Maelochs

You are not describing the present, let alone the future.

yes, for a lot of kids getting a license is a big deal. For a lot of others it is not. And the whole "part of having a car is being able to control a car ..." yeah, like you cannot control an AI car ... you get in, it goes wherever it wants, right?

A lot of kids see a car as a conveyance ... drag strips, twisty roads, all that .... not their meme collection. For a lot of kids, being able to text in a car is Way better than having to drive. Also, with GPS, parents can already track kids' rides if they want, so the "freedom" of getting in the car and disappearing simply won't be there. It is already gone for a lot of kids.

Delivery jobs would be one of the first areas where AI car./trucks would, catch on---lower insurance costs, less worry about tired or distracted drivers .... the driver would sit and read invoices and when the truck backed perfectly into the sensor-laden loading bay, he would be fresh and ready and know exactly what the load was, where on the truck it was, and he would be able to unload with greater efficiency.

Most delivery jobs entail servicing a specific set of customers, so programming the routes to optimize delivery time--like UPS does ... no left turns, and backing in or pulling into a tight bay would be much easier.

I n every shop I have ever worked there were the good drivers, the less good, and "that guy is my best driver." Now they All would be the best driver.

In 1070 the idea of people owning computers was pretty much a joke, except in sci-fi. Now everyone has ten time the computing power NASA used to reach the moon, in their phones. The Internet was Pure sci-fi ... until it burst onto the national awareness and then was global in under a decade.

In my lifetime, gays went from being the only minority it was cool to pick on for Everyone ... nobody complained ... anyone could beat up a gay man and everyone else thought "Good job"-- to gay marriage being nationwide.

I don't know how many of us recall the first decade of MTV, but when glam-rock became hair-metal became men--in-makeup alt ... Gay became Cool with a lot of teens.

Those teens are now parents of a generation which simply cannot understand ... just as few of us can understand that while we were too young to remember, refusing to let black families to buy homes in the neighborhood was considered the right thing to do, and in some parts of the country, beating and killing black people was something to brag about.

From about 1985 to 1995, "gay" completely reversed. Just because a lot of the older people didn't change .... it was just a matter of time until they died off.

And yes, there is stil a lot of racism and a lot of homophobia ... and some people who honestly believe *****exuality is a sin (as opposed the the people who just like to hate and find gays and blacks and hispanics and anyone Other to be convenient targets.)

But i can tell you, two black men couldn't walk down the street in some towns 30 years ago without risking extreme violence or death... nor two gay men ... and now in most of America an gay black couple can walk down the street and hold hands and be safe doing it.

We still have a Long way to go ... but stuff changes, and lately it has been changing faster and faster. The older people are, the less they seem to believe this ... but at some point we all need to open our eyes and see the world around us. it ain't Close to the same as it was ... or as we thought it was.

Self-driving cars? I am a lot more worried about human cloning .... have you been keeping up with that?

Rollfast

I remember AI like this (and I submitted this and many other images as well with similar results)...

Ninety5rpm

I think what you're getting at towards the end there is exactly what autonomous driver technology will bring to our society, and much sooner than you may think.

Specifically, I think it will enable efficient and inexpensive shared door-to-door transportation while also encouraging cycling for short trips.

Rollfast

But you'll have to make their old Mustang do it and forget four-wheeling.


I wouldn't do it, especially if it's the Go-Gos in that Buick with me. That's Belinda Carlisle driving after all...

Maelochs

First off ... off-roading is not transport.

Second ... yes, I think that you are thinking out your past.

"Muscle cars" and "performance" mean less to a lot of people than a lot of people think.

Why do we see ads for those cars? Same reason we see ads for top-end bikes ... Image. Same reason any bike company or car company blows big bucks racing --- image.

What are by number most of the cars and bikes sold---econoboxes and wall-world cruisers. Very very few of the exotic, high-performance cars get sold .... and Very, Very, very few to young buyers. Those cars are sold to the wealthy, middle-aged ... the riding dentist brigade, so to speak.

