Twenty-one years ago, when we were shooting Triumph of the Nerds, the director, Paul Sen, introduced me to his cousin who was working at the time on a big Department of Transportation research program to build self-driving cars. Twenty-one years ago! Yet what goes around comes around and today there is nothing fresher than autonomous cars, artificial intelligence. You know, old stuff.
As you can see from this picture, driverless cars were tested by RCA and General Motors decades earlier, back in the 1950s.
What changed from 1995 until today in my view comes down to three major things: 1) 21 years of cumulative automotive research; 2) demographic changes that might — just might — make us a little more willing to give up our cars, and the big one; 3) Moore’s Law finally making possible cars that might be safe to drive themselves on city streets. But if this is, as it seems to be, the Summer of Love for autonomous vehicles. none of those are the real reason for all the recent action. The real reason is greed.
Back in 1995 the goals for self-driving cars were more modest than they are today. They weren’t called autonomous, but self-driving. And there was no plan to have cars drive themselves on city streets, just on freeways and highways — on the Interstate. The plan was to bury cables in the pavement over which all the cars would drive and communicate with each other and with the road, itself. The goal was to fill the road with cars driving at the speed limit, spaced precisely one meter apart. Ironically that simple system, which we could implement cheaply today, would achieve most of the economic and societal goals being pointed to today to support autonomous cars. We’re told they will be safer, make more efficient use of public roads, and use less energy. And it’s all true. Why, then, are we so eager to perform the much harder job of building truly autonomous cars that can pick the kids up at school? Greed again.
I really got into this concept back in 1995. Hand-driven cars filled at most 15 percent of the roadway while self-driving cars could fill 85 percent. That one-meter spacing was key, too: if there were only two cars headed south on the same remote stretch of Interstate the system would still put them one meter apart. That’s because a 70 mph rear-ender with only 39.37 inches to accelerate barely dents your bumper, designing completely out of the system more than half of all highway accidents.
Cars one meter apart draft each other just like NASCAR racers, reducing total aerodynamic drag and fuel consumption. And instead of each driver raggedly accelerating from a stop at his own rate and own sweet time, every car would start at exactly the same time and acceleration rate just like they are being driven by, well, a computer.
None of this sounds like the autonomous cars of today, though. Nobody is talking about a system where cars scream down the road at high speed and in such close proximity because the idea is scary and because the design philosophy of today’s self-driving cars is different. They are autonomous, which means they operate independently. They also aren’t supposed to scare us even if the scary part is actually the safer part.
Now we get to the greed. If most of the benefit could be obtained with cheaper self-driving cars, why do we now want autonomous cars? Because cars could be upgraded to self-driving through aftermarket upgrades, which is how they did it in 1995. Truly autonomous cars, though, you have to build those babies from scratch.
So everyone is going to need a new car.
Mandatory replacement is a glorious thing for manufacturers. It’s like that box of baking soda in the back of your refrigerator that you are supposed to throw away every 30 days. The golden era of the record business was when vinyl gave way to CDs and we all paid again to buy the same stuff we already owned. It happened again when we converted our VHS tape libraries to DVDs and to some extent when we gave up physical media for iTunes.
It’s a glorious thing, the prospect of selling 200 million brand new cars and trucks over a 2-3 year period. And it’s coming, it’s absolutely coming.
Ford says it will have a self-driving taxi without a steering wheel in service by 2021. That’s a key data point because there’s no way Ford can afford the liability of putting those truly driverless cars on the road if they’ll be mixing it up with me in my 1994 Jeep Grand Cherokee that still smells faintly of mice.
For autonomous cars to be successful they will have to totally dominate, which will require new laws, getting old cars off the roads. This is the part they couldn’t do back in 1995. The banks will have to lend lots of money (with federal guarantees, I’m sure), old cars like mine will have to be melted down. It will be a huge endeavor that will also involve a serious increase in electric vehicles.
And it will happen. Shit, we all know there’s a recession coming after the election, followed by Japanese-style deflation unless we can find a way to really juice the economy. George W. Bush used a housing bubble for that after 9/11 but those tricks have been all used-up. And there’s no more room for the Fed to drop interest rates.
So autonomous cars it must be.
Appealing to both sides of the aisle, car factories will soon be running three shifts, infrastructure will be rebuilt at the same time, and even global warming will be quietly addressed if not accepted on the right — all while saving lives and increasing elderly mobility.
Heck of a deal. I’ll just whistle for my car like Roy Rogers summoning Trigger.
But will I have to also give up my Bugeye Sprite? Probably, unless Sundays are made non-autonomous car days.
I’m not saying this is entirely a bad thing or even mainly a bad thing. It’s just a thing we’ll have to deal with. And I thought it was only fair to tell you it’s coming.
The problem with that future is that bringing it about will piss off actual voters, who have the elite policymakers outnumbered. Ask Republican Nominee Jeb Bush and his Republican Party how well that worked out.
Autonomous cars on the freeway are going to happen soon, within 5 years. Their insurance costs will be lower than for non-autonomous cars which will help drive their adoption. They’re almost here now. Dad has a Subaru with lane departure warning and lane departure assist (it steers back into the lane automatically) and adaptive cruise control. If the lane-departure assist was just a bit better (it overcorrects and thus wanders from one side of the lane to the other) then driving could be a totally hands-free experience. On the freeway. On regular streets I wouldn’t trust it.
Cringely is trolling his readers. Not even HE could be this dumb. A conspiracy to jump start the economy? A replacement cycle like cheap, throw away music media?
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Except for all the dummies taking this seriously, the humor falls flat. The predictions are about as random and poorly thought as a magic 8 ball.
Corrections welcome, but doesn’t mandatory self-driving cars imply that the government will know where every car in the country is at any one time? Doesn’t that bother anyone? I don’t need Big Brother to have access to the fact that I drove to Indiana this weekend or Baltimore that weekend.
” I don’t need Big Brother to have access to the fact that I drove to Indiana this weekend or Baltimore that weekend.”
They already know – between license plate readers, cell phone records, and security cameras there is more than enough information to track you.
As seen with the airplane survalence, license plate readers, and theuse of the fake cell phone towers in Baltimore, they all ready are.
You may not know this but in the UK they already have a system in place which ‘captures’ 30 million licence plates a day and stores the data for two years. So yeah, that’s probably coming…
You have a Bugeye Sprite? I had one of those in high school. Such fun! I once used bubble gum to crimp electrical wires so I could drive it home. Good times.
I have a 914 now and I don’t see how they could ever get all the non-automated cars off the road even if they made them illegal. Think farms and rural areas. Even with subsidies. Not happening. Maybe in 20 years but not in the next 5 years.
Yeah, no, this isn’t happening. If you think requiring $700 for health insurance is a hard sell just try to go to the car-happy US and tell them that three year old car they are nearly ready to pay off has got to go. Or the monster huge-wheeled smoke-belching 4×4 and the wife’s Mary Kay Caddy too.
Never, ever happening. Making Americans get rid of everything is a silly notion meant to incite web site comments. Good lord the Feds still allow pre-1966 cars on the road without seat belts. Get real.
