present to make a judgement call.
A long time ago, maybe 20 years ago, I heard about a scam where a car suddenly brakes hard in front of a semi-truck. An accomplice drives next to the truck to box it in. Since the truck can’t stop as fast, it hits the car, and commercial truck drivers apparently have good insurance. What I’m saying is this is already a problem, but only when a car sedan driver really brakes hard. I assume they’ll be programmed not to do that unless it’s absolutely necessary. With more automated cars, that kind of braking should be necessary less and less.
Non-autonomous cars won’t be driven off the roads by government mandates, but by liability insurance coverage becoming unaffordable to the people who keep old clunkers running.
Amazon is not going to employ drone pilots. There going to all be contract workers, ala Uber. I think your friend is somewhat right, in that they’ll sell the drones to “independent contractors”;they won’t be flown by pilots making 100k a year.
Sorry, should be “They’re”, not “There”. 😎
“Allow myself to introduce myself”
None of the airline pilots I know make anything close to $100,000 per year flying heavy jets. I have my doubts anyone will be paying drone operators that kind of money. Most of my doubts about drone delivery though concern how many tech savvy people there are in the U.S. and how well armed the populace is. Anyone trying drone delivery is probably going to lose a lotta drones.
He didn’t say you knew them: https://www1.salary.com/Captain-Pilot-in-Command-Large-Jet-Salaries.html
Amazon may be ‘losing’ $2 Billion on Prime shipping, but they are recouping at least part, if not all of that through:
1) Amazon prime memberships at $99 (or $49 for students!) per year. Amazon just announced that they have memberships in the ‘tens of millions’.
2) Prime (and non-prime members in order to reach the free shipping threshold) buying more stuff.
It’s a great, and addictive, selling point.
You left out the cost cuts in pilot labor with all the new H1 and L visas being approved.
If the USAF is piloting drones from the other side of the world, an Establishment scion like Bezos probably can too.
I love the autonomous car skeptics in here. I agree with Mr Cringely, if all cars are autonomous then there is no scenario where they are NOT statistically safer than human-operated vehicles. The bar is not even that high…human operators are terrible.
Reality is going to hit these skeptics in the butt.
I just can’t wait for my self driving car!!
On delivery drones: What if we think in terms of a delivery platform (truck), still driven around the traditional route. It has a small contingent of drones – radio-controlled by the control system on the truck. Instead of the truck making five stops in an area, it makes one stop (or even keeps rolling) and five drones deliver five packages and quickly return to the truck? It seems to me that this is more realistic than involving the FAA. Those drones are going to fly at under 35 ft. The truck (initially driven by a human) will make five deliveries in the time it would have taken to make one or two deliveries by hopping out of the cab and running up to the door. Oh, and the drones are charging batteries while the truck is in transit.
It would sure make a UPS driver’s job more fun. Release the drones! (Or Winged Warriors if you prefer.)
I would love to see Homer Sompson as a delivery truck driver herding his flock of drones…
with laser communication between cars travelling 1 metre apart, they could ALL slam on the brakes within microseconds of the same time. there won’t be a human-sized time lag from car to car.
of course, if the train is going around a corner, the end ones won’t fare as well.
“[Amazon] will lease/rent/sell drones -to- customers, which will then fly to a centralized Amazon distribution site and pick up the packages to return to the owners house – and stay at the house.”
If you have a self-driving car, substitute “drive” for “fly” in the sentence above, and the need for drones abruptly disappears. IMHO, aerial drone delivery is in the same fantasy category as Jetson flying cars: fun to think about, but more mundane methods will be more practical and economical.
People seriously underestimate the disruptive power of personal autonomous vehicles. Anyone who makes money by transporting anything 50 miles or less will be out of business. No more school bus drivers, UPS or FedEx delivery drivers, postal delivery, food delivery, long haul truck drivers, couriers, taxi drivers, etc. Your car will go and fetch whatever you want. Also automotive repair and maintenance will shrink by at least 90 percent. No more body shops, Jiffy Lubes, smog testing.
