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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday July 26 2017, @05:55AM   Printer-friendly
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?


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  • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Wednesday July 26 2017, @06:45PM (3 children)

    by TheRaven (270) on Wednesday July 26 2017, @06:45PM (#544793) Journal
    Mod this up. Packet-switched networks of 1-2 person pods travelling at 100km/h suspended on rails about 10m above the ground is a far better solution than most of what's proposed.
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  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday July 26 2017, @09:11PM (2 children)

    by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday July 26 2017, @09:11PM (#544868) Journal

    Actually my thoughts are more in the cabin-switched ground or underground level network for 3-4 people per cabin traveling ~100 km/h on rails.

    More people => higher throughout. Some high traffic sections can actually use cabins for 40 people.
    Ground level avoids the risk of falling down like the one in Wuppertal, 1999 [wikipedia.org] with 5 dead and 49 injured.

    In addition some cabins can be made to take cars such that people can drive to the city and then not need to drive the car inside the city.

    • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Thursday July 27 2017, @07:45AM (1 child)

      by TheRaven (270) on Thursday July 27 2017, @07:45AM (#545048) Journal

      The problem with the larger compartments is that it reduces the end-to-end nature of PRT, which is one of its key selling points. If I can go to the station near my house and get a pod directly to my destination, that's a lot more convenient than getting one to the edge of town, changing into a large pod for the across-town trip, and then getting back in a small pod for the last hop. It also makes the switching much harder, because the large pods will have lower acceleration than the smaller ones (or need much more powerful motors) and so will not be joining the main track at the same speed. This also increases the number of possible failure modes, unless the large pods are on entirely separate tracks (which dramatically increases cost).

      Building the tracks underground is a factor of 10-50 more expensive than the scheme proposed by SkyTran, with a track suspended from lamppost-like supports. It may be safer (though fires underground can result in quite high death tolls and carbon monoxide is a significant risk), which pushes the cost from expensive to infeasible for a lot of places.

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      • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday July 27 2017, @08:03AM

        by kaszz (4211) on Thursday July 27 2017, @08:03AM (#545060) Journal

        Larger compartments will be needed for some high traffic sites, like central station to the city etc. Where people anyway go the same route. Otherwise the capacity will simply be too low. The larger mass can be compensated with more powerful motors, that is not a problem.