I can just here it now. There was a computer glitch on whatever road and there was a 25 car pileup or a hacker hacked the road system controls. Mass confusion and crashes occurred.
Given your record on predictions, I expect to keep driving on occasion my 1977 Mercedes Diesel (less than 80,000 miles currently) to well over 160,000. As to your belief in Global Warming al la Al Gore, I am off to buy Wool Stocks as Winter is Coming. Keep your predictions coming as you offer us a contrarian investment guide par excellence.
Dan Kurt
Maybe he jumped the gun a little…
But diesel cars? They will be banned, and sooner than you think. You can write that down.
I just plucked down a thousand Georges to reserve a Tesla Model 3 after much thought brought on by a conversation with a fella who said we’d see fully autonomous driving within the next twenty years. I thin he is right and I think Bob is right.
There will be a lot of consternation from the old farts, but life will go on and progress will be made, if not in little incremental steps.
And finally, the Old Cringely goes out on a limb and predicts something that people think crazy at the time of the prediction.
On this prediction, I think he’s on target. I can’t wait for the day when I can get in my car and use the 45 minute commute for something productive instead of watching and dealing with idiots who don’t care about other people and drive like they are stupid.
As a true judge of his predictive skills, his kickstarter is now almost a year late on a 3 month schedule.
I think you’re missing one of the key advantages of self driving cars.
Partial ownership
You use your car for 5% of the day, why do you need to own 100% of a car?
yes there are peak time where a large percentage of the cars are on the road but Uber style surge pricing will persuade users to travel at non standard times to save money.
It reduces the volume of city centre parking required as the car just drops me off at my door and goes off to the next customer.
Autonomous cars won’t typically be bought by Joe Public, they’ll be bought by ride sharing schemes or leased like a timeshare. Unfortunately this won’t help prop up the US economy.
It will hopefully bankrupt all those private toll road owners.
Makes rush hour traffic worse though – it’ll clog up roads in both directions with cars returning from dropping people off, rather than just the into-town direction.
Since trimming back the CarFleet, I own 100% of four cars.
Because I’m an American, and that’s how I roll.
And we’ve left our tire tracks and used vehicles across the Moon and Mars, too.
Driver and driverless cars will have to co-exist for a long while, mainly because the rich and influential have their classic cars they want to enjoy. I forsee a lane or two for driver cars, with a fee system to quickly make those lanes elite. That’s more or less what happened to car pool lanes. They started as a societal agreement where you traded the inconvenience of car sharing for a faster lane. Now you pay money for access, by buying access (237 in Bay Area), or simply if you buy an electric car (used to be a hybrid).
Red Barchetta…
https://play.google.com/music/preview/Tpokabpljxau36elpmpmnnju6xq?lyrics=1&utm_source=google&utm_medium=search&utm_campaign=lyrics&pcampaignid=kp-songlyrics&u=0#
Cringely writes “greed” like it’s a bad thing. I for one will admit it was “greed” that got me out of bed and to work everyday – and I’ll bet it had something to do with Bob going to work at InfoWorld. Say – now that “Halt and Catch Fire” has relocated to the Bay Area and has an InfoWorld character, will Bob get a cameo?
Need /= Greed. Greed could be forsaking a job that you mostly like (and pay that you can live on) for one that you mostly don’t, but pays much more.
It will work because millenials (now the largest demographic) don’t give a shit about cars. After all, everything with few exceptions looks like an Accord/Camry/Fusion/Malibu. We wrung the fun out of cars and made them too complex to do much ourselves.
So now the millenials are happy to ride with Mom & Dad unless they have to take their 10 year old Accord (that looks essentially the same as a new Accord) somewhere. They will be quite comfortable and accepting to whistle up a driverless Uber-car using their Smartphone ’cause the device is where the action is anyway.
Bug-eye Sprites better watch out for those 1-meter-spaced auto trains!
Cohda Wireless are developing add-ons for V2X Connected Vehicles, which are being trialled now with a view to becoming mandatory in USA within a very few years. They provide safety assistance, supporting but not requiring full autonomy. They say that 10% penetration of smart connected vehicles gives safety benefits (reduced accidents for equipped vehicles), so could be readily funded by insurance savings.
Much easier phase-in than full autonomous systems, such as Volvo’s highway train technology.
You left out the key ingredient – how the hell do you think all of this is going to get financed? The infrastructure in the country alone is already in pathetic condition and will cost billions if not more to repair/replace. And now we all have to buy new cars? Tell that to someone getting by on $25k a year.
This, plus the recession (that even Bob has agreed that is coming) is going to wipe out quite a good number of high earners (including lots of computery people, specially in overhyped subsectors such as Big Data, Machine Learning and Virtual and Augmented Reality), and quite a good number of companies that are working on the self driving cars themselves.
I don’t think that he is totally wrong, though – but it won’t happen in the next decade, I’m afraid!
Esenyurt konut projeleri bölgesinde en çağdaş görünümlü konutlarından biridir.bu projede ki dairelerde bir evde olması gereken tüm konfor ve dizayn barındırılmaktadır.eşsiz manzaralarıyla havuzlu bahçesi koşu parkurları, yüzme havuzları ,süs havuzları şadırvanlar ,spor kompleksi ve oyun parklarıyla tüm yaşamı bir bahçede tasarlanmıştır .eğitim kurumlarına yürüme mesafesinde ki yapıtlarımız hastane sağlık ocağı gibi sağlık merkezlerine yakınlığıyla bilinmektedir ayrıca metro büse yakınlığı ve hava alanına olan kısa mesafesiyle en gözde mekanlar arasındadır. banka kredilerinin en düşük olduğu bu günlerde yapacağınız en karlı yatırımdır. sahibinin yaşamını kolaylaştıran bu konutta tüm konfor düşülmüştür. konutta ki evler de merkezi internet sistemi ,uydu sistemi 7/24 aktif kamera sistemi ve acil durumlarda devreye giren acil durum selektörleri mevcuttur.İtalyan tasarımı boyalar ,Fransız balkonlar ,Amerikan mutfaklar ve kabartmalı fayans modelleriyle evinizde sanat kuşağı oluşturulmuştur.
https://www.emlakdream.com/etiket/esenyurt-konut-projesi/
OK, I get that Uber and their competitors want you to summon the car. Not having a driver saves them money.
I have seen the back seat of some people’s cars. It looks like a trash heap. Would you really want to get into a “rental” with two day old McD’s rotting in the back seat. Who knows what else under the seat?
It makes more sense to own the car and not let others trash it. How do you put in the car seats for the kids? Maybe the minivan can drive me to work, then head home to transport kids, so we need one car not two.
Those are people problems, and those are hard to solve.
Bob, your usually right, but early. Maybe it will take a few extra years.
It seems to me the money is in trucks. They could do the interstate thing, maybe with a crew in one lead truck. Oh, yeah, it is called a train. Those are already almost automatic. The crew is only there because of the unions.
Interesting stuff!