Younger people see cars in different ways.

Things change at different rates in different places, I know. there are still places where it isn't safe to be black or gay, and there are still places where the questions id do you have a Ford, Chevy, or Dodge pickup,. But those aren't the places where the future is made.



it's funny ... some people claim nothing will ever change ... and a lot of times, if you catch them form a different angle, they will do nothing but complain about how much things have changed.

Rollfast

I got that Duster I had as a beater with a dead engine and swapped an equivalent 225 CID Six and auto transmission in to get it moving, installed a stereo and speakers I got from my brother for free, drove my dad crazy putting an actual shag carpet and padding in to replace the worn out rubber floor and for less than 1500 dollars had a lot of fun with it until the K members started to fail and I got my mom's Ford Tempo.


I've never had the money to buy a new car. I never will again if I ever do have another car. But I also had a Duster Twister with the 340 grille, and the special rims replaced with normal ones.


I enjoyed that car every bit as much as owning three Rollfasts, two Schwinns, a Shelby and a few other neat bikes along the years. I wasn't the best driver either. I still miss taking that wheel in my hands and putting my foot on the throttle and brake pedals.


That won't disappear any more than some will want a Ciocc, or a Raleigh, Schwinn, Bianchi...and a bad cycle operator will not fare better with cars that drive themselves.


And I beg to differ in that people want cars that will do 80-90 on the freeway, old or new. We sure have a lot of newer trucks, SUVs and various cars on that road all passing my mom too close on Christmas day, a day or so after a snowstorm.

AlmostTrick

So are we on for the six pack?

EDIT: I guess @Ninety5rpm isn't up for it. I wonder why that is...

mr_bill

In 2015, "We envision a world where there’s no more traffic in Boston in five years."

Let's see how that "vision" is going, shall we?

Oops.

-mr. bill

scott967

AVs will mainly displace mass transit. Since government has a massive investment and interest in mass transit, it will attempt to forestall AVs. There is no impact on cycling.

scott s.
.

Maelochs

Why wouldn't governments replace their buses with fleets of smaller, more efficient AV buses?

Ninety5rpm

Such predictions are based on the assumption that pooling will work. They haven't figure out how to make it work yet. The UberX and UberPool fares for me to get a ride to work are $12-$14 regardless of which I use. So why would I choose Pool? They need to figure this out before traffic will be affected. But they're working on it. UberPool Express was announced today, requiring riders to walk a short distance at the start and/or end of their trip, allow for slashed fares. We'll see if this works. But one way or another, they'll get it. And that's when everything will change. But before then, it's silly to even expect to see improvements.

mr_bill

To summarize:

Dream of no more traffic in Boston.
?
There is no more traffic in Boston.

(Reminds me of a great novel by Ursala Le Guin. It’s found in the science fiction section.)

-mr. bill

scott967

If you have the option of dedicated AV or shared AV why would you want the shared AV unless there was significant cost differential?

scott s.
.

Maelochs

Really? How about this----the people who ride the bus won't suddenly be able to afford cars just because AV cars are on the market. There will still be people whose economic situation---or preference---sees them taking mass transit.

The biggest inefficiency of mass transit is the sheer size of the vehicle needed to cope with max capacity at high-traffic hours. it means that a lot of the time huge, inefficient and mostly empty vehicles are driving around most of the time.

if you had much actual, personal experience riding buses you would know this.

Cities need specially trained drivers to operate buses. Drivers are expensive to train and pay and subject to human foibles, like getting sick, getting sick of passengers, and occasionally running over cyclists.

Cities also need to buy buses in fleets to get good prices and to standardize parts replacement. So the city buys big buses, so it doesn't have to train a lot of drivers and can still move the maximum number of people needed at peak-traffic hours.

