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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: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @11:16AM (1 child)
Only a few people will be able to use autonomous shared cars as a substitute for car ownership. More than can use Zipcar, etc. or Uber, but not enough to really change much (except for those specific people).
First, let's talk about range. Electric cars have limited range. Expecting them to drive around town nonstop all day like taxis directly collides with this fundamental limit. Quick charging has fundamental heat limits as well and increases battery wear. Taxis today don't really wear out their engine first. They get retired because of general wear and tear. Brakes, tires, interior, suspension, chassis, all this stuff wears per mile, not per year. Fuel and oil changes are only part of it, and you're going to have to replace those batteries after so many charge cycles. The more you drive an electric car, the quicker those per-mile savings disappear. Combined with the need to hire people to do cleaning and general looking-after that car owners do for themselves and, well, we know how much a Zipcar costs, right? Only about 20-30% of that is fuel, and you still have to amortize the higher up-front cost.
First, you don't really need that many fewer cars, because most people go to work at the same time. They all need cars at once. Now sure, you might say "but most of these people are going to about the same place so they can share!" Congratulations, you just invented buses. As we know, buses don't replace cars, even for going to work.
"But people want to live in dense walkable cities!" That's true right up until they start having children, at which point that stops immediately. People now are already delaying children as long as they biologically can so we have likely seen the bulk of this change already, unless more people start going completely childless. Personally I think everyone who wants to be childless already is doing that. In short, the big demographic shift that is supposed to change everything has already happened and is now over and it's not going to change anything any more than it already has.
Speaking of children, you need your own car if you have them unless you live in Manhattan. Spending half an hour installing a child seat every time you get a short term car rental is going to get old fast. Not to mention not having the right rear seat DVDs and ipod cables and all the other stuff that is pretty much expected now even though nobody had that when I was a kid.
Where you might see a little bit of savings is in two parent households where one parent stays home. Right now they usually have two cars and they could probably cut that down to one. One parent could go to work, then send the car home for the other one to use. But this is still car ownership, just maybe not owning quite so many cars.
Which brings me to my next point. The real savings with autonomous cars is parking. Much valuable city real estate is taken up by parking and a lot of city traffic (up to half!) is cars driving around looking for parking. That all goes away. When you get to your destination you can send the car home, or at least to a parking lot outside the city center. This is a win for the quality of life in the city as well as for the environment.
Now let's consider some wildcards. One, we may start moving out of the cities again. The reason is cost. It costs a fortune to live in a city and almost as much to run a business there. Sure, the trendy hipsters love it, but when people start realizing that it's costing them fifty thousand dollars a year, they might start thinking that maybe smaller towns aren't so bad. That, generally, means more cars and less walking. I don't know for sure that this will happen, but it certainly could. Two, autonomous cars might enable more driving because of groups who currently can't (always) drive: elderly, disabled, and especially children. If a car is autonomous enough to drive itself, it's probably autonomous enough to carry a passenger who can't drive it. More availability for these people means more driving overall.
Bottom line is that not everyone wants this hipster lifestyle. Where you see walkable, I see traffic. Where you see opportunity, I see expense. Where you see "vibrant," whatever the hell that's supposed to be, I see crime. The robotaxi zealots hope that they can convince (or failing that, pass laws and force) people to conform to their chosen lifestyle. But it's not going to work because the technology does not mean what they want it to mean. It does mean more freedom and choices for people, as long as the laws don't screw it up. And that's good. But it doesn't mean everyone is going to live the way whatever subset of people says they "should."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @01:50PM
Lots of sensible points, thanks.
> One parent could go to work, then send the car home for the other one to use.
When I was in grade school (early 1960s) we had one car. Most days my mother drove my father to work in the Beetle (8-10 minutes each way) and then had the use of the car for the day. As soon as I could drive (age 16) I would often do the afternoon pickup of my father. Note that my father was a manager, running an engineering department with 30-50 people, and at that time the pay scale was such that one car was about all he could afford (along with a house and 3 kids).