I enjoy the prediction columns, which, if not always accurate in the future, at least provide food for thought. In this case I think the prediction is way off the beam and wildly ignores where we are right now.
First, have you noticed the current US Congress? It is likely to stay just as gridlocked and incapable of dealing with anything of significance, at least until the next set of gerrymandering changes in 2020, and there is no guarantee that it won’t stay exactly the same after that. This congress has spent the majority of the last few years making symbolic votes to repeal the ACA, at least 60 times, the last time I noticed. They can’t even deal with a severe and growing infrastructure problem and they are going to allocate money to modifying the 4 million miles of paved roads in the US? I don’t see it. I don’t see them, or the next president either, mandating the every of the hundreds of millions of vehicles in the US be converted or replaced. Hell, they can’t even get it together to fund Zika prevention efforts, something that we already see starting to appear and which seems like an obvious critical issue that needs attention right now.
We have a wretched public transport system that is only going to get worse as more lower income workers are forced out of urban centers, and this is shown to be critical for their employment, and we’ll instead allocate trillions and trillions of dollars making it easier for the affluent to do some work or watch entertainment while their robot cars drive them around? I don’t see how it even gets started. I think this is a big sink for Google R&D and VC money. The government might throw a little their way or make symbolic gestures, but there is no stomach for paying for moonshot times ten programs these days. There are constant dire budget issues and they are going to what? Loot the Pentagon budget to pay for this? Government budgets are now a zero-sum game, which things are you going to cut to make this happen? Ain’t gonna happen, there is no coalition for it.
And this all begs the question of autonomous cars even appearing in our lifetimes. Or ever. If you read the articles coming from Google’s work you see that they are building a system that requires total knowledge of the environment the vehicles are traversing. They need to keep a near realtime database of everything in the real world on or near the roads. So, we are talking about monitoring some portion of 4 million miles of roads just in the US. Then there is the need of the vehicles to make the right decisions every time in any new kind of circumstance. I’ve tried to imagine how you extend that throughout the whole country and I come up with something that makes a trip to Mars look like a trivial effort. No wonder the latest hints from the top management of their program is that 30 years seems about right. Go read the history of the fission programs, it was “20 years from now” until it became “30 years from now.”
I think the insurance issue is yet to be determined. If everything is automated and is safer, then sure, it will be cheaper. But we are far from that. Who is responsible if a vehicle lacking all driver controls runs over a person and kills them, or drives over a cliff and kills a family? Will the programmers be responsible? Will the project management or QA? The CEO? Which insurance company is first going to offer insurance for the first vehicles? Cheaper? I don’t see any of them offering policies until they feel the tech is nearly 100% safe. Certainly not cheaper, if you can afford a robot to drive you, you are going to pay a lot for that luxury.
How many deaths will be acceptable to the public? We accept that human agency causes many fatalities, and in some way we see that as free will or personal choice. But machines killing people are not the same, so how many robot caused deaths will be acceptable? Hundreds, thousands? In any accident involving a robot car it will be suspect. If dozens or hundreds of upper middle class people from affluent areas die in robot cars do you think there will be a government backlash?
So, the cars need to be super safe and will have to be overly cautious. Why wouldn’t an aggressive driver take advantage of that and just pull in front of them in heavy traffic? Once they figure that out, traffic jams are going to get worse than ever. Just think of all of the abuse that will arise, you know somebody will intentionally walk in front of one and sue and this might become a common scam, the robot-killer-cars scam. The list goes on an on, I can think of dozens without much effort.
The problem is that an all-robot-cars world would be great, but we have to cross a great chasm between there and where we are now. The government is not going to spend massively to get there and private investment only does so much. In a transition phase the robots are in a disadvantage and easily scapegoated. Recent surveys show that autonomy is last on the list of desirable features for 90% of people planning a new car purchase.
In short, this looks like the jetpacks & electricity-too-cheap-to-meter of our era.
“For autonomous cars to be successful they will have to totally dominate.” Really? I think the reason they will be successful is because they are truly “autonomous,” can make decisions on their own (based what they can sense and on collective information shared within the network they belong to, whether it’s Ford’s, Apple’s, etc.), and can co-exist for a very long time with human-driven cars. Any all-or-nothing scheme will be too expensive and destined to fail.
You know what? So is Windows 95, as of yesterday. And it owes us a LOT of rounds to make up for those consumed whilst dealing with it over the years.
We all know there’s a recession and deflation coming after the election? I guess I missed the memo on that one… care to explain?
I think Bob is thinking that this is the weakest recovery from a recession in history(FACT), and that it is being propped up by inflation to make the numbers look good. So after the election the propping up by Obama’s appointees will stop, and we will have a recession, and perhaps deflation, though usually you get inflation.
In my humble opinion I think you got the business model wrong. I don’t think the auto companies will sell you cars. Instead I think they will sell you “mileage plans” in the same way the phone companies sell you data plans. “If you agree to sign up for a 3-year mileage plan that allows you up to 12,000 miles per year, then we will allow you to use one of our cars during that time…..” And it may not even be the same car, but more like an Uber model, with a guaranteed arrive time when you request a ride. And then all sorts of add-ons like paying more for faster guaranteed arrival time, luxury vs economy car…. Also, maybe Hertz and that other auto rental companies are better suited to do this.
Dear Bob:
I’ve long loved your creative thinking that exposes the unexpected, underlying reasons why things will happen in the future. But here you are in fantasy land.
100% autonomous cars on the road will NEVER happen. Some coexistence, maybe.
Here’s some reasons:
1. As a country, even we don’t have the money to pay for a short quick conversion from 0% to 100%
2. The American public will never give up its rights to own guns. You think those guys in a dually pickup will ever let you take away their right to independent personal transportation? Nor will 90% of the rest of the population, so a legislated conversion is out (unless we convert to a dictatorship — in which case the dictator will still have his own personal human-driveable fleet).
3. 100% all-electric cars is also a fiction. Think of the security risks: someone hacks the electricity grid, or there is an EMP, and all the vehicles in the country — if they will even start — are limited to traveling 300 miles or less before they become bricks?
4. The most important block to autonomous transportation is the lack of mental telepathy. I estimate that 50% or more of ALL driving in this country is done without maps or street addresses. You get in your car, and you turn left here and right there and you get to where you want to go WITHOUT EVEN KNOWING THE EXACT ADDRESS OF YOUR DESTINATION. How are you going to tell your autonomous car where to go?
5. And lastly, as a computer person, you know that the hardest thing of all to change is user habits. Your scenario envisages such a massive change in human habits that it could take 5 generations (100 years) for that to happen — if the human race is still here by then.
But keep up the creative thinking! We all love you for it!
— Ron
You forget that the baby boomers are getting old…
Baby boomers don’t matter. There’s plenty of younger kinds that like 4 wheeling with the pickups, and there’s plenty of jobs that require a pickup (construction, etc) and require one go places that autonomous vehicles simply can’t go (hyrail, offroading, etc). Yes, there’s been some success there (in the DARPA challenges) but even those were extremely limited in terms of negative space (holes, cliffs, etc) that could destroy vehicles and not many passed.