May we live in interesting times 😉
I think Autonomous Cars will be phased in only in very limited areas. High-traffic urban and suburban zones will require them; lower-traffic suburban and rural areas will not require them; and in the areas where they are not required, they will be forbidden. This will be part of a larger social trend going forward of extreme political and sociological division, and those divisions will fall largely (although not entirely) on urban/rural, high-traffic/low-traffic lines. This country is rapidly splitting apart on ideological, spiritual, and racial lines, and this technology will fall very neatly on one side of that line– the side of the collectivists. Because there is nothing more collectivist than getting into a car driven, literally, by the collective.
FAA licensed pilots for delivery drones — nonsense. There will be some kind of exemption for short range and low altitude. I like the idea mentioned above of drones based on UPS truck. Range is short, so data link and batteries are not a problem. Driver can teach the drop off point for each address, which is then remembered. When a drone crashes, the driver can immediately retrieve it and deliver the package by hand.
Cars one meter apart traveling at high speed? Sounds like a train to me.
Except without couplers to keep all the cars in lockstep when the first car hits the brakes, it will quickly become a train wreck.
Except that the cars will be networked, so that one car slowing or stopping will be communicated to all following cars instantaneously, which can then all slow or stop in unison. So yeah, just like a train.
Nope, the propagation delay can’t be completely eliminated. So each gar is going to eat up a little of the buffer between the cars, and eventually one car at the back is going to make contact with the car in front of it. Once that car is pushed forward it’ll propagate back up the line until it gets to a point where there’s still enough buffer left between them to stop the chain reaction.
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Physically coupled train cars don’t have this problem.
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Also, there’s still a lot of argument in the autonomous auto community about whether full car-to-car networking should be done, and of course even if they agree then they all have to agree on standards for it. (“Standards are wonderful. There’s always so many to choose from!”)
Why not have couplers then?
Drone technology will eventually evolve to where the economics make sense. It is in Amazon’s interest to “Socialize” the technology today so that when the technology and economics converge the general public will be accepting of getting their packages from the sky.
How long? I’m guess limited deployment within five years with fully deployment within 15 years.
But that’s a wild *ss guess… Technology has a way of making even the best predictor look like an idiot.
I love how everyone argues about autonomous cars by using points about safety, communication, etc, etc, etc. Blah, blah, blah. Bob’s prediction has NOTHING to do with HOW autonomous cars get to the point we are using them. It is inevitable we will. Yes, all those technical and legal issues will come to pass.
Bob’s prediction is on WHEN they will be “nearly” every where. I think Bob is pretty close on his 15 year estimate… but for the wrong reason. The average car in the U.S. is about 11 years old (yea, I don’t car about your 66 Chevy for this argument). So… do this math… it will take 11 year to replace “most” of the cars on the road with autonomous cars. The clock starts ticket when the first truly autonomous car is accepted and being sold IN VOLUME. Will a major manufacturer have a truly autonomous car in 4 years. Maybe. All those technical and legal issues could impact this timeline as well.
So… 15 years… seems a little aggressive to me. But 15-20 years… I can buy that!!!
What I want to know is when with we replace HOV lanes with autonomous LANES??? This can happen as soon as there are enough autonomous cars out there. That is likely about 5 years away. You don’t need a fully autonomous car. Just one that you enter the autonomous lane and then go into autonomous mode. Sweet!
I thought these were supposed to be predictions for 2016? My only comment about predictions for 10 or 20 or 30 years from now is not a chance. That’s too far in the future for anyone to have any idea of what’s going to happen. Any prediction even close to reality will just be dumb luck. All you’re saying here for 2016 is that major adoption won’t happen. I’m sorry, but the organ grinder’s monkey could predict that without even working up a sweat. Next year when you’re tallying your score, these two “predictions” don’t count. Not even close.
On a technical/human basis, I see it the other way around. I don’t see autonomous cars being accepted by a majority of the American public within 15 years (how many people by then will passively sit in a car doing 70 MPH down the freeway without controlling anything?), and I think technically there’s no way for them to successfully operate in conjunction with human-driven cars equally in the mix everywhere on a 1-to-1 basis.