If the city could buy half again as many vehicles which were smaller, more efficient, cheaper to operate, and did less road damage, they would---except they'd still need to train all those extra drivers, and even more temp and part-time drivers to cover for the extra sick days and such.

Take the drivers out of the equation and then suddenly the vastly increased flexibility and efficiency of a fleet of smaller vehicles makes it by far the best choice.

Now the city can send three smaller busses—which don’t generate much more traffic that one large bas, and are more maneuverable and can also accelerate more quickly to get up to traffic speed—when it need to carry a lot of people and if there are only three people at a stop, it can send one minibus and park the other two anywhere along the route.

if passengers start piling up at a stop the city can dispatch a second and if needed a third minibus—and if not, the city isn’t putting miles and burning diesel drive a 90-passenger bus with four people on it.

Add to this a cell phone app and people can “order” a bus, by logging in before they need the bus. There could also be a call button at the stop itself. While this wouldn’t be foolproof, it would help make sure enough and not too many buses were heading where they were needed and not where they were not.

There would always be one bus on the route—but it would be whatever size seemed to be best suited to passenger traffic at that time.

That a good explanation?

AlmostTrick

It all sounds great on paper.

Time (about 5 years!) will tell.

Ninety5rpm

If hailed AVs dominate the Phoenix metro area by the end of 2019, which I think is very possible, we will know much sooner than five years.

Ninety5rpm

Personal reasons. Let's keep it virtual.

Maelochs

All it will take is one Hollywood summer blockbuster about AI cars locking the door and windows and running amok with families on board and the whole industry will be set back five or ten years. I am sure Ford and GM are setting up shell companies to launder the money for the film as we speak.

Ninety5rpm

Doubtful. They're both pouring billions into AV tech. GM is ahead of Ford, however.

https://www.wired.com/story/gm-cruis...r-launch-2019/

https://corporate.ford.com/innovatio...mous-2021.html

Maelochs

https://www.ntd.tv/2018/02/22/major-c...ng-cars-see-2/ "orders of magnitude" better than existing Lidar systems ...

Ninety5rpm

Very interesting.

That's another reason hailed AV taxis make more sense than privately owned AVs - the technology evolves too fast for the typical 15k miles people drive in a year. In a taxi fleet a car can go 100-200k miles per year, so can be replaced every few years with the latest tech.

Maelochs

I totally disagree. AV cars will be sold at a price comparable to contemporary self-drive cars so people can buy them.

You know, companies make stuff and sell stuff so people will buy stuff and the companies will make money. Automakers will not want to price themselves out of the market, and they won't be able to sell enough luxury cars to all stay viable. So ... the cars have to be affordable by the people who already buy cars.

tech is cheap and getting cheaper all the time. Just look around. In the 1950s a computer was literally the size of a freight train. In the '60s, computers were less powerful than a google watch. Nowadays people carry computers much more powerful than the desktops of a decade ago ... in their pockets.

Phones are expensive because people are idiots. They will pay whatever they have to get a phone more powerful than the phone they didn't even partially use before. For status. The phones are dirt cheap when they leave China.

Go online and see how cheaply you can buy an incredibly powerful laptop and a 24-inch monitor nowadays ... and that is Always getting cheaper.

And in any case, people Do Not Want to Ride Bikes. Most people who ride bikes cannot wait until they get their DUIs paid off and can drive again. And that is true all over the world. I have traveled some and so have a bunch of other posters. I am sorry but people do not aspire to riding a bike.

The only way to get more people on bikes is via E-bikes, where people will at least pedal some. And please remember--a Lot of people simply cannot ride a bike any serious distance carrying any serious load. And a lot of people live in really hllly country where even an experienced cyclist would find it tough to get around by bike doing utility work---carrying large bundles of laundry or groceries or building supplies.