So, yes the big issue will be that there will be a lot of people that will trade a vehicle for Uber/Lyft/etc; but that won’t be everyone; the majority of the rest will be wanting a lot more freedom of movement for various reasons. So it’ll probably come down something like:
40% of people will be happy with Uber/Lyft/etc
15% will be happy with their own autonomous vehicles
40% will want something that neither of the above
5% will have a “classic” car that won’t ever be autonomous.
Uber/Lyft have the issue of distribution – they don’t help much out in the rural country.
That 15% will grow towards 55% as tech gets better, but it’s going to be a long time.
1. As a country, even we don’t have the money to pay for a short quick conversion from 0% to 100%
You said it’ll ‘never’ happen, now you’re saying it can’t happen quickly. I think it’s completely obvious that it will eventually happen but it could well take decades. And there will almost certainly be semi-autonomous vehicles (pickups or whatever) for agricultural/similar uses.
2. The American public will never give up its rights to own guns. You think those guys in a dually pickup will ever let you take away their right to independent personal transportation?
They won’t have to.
| Nor will 90% of the rest of the population
Where did you get that number from? I reckon it’s more likely to be the other way around. 10-20% of diehards and the rest happy to have a car that does the work for them.
3. 100% all-electric cars is also a fiction. Think of the security risks: someone hacks the electricity grid, or there is an EMP, and all the vehicles in the country — if they will even start — are limited to traveling 300 miles or less before they become bricks?
An EMP could affect some gasoline/diesel powered cars anyway. Besides, a hacking attack against key infrastructure (e.g.: oil/gasoline distribution) is always a risk. It’s illogical to say that we won’t have electrical cars because what if someone hacks the grid. It’s like saying e-commerce will never take off because websites can get hacked. Relying on electricity over oil is probably, long term, far better for our security.
4. How are you going to tell your autonomous car where to go?
I don’t know… my wife and I have become pretty accustomed to checking Google Maps before we leave the house/as we get in the car. And your car will know the exact places you generally go (work, the store, home, school, etc), even if you can’t remember. It’ll be a case of getting in the car and saying “Take me to the nearest burger place with a 4* rating on Yelp” and the car will do it. I can see that selling well!
5. And lastly, as a computer person, you know that the hardest thing of all to change is user habits. Your scenario envisages such a massive change in human habits that it could take 5 generations (100 years) for that to happen — if the human race is still here by then.
5 generations? Where did you get that from? Firstly, I think you’re exaggerating the size of the shift here. People will still be getting in their cars and going to work in the morning. That’s what the big auto companies want. They will continue to successfully market to our lifestyle expectations – in fact, I can see the autonomous (or semi-autonomous) vehicle being presented as the epitome of vehicular freedom. A generation ago, I knew one person who had a cellphone. Even 10 years ago, comedians were still doing jokes about how stupid mobile phones were. Nowadays you have to be a real stick in the mud not to have one, and most of them are actually powerful computers. That happened in a decade, a decade and a half. Humans are more than willing to adapt to technology that appears to make their lives easier.
C’mon, Cringley, you can do better than that. Has a large-scale technical and social change ever been forced upon people quickly with positive results? Except maybe during a war?
There’s nothing wrong with your “1 meter apart all cars autonomous” solution, except it over-simplifies the goal. I think it will take longer and occur incrementally.
I read the Ford article. Self-driving taxis in one or two cities, in geofenced areas, under optimum conditions. That certainly doesn’t encourage or require wide-spread adoption of self-driving cars.
“Greed” is a motivator for the car and tech industry, but that allows them to raise prices now to invest in R&D so they are not left behind in the future self-driving revolution, whenever it comes.
Yes, technology now allows prototypes of self-driving cars, but they must prove reliability before any wide-spread adoption occurs. And that includes reliability in non-optimum conditions, like at night in a snow storm in a road construction zone. Plus reliability such as being free from critical bugs and hacking through several update cycles.
Then there is the social issue. Early adopters will love the concept and the cars. The rest of us will have to be convinced. It’s definitely possible to convince me, but I have no desire to get a “cool” self-driving car unless it definitely makes my life better. And then there are the idiots and crooks; the world of self-driving cars must become robust enough to handle their existance and interference.
We can’t know what the eventual “ideal” self-driving car situation looks like, we can only make progress towards the concept and see how it works out.
“Has a large-scale technical and social change ever been forced upon people quickly with positive results?”
Well, the internet, social networks and mobile phones. I mean, that’s a pretty good example.
Hmm, they did say “forced” on society…none of your examples of societal change were forced upon people.
Furthermore, those examples took decades to fully impact peoples’ lives, and in some ways weren’t really
changes in behavior, just changes in the methodology used to communicate, specifically social networks.
Have you any examples of forced change that were implemented in very short time frames that had a net
positive effect?
I don’t think we’ll ever have a 100% situation. It’s not like the digital-TV switchover where many people didn’t even notice because most of the country was on cable. For a switchover like this to work, politically, we’d have to live in a world where nearly everyone already took the bus and only those with no voice or political interests still had cars.
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Before I relocated and was flying down monthly to spend a few days in the office, I stopped renting a car after the first few visits. I used Lyft to and from the airport and the local bike share to get between the office and the hotel.
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Now that I’ve moved, I gladly use bike share and our local train system rather than drive. Except the last four minutes which otherwise takes 30 minutes if I go by bus which I do still have to drive in my hot car that’s been sitting unused 2 miles from my house taking up space. But when I have to stay late for work, they’ll pay for me to get a Lyft back to my car at the train station. Right now, it’s too costly to get a Lyft from the train station to the house and waiting for the driver to arrive would eliminate the time saving so I can’t get rid of my car. But I’d sure like to. But once autonomous cars are available, I’m sure it wouldn’t be too difficult to schedule one to be waiting for my curbside the same way I use my app now to reserve a bike at the other end of the train ride.
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Electric cars are coming, autonomous cars/trucks/buses are coming and in the rare case that you live in a populous area not in a flight path, possibly even flying shuttles.
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The local transit authority has private bus roads crossing the county in areas where it hasn’t yet proved the need for trains. I wonder if we’ll see metropolitan areas with difficult traffic issues limiting some roads to only certain types of vehicles for the purposes of encouraging their use (electric cars in the diamond lane? special onramps or lanes for Uber/Lyft/taxis) and for the types of congestion they reduce.
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Many of the efforts put forth by the car companies are no more than Press Releases with dates so far in the future the authors know they’ll be working somewhere else by then — and the Rental Car companies aren’t even bothering with press releases or the kinds of investments that make the news on Engadget. (They’ve not read the chapter on “Setting a Tripwire” in Decisive by Dan and Chip Heath, apparently.) We’ll see some more car companies fade away (or stop selling in the US), we’ll see some rental car company consolidation (or acquisition by the Lyfts and Ubers). But a new industry will take their place – the ability to Teslafy your Bugeye Sprite – technology shops devoted to upgrading your classic. As well as small technology companies with a solid vehicle platform onto which you can design your own shell.