On the other hand, I see drones as feasible being piloted by private individuals of good ability. There’s a wealth of talent out there….I know a soon-to-retire Delta pilot who expertly flies his drone quite a number of miles. If we can manage commercial aircraft at similar altitudes (albeit with FAA involvement), I’m certain qualified pilots could manage it with drones, and that technology fully exists now. Also good jobs for ex-military, who have been getting the shaft lately based on the disgraceful number of them homeless (but that’s a topic for a different site)….
I agree with other posters who have pointed out these are a couple of lame predictions. While you’re
at it, why don’t you predict that there won’t be flying cars in 2016? Anybody can make vague predictions
and then declare them fulfilled a year later. Here’s a thought: let your readers decide if you were right
or wrong.
On the subject of autonomous vehicles, no one has mentioned how many government entities, from
municipalities up to states, rely on the fines from traffic enforcement for a significant portion of their
revenues. What happens when that income disappears because autonomous cars never violate
the motor vehicle code?
They increase road tax!!!
Your example of the New York telephone wires going underground made me think that urban delivery might just bring back the old PNEUMATIC TUBE systems (as in the movie “The Hudsucker Proxy”). Does anyone know why those were abandoned?
i think drone delivery will end up using the subway tunnels and sewer tunnels instead of going overhead – no pilots required and space is available and safe – and delivery will not be included to the home – too many variables – but to amazon lockers or similar group delivery sites – sms when delivered gives you the code to pick it up on the way out of your subway station. if you are outside the city – they hover in the safe zone around the train tracks, canals or power line roadways – we will rarely see them.
driverless cars: i think they will be considered special cars and given permission to use the carpool lanes and carpool candidates need to have smart cars to get in that lane to drive faster than others – this will kickstart all robot car development into high gear quicker because it is isolated from most traffic and create envy – then the people will pay!
Amazon has not made any money in 20 years and yet has a $300 billion valuation. Does not make much sense to me.
Meanwhile. a new amazon competitor Jet.com seems to selling at a loss propped up by VC money. Jet has announced that it makes no profit on sales but is betting on dynamic pricing—meaning the price of items changes depending on what shoppers buy. Surely there is only so much juicee you can squeeze from a lemon
Re: ‘No more school bus drivers, UPS or FedEx delivery drivers, postal delivery, food delivery, long haul truck drivers, couriers, taxi drivers, etc’ that would hurt a lot of people but would seem to have compelling economics with a lot of these services running 24hr hrs a day.
The tech already exists for commercial airliners to fly themselves but am told there would be too much pushback from passengers due to perceived safety concerns. So far, airlines have not even gone down the road of reducing the cockpit to one pilot.
Something I do not see brought up much about driverless cars – Security!
1. What if you miss a payment on the car – will the bank or dealer be able to override your control of the car and force it to drive to an impound lot? I remember reading about where banks had foreclosed on the wrong houses in recent years. Imagine that extended to driverless cars….
2. Government could demand a back door to driverless cars in much the same way it is demanding a backdoor to encryption. Just think what power that would give to any government – to be able to simply seize people by locking the doors and and driving them to a detention center while maintaining “plausible deniability”. This could be abused by governments worldwide, not just in the US.
3. Driverless cars, like everything else digital, will get hacked. High tech criminals could hack and exploit the government back door or simply create new remote control hacks. This would make carrying out kidnappings be so much easier, albeit without government sponsorship. Driverless cars could also be abused in this manner for robberies, rape, beatings, and so on. The victim(s) would be locked in their car and driven to a secluded location for the crime to be carried out.
4. During times of civil unrest, the government could invoke a “kill switch” to turn private cars off in a given locality (determined by GPS) via the government backdoor described in #2. This “kill switch” would likely be exploitable by any entities who could exploit the government back door or hack their way in from the outside.
5. In keeping with the idea of #3, if murder was the goal of the remote hijacking, then simply forcing the car into a fatal crash would even be simpler and with less likelihood of being caught than driving the car to a secluded location for the perpetrator(s) to physically meet the occupant(s). Depending on the nature of the crash the likelihood of a successful murder could vary.
