SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the I'm-sorry-Dave,-I-can't-do-that dept.
[...] some experts believe as much as 95% of passenger miles could be electric, autonomous by 2030, thanks to some basic economics. Because electric vehicles cost a whole lot less to drive and maintain—but more to buy—and because autonomous vehicles greatly reduce the cost of commercial driving, a combination of the two technologies will make autonomous Transportation as a Service exponentially more cost competitive than either owning a car, or hiring a car and driver. It's also exponentially more profitable for car companies, who have long feared the loss of maintenance and service profits associated with a transition to electric cars.
This question will come up more frequently as self-driving technology advances. Will perfection of that technology make a difference, though, in the face of social behaviors that have been deeply ingrained over the past century?
(Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Wednesday July 26 2017, @06:23AM (26 children)
Loads of people say that/... but loads of people also catch busses. trains and all that public transport that is affordable.
The moment a private drive-me-anywhere vehicle comes at an affordable rate, people will use it.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Wednesday July 26 2017, @08:11AM (1 child)
I live in San Diego. Mass transit is pretty much a joke. Trolley? 45 minutes from home to downtown and costs twice what gas would. Trolley to work? Doesn't go within 15 miles of my job (but they're working on that, it will be ready after I retire).
Bus? Um, no. Slower than the trolley, not as comfortable, getting to work would take a couple hours.
Taxi? Oh hell no. Too damn expensive, I'd rather trade favors with friends. Uber/Lyft? If I run out of friends I'll look into them.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday July 26 2017, @06:27PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @08:19AM (13 children)
You assume that a person doesn't value their own time. People do use public transportation, mass transit, etc but that's only a small percentage of the population. Not owning a vehicle and having to get to work on time will be difficult unless there are enough available cars for hire to pick everyone up around the time they would normally leave for work.
Sure, people can car pool, but that takes longer each way. More people could take busses but only if the bus routes are close to home. More could take trains but how do they get to the train station - a hired car? Only if enough are available at times of peek demand, which brings us back to where we started.
Not owning a vehicle eliminates opportunity shopping, like picking up a few items from the store on the way home. It also limits the true freedom of movement that owning your own vehicle provides.
I'm not saying these autonomous vehicles won't become available. I'm just saying for most people they are not a realistic replacement for owning their own vehicle.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @12:33PM (6 children)
And you assume everyone lives in North America? Somehow here in Europe, the fastest way around the city is bike and then public transport and then car. People "value their time", but forget how much time they actually waste owning a car.
1. getting into a car
2. finding place to park
3. getting from parking place to destination
But yes, maybe here in Germany it's a little different than America. Maybe if you actually look at places with decent public transit and shitty car access, like downtown New York and compare it with car travel, you'd have a different view. Comparing some suburbs to work in Chicago for car vs. public transport vs. bike, yeah .... not a good comparison since city planning is quite terrible, and 100% reliant on cars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @02:58PM
Immaterial. This story is about replacing cars in use by car owners. For most people who have alternative options - public trans, biking, walking, etc - they are already exercising those options.
How much time am I wasting owning a car if I use it to visit clients? How about to go where public transportation doesn't go (which is just about everywhere that I go)? How about how much time I'd waste using public transportation in my area? Should I walk 15 minutes to wait for a bus that will take a roundabout route to my post office? Once I check my PO Box I'll wait another 1/2 hour for another bus to take me back to somewhere I can walk 15 minutes home.
Why spend ~90 minutes or more on that adventure when I can make the round trip, stop at the store, hit a gas station and then a drive-thru and make it home in less than 30? Never mind having to deal with the weather while walking (plenty of sections of road around here don't have sidewalks so we have to walk in the gutter) to a bus (that may or not be on time), waiting for the bus while standing on the roadside (not an actual "bus stop"), waiting for another bus to come back and walking home.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mcgrew on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:26PM (4 children)
Ah, the (twisted) logic.
1. It takes the same amount of time to enter a self-driving car as a driven one
2. Your car will be able to park itself
3. After it drops you off at the door.
But yes, maybe here in Germany it's a little different than America.