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It’ll take more than 5 years for autonomy and electric lionshare – it’ll happen as those that believe owning a car is a piece of the American dream age out of the driving population.
Thank you, Pointy Haired Boss!
http://dilbert.com/strip/2016-09-05
So now is a good time to buy stock in companies that make treatments for lice, crabs and bedbugs.
Has anyone seen a study on Uber as a disease vector yet? I expect one within a year.
Well, replacing all 150 million cars in the US at $20,000 apiece comes out to $3 trillion dollars. That’s what, 30% of the US GDP? Plus, it’s also 10 years at peak US auto sales (which fits with current average age of 11-1/2 years). Sorry, there’s going to be a transition time.
Plus the fact that most low-wage workers need a car for traveling to work and sure as hell can’t afford a $20K car on $15/hour. So there will be a _lot_ of subsidy money, probably in terms of a tax credit. Time to roll the printing presses, because the typical taxpayer having already bought one car is not going to enthused about buying one for that layabout janitor.
Other business models may appear, lower cost cars would appear, inflation definitely appears, but there is not the production capacity to make cars quickly enough without mixed mode driving on the streets.
Perhaps just a personal belief, but I just don’t see ANY way…..morally, behaviorally, logistically, economically, politically and most of all LEGALLY……that you can…by some kind of government decree…..prevent any and ALL non-autonomous older cars from being allowed to use the roads.
And, as Bob says, the only way autonomous cars will ever really be feasible is if ALL cars on the road are autonomous. I agree that phasing in a mixture of autonomous and older non-autonomous (i.e. “normal”) cars won’t work other than specific urban situations.
I don’t even want to go into all the reasons why attempting to forcibly obsolete / remove from use all non-autonomous cars wouldn’t work, but think about it for a moment: are you actually claiming that you believe that one day…or even over a phased-in period of ten years….somehow EVERY SINGLE CAR that was built from 1890 to (say) 2025 will no longer ever again be allowed to be used on the street?
How in the world would that EVER be implemented, or enforced? It’s a breaking of an implied contract and inherent American right of freedom to travel the roads of the U.S. The lawsuits, the protests, the legal challenges, the personal and business resistance, etc. etc. Haven’t you ever seen, say, a 1957 Chevy or a 1949 Mercury or a 1929 Isotta Fraschini on the road nowadays? Or watched some of the old cars driven on the road in “Jay Leno’s Garage?” How many light-years less modern/capable/safe are those compared to a modern car? But no one has ever tried to actually ban those cars from the road.
Just my opinion….I don’t see how older non-autonomous cars could EVER be banned. Now, a financial incentive to get the public to WILLINGLY give them up….that’s another story. But to try to FORCE them to do so? No way.
“Everyone is going to need a new car.”
Maybe not, claims Perrone Robotics. Whether there is an alternative legal regime for autonomous vehicle retrofits depends on how many influential and wealthy-ish people like their Sprites enough to have them retrofitted and certified.
What does global warming have to do with it?
The general solution for global warming is to eliminate cars from the road entirely. Electric cars is sold as a way of reducing greenhouse gases, but a wholesale switch of the auto sector would put too much demand on the electric grid, especially if it needs to be solar power, which is of course not available at night when the electric cars usually get charged.
It ain’t just your Bugeye Sprites out there, Bob. Millions of bikers aren’t about to give up our rides for cyber cages, nor do we relish the idea of robot Road Kings. I just got back from the Sturgis Rally and I expect many more to come.
Two issues:
First: The 1 meter spacing is problematic. Why? B/c different vehicles will respond differently based on weight. NASCAR/F1/etc gets away with it because the vehicles and drivers are so regulated that the weight difference is negligible. But on the main roads? Two exact cars will behave differently because 1 has 1 passenger while the other has 4; making either the system push more power to get the same acceleration or brake harder for the same deceleration – both of which are not likely as the vehicles will likely apply the same power by accelerate at different rates (thus breaking the 1 meter spacing) or have different issues with deceleration than we currently have – issue won’t be response time but actual ability to decelerate properly and safely. Sure, the vehicles *could* decelerate really quickly – but they could also kill their occupants; same issue in Fighter Jets – the tech is way beyond what the human body can withstand, so there’s much the jet can do and survive but the pilot won’t so limiters are in place. Autonomous vehicles will never be the 1 meter part for the same reason – safety of the occupants b/c physics is still physics.
Second (and I posted this in reply to someone else too – but you have no way of linking to existing comments):
There’s plenty of younger kinds that like 4 wheeling with the pickups, and there’s plenty of jobs that require a pickup (construction, etc) and require one go places that autonomous vehicles simply can’t go (hyrail, offroading, etc). Yes, there’s been some success there (in the DARPA challenges) but even those were extremely limited in terms of negative space (holes, cliffs, etc) that could destroy vehicles and not many passed.
So, yes the big issue will be that there will be a lot of people that will trade a vehicle for Uber/Lyft/etc; but that won’t be everyone; the majority of the rest will be wanting a lot more freedom of movement for various reasons. So it’ll probably come down something like:
40% of people will be happy with Uber/Lyft/etc
15% will be happy with their own autonomous vehicles
40% will want something that neither of the above
5% will have a “classic” car that won’t ever be autonomous.
Uber/Lyft have the issue of distribution – they don’t help much out in the rural country.
That 15% will grow towards 55% as tech gets better, but it’s going to be a long time.
Such an interesting and fun topic.
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One of the biggest problems with self driving cars is mixing them on the road with human driven cars. Separating them from the humans would make things a lot easier. So I could see this be a serious thing to consider.
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Another interesting problem is getting self driven cars to operate well in poor weather conditions. I could us revisiting the buried wire system. Teaching cars to operate on hills in the snow should be interesting. Having grown up in WV I know doing it well is a combination of technique, experience, and a bit of an art. When in an area where people are unfamiliar with driving with snow and hills, it is a bit crazy and terrifying.
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In about 10 years I believe most cars will be 100% electric. The technology is now maturing fast enough for this to become a reality. This will have a disruptive effect on the auto industry. At first their will be a big surge in the sale of new cars. Then cars will be replaced less frequency. The auto industry has operated on most of us replacing our cars every 3-5 years. I believe with electric cars the replacement rate could be 7-10 years. There will be a LOT LESS auto maintenance and repair. When the majority of cars on the road are electric, I can see 1/2 to 2/3’rds of the repair shops closing.
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I think for the next 50 years we will continue to use internal combustion engines to power big trucks. It is a simple matter of energy storage. It takes a lot of energy to move them and they need to operate 100’s of miles between refueling. I don’t see battery technology being able to do this for a long time.
They’ll have to blast my MG out of my cold dead hands!!! …which I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to do.
Robert raises two interesting points.
The autonomous system can really only be safe(ish) if the non-autonomous human drivers are removed from the system. Then the magic algorithms can control it all. So all cars need to replaced really. Otherwise autonomous pollutes an already hypercomplex traffic system.