File all of this under “What could possibly go wrong?” Hopefully I am over-thinking this and none of this will happen. At any rate I would prefer to stick with a relatively dumb car that is not IP connected or machine driven. Perhaps when I am too old to safely drive I would reconsider that opinion.
Re: “when I am too… to safely drive” Replace “old” with “human” to see the point of driverless cars.
Here is my Less Ranty Version. It comes down to a matter of trust. I would trust that the intentions of car manufacturers and some of the companies they may partner with (Google, Microsoft, Apple) would generally be good. Having said that, these companies may be put under duress to provide backdoors for the government of whatever country in which they are providing driverless services. Those companies may not even be permitted to publicize those backdoors under the threat of legal penalties. While America would certainly be much safer than say Russia or China, there are some unsettling provisions of the Patriot Act that could be subject of partisan abuse by either mainstream political party. Would tracking data for traffic management be anonymized? Would there be any sort of “kill switch”? Would there be any sort of “remote control takeover”? In less democratic countries this would become likely. In more democratic counties this could become a corrupting temptation.
Then, there is the matter of security. Windows certainly needs its patches, but Apple and Linux users should not be smug either, all need to be patched up to date. The same goes for mobile phones and tablets. Devices no longer supported with security updates should be considered for replacement with newer devices. So how many years would a given model of driverless car be supported before it would become subject to replacement for a lack of security patches? How many people would drive on with a dangerously insecure car out of economic necessity? Would outdated, insecure models of cars no longer be permitted to be registered to legally drive on the roads? The automotive industry would just love that as it would increase sales. The poor would bear the greatest burden of such a regulation. Many smartphone and tablet users are using insecure devices and are blissfully unaware of it. Will we end up with that problem with cars, too? Then there is the matter of hacking. It is bad enough if my phone, tablets, or laptops get hacked. I could suffer financial and other sorts of losses. If my car gets hacked, it could cost my life. Hackers are getting bolder in their attacks, recently this winter Russian hackers took out the power grid in parts of the Ukraine, putting many in the cold and producing health and life safety hazards. Driverless cars would provide too tempting a target for bad actors to not try to exploit.
To be relatively safe, a driverless car would need to have security baked into the design, have regular security updates, have no backdoors, and run antivirus/antimalware/antiexploit software. If a car became compromised then it would have to warn the driver who would then need to stop safely and get the assistance of a dealer or repair shop. Drivers would need to be assured of their privacy in their driving. If a person is suspected of criminal activity and law enforcement needs to track them, then follow existing legal process and get a court order to authorize it. The means of driverless cars interacting with each other would also need to have security integral to their design to avoid bad actors from creating accidents. The public road infrastructure with which driverless cars would interact would also need to be secured for the same reasons. Then there is the matter of driverless cars crossing national boundaries whose governments may have conflicting policies of these issues.
I am human yet more capable of driving than some people locally, I have avoided accidents where the other driver was clearly running the red light. Perhaps when I get to the age where I am no longer confident in my driving abilities these issues may have been worked out, as I expect this all to take much longer than expected.. In total these are rather large issues which seriously need to be addressed.
autonomous/driverless cars will be very safe, because they will be limited to ridicolously low speeds and dedicated lanes.
unless you are willing to accept a car that will kill you only once or twice a year, or when a compulsory, safety related sw upgrade will introduce some really bad bug and a few hundreds get killed before a patch is made available.
One could argue that humans are full of bugs.
The article assumes that the cars that we own will be replaced by autonomous cars.
This is where we go wrong in predictions. Our cars will not go anywhere! What will happen is we will stop using our cars and start using automated cars offered by companies like Uber.
These driver less cars are so cheap, all taxis will disappear as they can’t compete.
We may use our cars now and then and some may even scrap it. Marinating a car will be
very extremely costly as most car-repairing companies would have died.
So, we will see a sea of change in less than five years.
Coming to drones, flying drones for delivery purpose is very dangerous and will not happen in crowded cities. However, drones will be used in combination with driverless cars.
Which means, the drones will travel with driverless cars with the cargo and when they come near
the destination, say your home, the drone will wake up and deliver the goods. The unused garages in our homes will be the delivery spots.
-Author
‘The Audacity of Futurism’ expected in May 2016.