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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: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday July 26 2017, @01:48PM (3 children)
sudo mod me up
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @02:54PM (1 child)
How else are you going to maximize return per customer? It's all about throughput. That's how Walmart and Wallgreens and shopping malls work. You don't want 1000 or 5000 people from the neighborhood going to the place. You want to force 1/10th of the city to be the catchment area. And the only way to do that is to make sure that the rest of the city has 0 services. By maximizing distances you guarantee that the corner store, if it still exists, has to compete with Walmart and at Walmart you can get stuff $0.50 cheaper. And since someone has to drive everywhere, including the corner store, then the corner store is SOL.
This is to maximize throughput. To maximize profits for the stores.
The funniest is everyone is talking about "wasting your time" when you take public transit or walk. But the waste with cars is tremendously worse. By forcing people out of their neighbourhoods, people literally waste YEARS of their life in their cars. And since it's accepted as normal, no one actually talks about it. People actually believe that by getting into their cars they are "saving time" because they are "moving".
The opposite is true. I'm in Germany for a while. I walk to work. 15 minutes. I have 4 supermarkets on way to work. I have another few within 1000ft of home and work. And this is typical for people living inside cities. If I stayed in US or Canada, I would have to drive to work for 30-45 minutes each way. More realistically, it would be 1h each way. To get to store, I would have to walk at least 5 minutes across the parking lot to and from my car. This is literally 1.5h savings per day vs. walking here. In 10 years, with 200 workdays (more or less), this is 3000 hours in saved time by NOT using a car and living in a people friendly city. 3000 hours is 1.5 years of full time work. If you do this for 40 years, the difference is 6+ years of your time driving to "save" time vs. walking. Still glad you can get in your car?
So why is city planning so shitty in US and Canada? It's car-centric, not people centric. You couldn't design more people unfriendly cities even if you wanted to. What a mess.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday July 26 2017, @08:24PM
I think this is right. Driving is the worst waste of time. On a bike, you're also getting exercise and seeing the area in a way, in greater detail, than you do in a car; also, when I commute by bike I get there faster than by car or even public transportation, because traffic and congestion in the subway are that bad. Walking/running are similar, though obviously you can't cover as much ground in the same time. On public transportation you can read and do other things.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 26 2017, @03:53PM
Your stat is insanely misleading. It counts every incorporated town and suburb, no matter how small or remote as urban when the vast majority of them aren't even close.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.