Economically, how can you have growth when lots of homes have two cars, 4 mobile phones, 2 televisions etc etc. Upgrade is they key (HD, UltraHD, Super Hi-Vision for TVs). The Western economies middle classes have purchased everything they need, forced upgrades are the way (Apple removing the headphone socket).
But then again, this is just capitalism: buy stuff again and again. Not necessarily progress as the platforms keep the wealth.
The idea of the government banning non-autonomous cars is a nice fantasy but it’s not hard to pick flaws in it and come to the conclusion it’s not going to happen. Numerous flaws: 1. A very large proportion of people enjoy driving. They wont allow any government to do this, there would be riots in the streets. 2. If you no longer need to drive yourself, most of the expertise and knowledge and assets the manufacturers currently have are instantly made null and void. Cars would no longer need to be be enjoyable to drive, they would never need to have a top speed over say 70 mph, they basically just become an air conditioned box you sit in. The saftey equipment can be massively reduced. The margins would be butchered and half the manufactuers would instantly be made redundant. 3. Who dictates the theme and dialogue that steers the political direction governments take? The ultra rich. Who owns all the $10m classic Ferraris?
Anyway, what WILL happen in the near future is that Tesla will become the dominant car manufacturer. It’s hard to over-exagerate just how far ahead in the electric car game they are when compared to the other manufacturers, who have basically sleep-walked into their own demise. They all need to be spending $20b in the next couple of years to have any chance of catching Tesla up but they simply don’t have the money to do that. Tesla currently makes 100k cars a year. It’s taken BMW and Nissan – the next 2 biggest electric car manufactures – 3 years to sell 100k electric cars between them. The new Tesla has 400k pre-orders with zero spent on advertising. In 10 years probably half of new cars sold will be Teslas. In 20 years the automotive landscape will be vastly different, most of the current manufacturers will be gone but the big names will survive making very expensive, niche, enthuisiast driven petrol cars that are slow compared to Teslas but fun, emotive and generally awesome to drive, they will be entirely focussed on driving joy. Diesels wont exist. The air in cities will be clean. It’ll be awesome.
The whole idea behind autonomous vehicles (and HGVs will come long before cars do) is that they CAN share the road with vehicles driven by mere humans. Taken to it’s logical conclusion, Cringely’s thoughts would have us ban pedestrians from crossing the road as well, or heck, even being near a road!
I think a far more interesting effect from the introduction of autonomous/self driving vehicles is that there will come a point where there are car drivers that cannot actually ‘drive’ a car, just as there are driver’s today that cannot drive a stick shift.
[…] From I, Cringely: […]
Cars don’t exist in a vacuum.
Even if all the cars on the road were autonomous you’d still have pedestrians, horses (&carts) & cyclists.
That’s why these systems work well on the motorway, where um pedestrians, horsed (& carts) & cyclists are banned.
Is there a centralised list of situations that autonomous vehicles will have trouble with, along the lines of Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names/Addresses etc. ?
https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/
When there are a lot of self driving cars on the road and many of those cars running a service that is used by many people, then it becomes a “distribution” system. Engineering have been designing and building computer control distribution systems for 30+ years. Consider a modern Amazon distribution center. Product come in and are put in storage. Later they are pulled from storage and transported to the customer. In a people distribution system we would be doing the exact same thing within a city. When you needed a ride you would get into the first seat in the first vehicle that went by that happened to be going in the general direction of your destination.
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The biggest technology challenge in self driving cars is to learn to stay in the driving lane, navigate correctly through intersections, recognize the surroundings, and keep from hitting things. The know-how to follow a path, manage a fleet of resources, control where things go, etc.has been understood for 30+ years.
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If we change our perceptions on how we travel it will simplify the self driving car and make it much more attractive to the mass market.
Avcılar konut projesi zamanının en iyi projesi olan konutlarıyla geleceğe yatırım yapanların ve çevresinde ki imkanlarıyla en gözde projedir. deniz manzaralı yapıları,eşsiz bahçesi,mükemmel mimari tasarımıyla görenlerin içini ısıtan evlere sizde en uygun koşullarda üstelik istediğiniz kredi imkanları ve taksitleriyle sahip olun yapıta atılmış her fırça, yapılmış tüm dolaplar, dizilmiş her fayans da evin yapılış ustalığını görebilirsiniz. yapıtlarımız e5 kara yolu üzerinde metrobüs güzergahında ve hava alanına sadece 10 km uzaktadır. ayrıca İstanbul üniversitesi ,Gelişim üniversitesi gibi eğitim kurumlarına yürüme mesafesindedir. devlet hastanesi,eczane ve sağlık ocağı gibi sağlık merkezlerine olan yakınlığı ve avcılar sahile bakan yapısıyla avcıların en gözde mekanıdır.
yapılarda doğu ve batının sentezini sezebilirsiniz.Amerikan mutfakları,Fransız balkonlar ve İtalyan tasarım boyları ile batının , deprem ,sel ,yangın gibi afet zamanlarında Japon titizliğine sahip yapılardır.Konutlarımız da açık ve kapalı yüzme havuzları,geniş 7/24 gözlenen otoparklar site özel güvenliği mevcuttur . ayrıca site içerisinde koşu parkurları ,süs havuzları ,oyun kompleksleri ve spor kompleksleri,geniş çocuk parkları ve eşsiz yeşillendirilmiş alanlar vardır.konutlarımızın fiyatları ailelerin gelir düzeyine göre anlaşmalı bankalarla düşük faiz oranlarıyla alıcısını sıkmayacak koşullarda yapılmaktadır.
https://www.emlakdream.com/haber/3S-Kale-den-Topkapi-ve-Avcilar-a-Konut-Projesi/77689
Great article but “self Driving” has been going on much longer than that. Back in the mid 80’s DARPA had 3 big projects. Robotic Land Vehicle, Robotic Sea Vehicle and Robotic Air Vehicle. I was working at TI at the time on a contract for Robotic Air Vehicle. When the AI bubble burst, the funding for these projects dried up really quickly. Great to see things come full circle!
When you get to the point where everybody is convinced that it is only safe to be on or near a road if your car, or phone, or watch, or horse is broadcasting a Basic Safety Message to nearby autonomous vehicles and to the infrastructure, then it becomes feasible to imagine that self-driving cars can navigate a path through the mayhem. Any vehicle can be retrofitted. Erratically moving vehicles can be avoided or investigated. Bicyclists will show up on the truck driver’s situational awareness screens. People desiring anonymity will need to turn off their electronics and avoid the roads.
This sounds like those predictions that solar energy is going to be cheaper than coal and natural gas real soon now. Usually something thrown in about Moore’s law, and the total solar irradiation that hits the Earth being enough to power the world 100 times over.
In fact, here is Cringely saying just that, predicting solar would be half the price of regular electricity by now.
https://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2008/pulpit_20081030_005501.html
“Global warming a la Al Gore” wow, that’s a record for showing you’re an idiot in the fewest words.