It's a LOT different. All of Europe is 3.931 million square miles, the US alone is 3.797 million. Germany is closer to the Ukraine than Illinois is from Ohio. No two European countries are as far apart as New York and Hawaii. There is no comparison at all between any European country with any North American country.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday July 26 2017, @06:32PM (2 children)
This kind of statistic completely ignores the fact that the majority of the population of the US is clustered around the coasts, and the remainder is clustered in cities. For example, the total population of Utah is around 3 million, the population of the metro areas of the three largest cities in Utah is over 2 million.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @09:25PM (1 child)
Have you been to Utah (or Nevada--similar terrain)? It's mostly steep rocky mountains (beautiful scenery) and desert. I'm surprised there are anywhere near a million people living outside the major metro areas, would have guessed much lower.
I've crossed it several times by car, and twice on the crew of a friend riding his bike in RAAM (Race Across AMerica), a great way to see the country at ~15 mph (~25kph). Out in the desert areas we often went for an hour not seeing any other cars or people on the road, and then it was often another bike/crew that was in the same race with us. This sign and story, including the comments, is about what I remember --
http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865586821/No-bull-no-service-for-106-miles.html [deseretnews.com]
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday July 27 2017, @07:54AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Thursday July 27 2017, @03:35AM
The US is closer to the UN than any European country. Each state in the US would be the equivalent of a European country.
So of course comparing the US to Germany is wrong, it'd make more sense to compare New York to Germany.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @03:09PM
I do value my own time. That's why I prefer not to waste it with driving when I could do other things while sitting in a nice train. If you drive, you have to concentrate on driving. If you are driven, you can do lots of other things like read, play games, work on your laptop, or just let your thoughts wander.
(Score: 2) by bart9h on Wednesday July 26 2017, @03:20PM (4 children)
And you assume everyone lives in North America? Somehow here in Brazil the vast majority of the population commute by public transportation.
Maybe you should change "percentage of the population" to "percentage of the population that can afford to buy a car". Even then, here in Rio many people that already own a car prefer to take the subway or the bus.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:28PM (3 children)
While you assume everyone lives in Europe.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday July 26 2017, @06:35PM (2 children)
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday July 27 2017, @06:33PM (1 child)
Nobody mentioned Brazil or South America, they mentioned North America and Europe.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday July 28 2017, @08:03AM
It then goes on to talk exclusively about Brazil, finishing with:
You might want to try reading the posts that you reply to.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ledow on Wednesday July 26 2017, @11:36AM (5 children)
Hate public transport.
And what people miss is that public transport is NOT set up to do some things:
1) Your weekly shop. This consists - in my country at least - of driving to a supermarket, loading up the boot. You can't do that on public transport.
Though you MIGHT be able to do that in a hired car (which is what any automated vehicle essentially is), you certainly can't do it on a bus or train.
2) Occasional shopping. Christmas, birthdays, a new bin for the kitchen, you can't drag some stuff home and if you say "delivery" it means that you wouldn't bother to go out in the first place.
3) Unscheduled trips. Sod having to do everything by even a London bus/Tube timetable.
4) Things in out of the way places. I go to boot sales, to people's houses who don't even have a postcode, let alone a bus-stop, to pubs in the middle of nowhere not served by a public route.
Some of those things can be done in an automated car, but none of them are practical on existing public transport.
In an automated car, however, I have to book, wait for it to arrive, go do that thing, hand the car back in some fashion.
With my car, it's just there. Jump in, go. My power went out last week. Once I realised it was going to be out for a while, I jumped in the car and in 10 minutes had visited three hardware stores to try to rent a generator. You can't do that in a demand-hire-car.
Also my car costs less than 50p a mile, purchase, fuel, tax, testing and maintenance included. Good luck getting that price on any public transport route longer than half a mile, or in any hired vehicle whatsoever. Once you take into account things like membership fees, even things like Zip cars can't compete with that. And I get a "free car" for that price (i.e. the car gets paid for and I own it outright within a couple of years, at which point per-mile prices plummet and the car has an inherent value I can reclaim if I want to). I don't get anything for hiring a car beyond the journey I wanted.
Automated cars as a service industry have uses, pretty much on par with demand-hire vehicles now, and taxis. Beyond that they are niche and public transport will still be required and used, and personal transport will still be required and used.