Your comment forced me to re-read Bob’s statement. First, he didn’t mention “Al Gore”, but secondly, and more importantly, is the beginning of that paragraph: “Appealing to both sides of the aisle…” So I interpret his comment as not an expression of belief in global warming, but rather using it as a way to get more Americans on board with autonomous cars, regardless of whether there is a connection to climate change, or whether climate change is fact or fiction.
I just bought a new car that has lane departure assist, adaptive cruise control and the nav system shows the speed limit on most roads. land departure assist seems to work when there are bright white and yellow lines on the road, but fails fairly often even in areas like an exit. The adaptive cruise control does a pretty good job though.
I would love to have a self-driving RV that would pull into my driveway the day before departure so I could load up. Then, drive me overnight to my vacation destination, where it would become the hotel room at the resort. For local sightseeing a resort-provided vehicle would take us to the sites and tourist traps, then bring us back to the RV for dinner and sleep. Once the vacation was over, it would drive us back home.
Instead what we’ll get is something akin to a city bus: hard plastic seats, rubber floors, lots of advertising and (on Saturday morning), vomit on the floor.
When I saw the word Greed, I as thinking of something entirely different. I read an article a few weeks back about how Uber is really interested in driverless cars. Seems like another ploy to get rid of more jobs that people can do. Pretty soon all food will come from vending machines, or delivered by driverless cars. But who will be left to buy it?
I don’t think I’d ever want a self-driving car, but with our litigious society, can you imagine all the warning stickers/legal disclaimers that would come with one of these cars?
>global warming
>accepted on the right
Cringely, hate to break it to you, but it`s “climate change” now. Get on with current leftoid bullshit, please.
Hey rightoid! Arguments work better if you have any facts.
Try https://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-change-global-warming-basic.html
Note evidence of usage of several terms to describe the changes covering quite a large period. Oh, and dear ol’Frank Luntz urging your fellow rightoids to use it because ‘less scary’.
Rightoids; consistently wrongoid.
Language is usage, but it’s good to know that there is a distinction between the terms. The questions remain as to whether the changes that happen can be affected significantly by what we do on Earth, or even whether global warming is good or bad, long term. I’m sure the residents of our largest state would welcome a little global warming. The real issue is whether the changes happen too quickly for life on Earth to adapt to those changes. Another issue is how many resources should be used to fight something that is not clearly good or bad, and who should decide exactly what the resource allocation should be.
“I’m sure the residents of our largest state would welcome a little global warming.”
Melting permafrost is causing serious problems with both new and existing
structures. An extended warm season exacerbates the mosquito situation
as well as other pests, which in turn can adversely effect the wildlife that
many Alaskans depend on for their livelihood.
It’s nearly 100 degrees below zero in the winter in Barrow.
“It’s nearly 100 degrees below zero in the winter in Barrow.”
Even if that true — and it’s not — it in no way negates the
adverse effects I mentioned of a longer and warmer Alaskan
summer. (The lowest recorded temperature in Barrow was -56 F.)
It appears you’re right about Barrow’s temperature. I recently recorded an episode of Jonny Carson from 1984, in which a guest, who started a restaurant there, claimed it was about -95 degrees in February. Perhaps she incorrectly tried to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit. Still a little warming can’t hurt. The point is life can adapt to climate changes if they’re not too sudden. If the facts were well understood, there would be no room for all the political controversy.
I just replayed the March 20, 1984 Carson episode segment featuring Fran Tate. What she actually said was that it varied from minus 80 to 95 throughout February in POINT Barrow, Alaska, one Saturday as low as minus 115.
SkepticalScience is a dishonest website, and they certainly aren’t skeptical.
The term has been used for decades, as seen in the name IPCC not IPGW, but the primary term being pushed by the salesmen was global warming, until the warming wasn’t enough to match their predictions of gloom and they started saying climate change more often.
Bob- Nice article. Thank you.
Greed, yes, but if you are interested in going into more detail I think you should look at long-haul trucking before private vehicles. With private vehicles the automakers are making revenue only off replacement. With long-haul trucking, there may be significant cost savings to replacing human drivers with robots, and the automakers may be able to capture a portion of those savings as new revenue.
There are lots of reasons to think autonomous trucks would be cheaper. Not just eliminating the need to pay the human driver: you also get cost savings from (a) eliminating the sleepers and cabin, (and the corresponding heating/cooling costs, and (b) no driver down-time gives improved schedule reliability, and the ability to keep the truck moving much closer to 24-7, giving the same average speed at reduced maximum speed (saving significant fuel), and/or more total miles per year, giving you the ability to amortize your capital investment at a faster rate.
The AI problem for semis might also be a little easier, since they are restricted in which roads they can travel on due to size limitations.
Disclaimer: I’m a software engineer at NVidia, which is making significant engineering investments in autonomous driving.
Yes a deep recession is coming after the election and the strategists are already getting ready to fight it:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/janet-yellen-lays-out-tools-for-next-recession-fight-1472307123
https://www.morningstar.com/news/market-watch/TDJNMW_2016082794/update-fed-searching-for-tools-to-fight-the-next-recession.print.html The Fed’s main tool could be bond-purchase programs: JACKSON HOLE, Wyo.–When recession hits again, the Federal Reserve could turn back to unconventional programs it used with aggression in the last crisis, Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen said Friday in taking stock of the central bank’s long-run plans for managing the ups and downs of the economy. The Fed traditionally cuts short-term interest rates when recession hits, as part of an effort to spur borrowing, spending and investing. But rates are near zero and aren’t expected to go much higher, leaving the Fed in a search for weapons for when the next recession hits. Ms. Yellen said the Fed’s main tool could be bond-purchase programs, which the Fed used during and after the 2008-09 financial crisis, expanding its portfolio of assets to more than to $4 trillion today. Read: Stock market could test new highs as rate hike jitters fade (https://www.marketwatch.com/story/stock-market-has-room-to-test-new-highs-as-rate-hike-jitters-fade-2016-08-27) “In addition to taking the federal-funds rate back down to nearly zero, the [Federal Open Market Committee] could resume asset purchases and announce its intention to keep the federal-funds rate at this level until conditions had improved markedly,” Ms. Yellen said. She cautioned however that “with long-term interest rates already quite low, the net stimulus that would result might be somewhat reduced.” What was striking was also what she left out of her playbook for battling future recessions; there was no mention in her comments of negative interest rates, an approach tried by the Bank of Japan, European Central Bank and other central banks in Europe
I have a problem with “Asset Purchase” programs by the government because netted out it means that the government starts to own parts of companies. If we get into a severe recession, then government then is “nationalizing” lots of industries. Capitalism is already “on the ropes” but asset repurchase programs just ensure that the government is going to get ever more into every company’s business, requiring more “equality”, more regulation, and more restrictions. To see how well that is working, the current EpiPen issue is not about capitalism, but about cronyism where the company has managed to lobby the FDA into creating a de-facto monopoly on these essential allergy reaction pens. The FDA basically regulated all competitors out of the marketplace, and is restricting new entrants by making the entry requirements even more severe than the current requirements for Mylan (makers of EpiPens) themselves. The best “hope” for a competitor will not even be able to start testing product which “might” meet the FDAs requirements until 2018. We are rapidly moving to a world where the government will probably even control every bite of food and every breath of air by 2050. It makes me want to go live on a ranch in Montana, or with the Indians.
Lots of problems here to be addressed. First of all, with the “Telsa autonomous driving accident”, the sensors failed to notice or avoid things which were at a higher level than the hood directly in front of them. The “fabric of sensors” is going to have to become much more sophisticated and longer range, and then filter out false positives so that the car doesn’t stop every time a dragonfly passes. Secondly, there multiple ideas here and much of it depends on who mandates and funds the innovation. If the government controls all cars, then why would I want to own one? Secondly, the “space” problems on freeways could be much better managed with “carpooling”. So, if you don’t own your car, what’s to say that you don’t order a car to commute the in AM, but you have 3 other passengers as required by law? Each “vehicle” has a separate compartment for each passenger so that you do not smell their farts or cologne, or perfume. All of you are going “approximately the same place” so the car is driving pretty much the same route chosen by an optimization program. Then you save the space (down to the 1 meter), plus there are 1/3 as many vehicles on the road. Finally, you won’t pay for the drive, you will pay for the “priority” or to be driven alone. Prices certainly have to come down from our current “cab” rates of about $3.50 a mile (meaning a 20 mile cab ride to my house costs $70, which is the current cost). It has to be about $0.25 a mile or $0.50 a mile which is probably close to what it costs to drive my car now, or a 7-fold decrease in current Uber/Cab rates. Car pooling can help with the costs. Next for insane traffic situations like LA or Dallas/Austin/Houston, there will be “priority pay” meaning, that off peak travel can be $0.25 a mile, but “peak” travel might be $0.75 or $1.00 a mile and customers “chose” the priority they want to pay for. I think delivery trucks might end up out of rush hour in this model, because the company is going to pay to get it there cheaper. Priority parcel and “escort” vehicles (government/embassy officials) may pay more as they disrupt traffic, even $5.00 a mile for disrupting rush hour. If everyone owns their own car, then we lose the “carpooling” advantage, as well as finding a “priority tolling” system around driving at “peak traffic times”….
Bob,
And whither go the motorcycles? Does the government finally get to abandon such “unsafe” means of transportation? It seems to me that if the motorcycle were presented today they wouldn’t get off the drawing board. Too selfish. Too dangerous. The government would have to step in to protect us from ourselves.
[…] Technology blogger and former PC World Columnist Robert X Cringely shares in a recent posting that self-driving cars will happen for several reasons such as demographics, technology and years of research…but that the REAL reason for the inevitability of truly autonomous vehicles is a very human one; and he reminds us that we’ve been here before. Learn more in his article “Self Driving Cars are Old Enough to Drink and Vote.” […]
I think the author greatly misses the point (on purpose?) —
Self-driving cars are not going to INCREASE car ownership, they’re going to DECREASE it.
Drastically.
There’s no secret conspiracy of greedy car companies scheming to sell an unlimited number of new cars. That’s laughable.
Rather, this is the next step in SAFETY and AUTOMATION. 1.4 million people die in car accidents yearly. These numbers will trend down drastically. And, on the automation front, taxi’s will be out of business. Instantly. Sorry for that million dollar medallion you bought from the great city of New York. Uber will switch to driverless cars, no longer needing to pay wages, health care, and Social Security to the software that controls them. And, when Uber-like services become faster and far cheaper, many more people will forgo car ownership all together. Also car ownership implies sharing, especially with a spouse who may work from home, or work different hours. Again, another drop in ownership.
If the author is looking to wring his hands about some future “problems”, he’d be better off worrying about all the low-skill jobs that will completely disappear. Every driving job will eventually be gone. Including truckers.
Fully agreed: there will be far fewer cars needed (only 20% of the number we have today). Auto-makers make most of their profit from servicing and after-sales rather than selling the vehicles themselves, and when EVs are the norm, their servicing profits will vanish, ‘cos there ain’t much to service. Therefore, building vehicles for autonomous fleets and charging per mile is actually the only way they can make any money! I personally don’t think the government will ban human-driven cars, but rather, people will figure out by themselves that they can save money by not owning their own car.
[…] I’ve been a fan of Robert X Cringely for quite a few years. He recently did an article on Autonomous Cars that you might find interesting: https://www.cringely.com/2016/08/25/self-driving-car-old-enough-drink-drive/ […]
Where do motorcycles and scooters fit into this? Are they going to be banned too?
Seeing as self-driving cars are not replacing normal cars in a big-bang approach, can you imagine all the legal implications of various accidents occurring between self-driving cars and human driven ones? What about all the rules that need to govern the self-driving car should an impending accident be determined? Does it avoid the accident onto the sidewalk where pedestrians are, injuring them? Does it allow the accident to happen with injury to its occupants? Who is liable and how are decisions of self-driving cars justified?
Self driving cars may be coming, but you will have to pry me out of a car I can control, a car that does not look like a jellybean, & a car that has a roar in its gasoline powered internal combustion engine! You may call me old-fashioned but I believe you are taking away my freedom to force me to ride in one of those ugly machines.
To hell with autonomous cars. I LIKE to drive. I like twisty curvy roads and taking things at speed. The powers that be better not mandate autonomous cars or there will surely be a small revolution that takes place in who is in office.
Tarihi Adaya komşu Zeytinburnu kazlıçeşme de bulunan 111 Dönümlük arsa üzerine Emlak Konut Ayrıcalıkları ile iyi bir yatırıma ayak basmanızın tam zamanı. Büyükyalı istanbul projesi Konumu itibari ile en çok tercih edilen yapıtlar arasında bulunan bu proje metro, metrobüs, otobüs , tranvay gibi ulaşımın olmazsa olmazlarına çok yakın mesafede aynı zamanda birçok kurum ve kuruluşa dakikalar içerisinde ulaşabileceğiniz bir yerde olması dolayısıyla zamanınızı trafiğe değil kendinize ayırabileceksiniz.
Fırsat ve ayrıcalıklardan yararlanmak istiyorsanız sayfamızı takipte kalın en doğru ve güvenilir haberleri bizzat proje sahipleri ile olan röportajlar ile sizlere bilgi vermekteyiz.
https://www.emlakdream.com/proje/buyukyali-istanbul-projesi/36
Further automation is coming, but seeing as automobiles are the second most popular penis substitutes (for both sexes) after firearms, and given the penchant for Hollywood and Madison Avenue to flog the notion of transportation-as-excitement, people will continue to game the system. Just as Joe Middle America buys a Mustang and pretends to be Steve McQueen on the way to work, there’ll be a substantial market for bootleg “Jason Statham chips” that’ll enable the family sled to dart between lanes more agressively or cut the following distance from three feet to a few inches. Then there’ll be Russians or Middle Eastern terrorists or some nerd in Covina who’ll be happen to demonstrate that the entire system, like anything else is hackable. Maybe this will be the last straw that persuades most of us that we’re better off getting around in public conveyances operated by experts.