All of those are more expensive than owning and running your own car. Whether that car is petrol, diesel or electric. In fact, making it electric makes any other type of hire unable to compete entirely. Price per mile plummets with an electric car, or even a hybrid.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @01:13PM
I dunno. I certainly lived for a couple years (in the US) with no car -- and I didn't do the whole shopping every day or two that's apparently popular in some European cities. I went shopping once a week, sometimes less, with a bicycle and a sturdy duffle bag. I packed my groceries in the bag, put the bag on my back, and rode home -- every week. I could certainly have taken a bus or train with that load of groceries, or even more. (But this was a typical US city, so there were no trains, and the bus routes would actually require you to walk a mile, take two buses (with a 25-minute wait at the changeover), and generally turn a 1-hour shopping run into a whole afternoon wasted.) If someone needs more groceries in a week than he can hump on his back, perhaps he should attack the problem from both ends by eating less?
And yeah, I realize you might be shopping for several mouths. But since you stated it as "Your weekly shop", not "a family's weekly shop", I think it's fair to point out that a properly routed and scheduled public transportation system really can handle this for quite a lot of folks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @01:38PM
That's what taxis are for.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday July 26 2017, @06:38PM (1 child)
How quaint. I select the things that I want in an app or on a web site, and the shopping is delivered to my house. The combined time of both the ordering and putting away the shopping takes less time than driving (one way) to the nearest large supermarket. For smaller things, I'll pick them up at one of the small shops on my cycle home. All of the major supermarkets in the UK deliver, though I use the one that doesn't have a brick-and-mortar presence.
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday July 26 2017, @08:19PM
That's sort of the other end of the driving picture that most of the other people in the thread have been missing: how many of your necessary trips are still necessary? The "Retail is dying" headlines have really proliferated this year thanks to Amazon, FreshDirect, BlueApron, and other online services. As your post pointed out, that takes care of a swath of "necessary" trips that are no longer necessary.
Even in the suburbs I loathe getting in the car to go anywhere to buy anything because the traffic is prohibitive and the driving culture is appalling. And after you've battled through that and gritted your teeth as the 10th asshole in a row has cut you off, you get to the store staffed by people who don't know why they're there, what they're selling, and don't care; plus, the thing you want is not in stock or it's twice the price that you can find online. So why subject yourself to that entire exercise anymore at all if there are alternatives? Alternatives there are.
Beyond that there's the larger effect of Peak Stuff. How many tvs do any of us really need? How many pairs of shoes? Do the extra 10 outfits that will go out of style before you ever get around to wearing them all once really make your life so much more fulfilling? When the cost of all that is endless debt slavery to credit card companies/banks, is it really worth the stress and loss of freedom and health that come with it? If people decide they do not need to do those things, then that is another "necessary" trip in a car avoided.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday July 27 2017, @02:13AM
The real thing about public transport is that public transport in the US intentionally doesn't go to some places.
As in, if you look at a metro area, it's not uncommon to find areas of the cities where no buses or subway or light rail lines go anywhere near. And there's a reason for that: If the public transit board suggests putting in a route, the residents will stomp and scream in opposition. When you ask the residents why they don't want public transit service to their neighborhood, they'll tell you that they're worried about the kind of people that the new route will bring to their area.
In other words, it's a method of enforcing racial segregation in American cities.
My experience using public transport is it's fairly pleasant, all told: I get to sit there reading a book, and then I get to where I'm going. And that's been true in Boston, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and my own fair city of Cleveland.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday July 26 2017, @03:53PM (2 children)
We're (well, I am, but I assume a fair number of people here would agree) not saying driverless cars should never be a thing. We just want to keep the choice to say "no" to driverless and have our own vehicle.
As it is all kinds of ridiculous, expensive, mostly-useless-to-people-who-actually-know-how-to-drive gizmos are going to be required to be built into new cars over the next decade. "That's why government exists--to get in a man's way."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:32PM (1 child)
I think eventually the insurance on a non-self driving car will be out of reach for most people and dirt cheap fpr autonomous cars. Face it, people drive very badly, at least where I live. But I don't foresee ever not being able to buy a car.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 27 2017, @02:09AM
Why would that be? The frequency and severity of accidents is going to go down with self-driving cars because the roads are safer for everyone, right? And we can revoke the drivers license of the worst drivers on the road (something like 5% of US drivers are responsible for both the majority of accidents on the road and particularly negligent behavior like drunk driving) which in itself will make roads far safer and insurance less costly for everyone.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday July 27 2017, @01:07PM
Loads of people say carjacking is bad, but loads of people do it anyway. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out what the problem is with using a vague quantitative term to compare quantities which can vary by orders of magnitude.