Think abut it ... when the bike started to get popular who used it? Not working men----they knew a horse was practical and a bike was not. The only people I have heard using bicycles for serious work are some Australian sheepherders, and some doctors in Africa where the roads didn't admit cars but people needed someone faster than a person on foot could get there.

Bikes can be great for urban and some suburban daily commuting---but to make them work the rider needs a fair degree of health and fitness, and again terrain and weather make riding exceedingly hard in a lot of places.

In the U.S. where even poor people are pretty well off, there is no reason to expect that AV cars will drastically change people 's transport habits. All that will happen is everyone will be a lot safer. There is no reason to think AV cars are going to be marketed as a luxury item---people would rather hire chauffeurs if it came to that--someone to deal with the troublesome details of changing flats, bribing cops, and carrying a handgun to prevent kidnap attempts.

AV cars are going to be marketed as fleet vehicles while people get used to the idea and development work proceeds. Then just as driver assist and even GPS dash screens have done, the AV stuff will be introduced into the top-end general commercial models--the Lexus/ Infiniti/Cadillac crowd--and every year or two be available as an option at a lower tier until finally the Toyota Corollas and Honda Civics and every car will have it ...

And then yes, eventually, the government will drastically restrict self-driving as a safety hazard and because self--driving cars cause 100 percent of the traffic jams. And insurance companies will jack up the rated for self-drive vcars because they will cause almost all the accidents. more rural areas will see far less restriction.


Seriously--computers used to be as big as houses. Now you have vastly more computing power in the palm of your hand. And you think that's as small and as powerful as it will get?

120 years ago a radio was big, temperamental, fragile device that wealthy people could put in the sitting room .... fifty years later cars might have a cheap AM radio. By the 1960s and 1970s, cars started to come with tape players, 8-track tape players, and even multiple speakers. Nowadays, we fully expect even the most stripped down economy car to have am/fm a USB jack or Bluetooth for an iPhone.

People need to look at history and extrapolate.

Maelochs

Good point.

Ninety5rpm

Here are the main reasons I think sales of AVs to private individuals will be very low:

1. Expensive tech raises price of cars.
2. Quickly evolving tech (out of date within a few years) makes high mileage fleet use more economical
3. High maintenance tech (better managed by a fleet maintenance team than private individual)*
4. Low demand (AV taxis will meet transport demand for most)

* For example, just keeping the sensors clean is a specialized task that must be done regularly.

Maelochs

AV taxis would have to be very very cheap to beat out the convenience of having your own car.

Just in temrs of efficiency ... the taxi either comes early and charges you to wait, or comes late and you waste time waiting on the taxi. You have to plan well ahead of time when you will leave, and you have to pay extra if you want to suddenly change destinations.

The other thing is urban/suburban/semi-rural. As I mentioned elsewhere my father lives in a semi-rural area where taxis charge a ton (and so does Uber) because the taxis have to go so far away from any possible fares ...a cab might be okay if you are in a rider-dense environment ... but out in the sticks, you pay a premium ... because once they drop you off they have to come back all that way for free.

even in a suburban area ... i wouldn't want to have to pay a taxi to take me on a day's errands ... and the nearest taxi company is 20 miles away. Uber doesn't exist.

on the other hand, my wife would buy an AV car if it were 15 % more than not.

Also, once the fleet-test days are done, the basic package will be determined. Taxi companies aren't going to want to buy all new hardware every couple years---its their profit margin. private drivers are the ones who will pay for silly upgrades.

But just as with computer hardware and operating systems ... stuff is still usable for a long time, even after many new generations of hardware has been introduced.

No reason you couldn't run a 1995 computer with a VGA monitor running Windows 95 if you wanted to. You might have to shop around for the right cords and plug adapters, but you could still go online and function. And that's 23 years old.

Once the standard programming has been determined, upgrades will be mostly software. Fleets are going to want to find a level of safety and performance which makes sense financially and only upgrade when they buy new vehicles.

And, as I told MTB_addict---companies are in business to sell products. GM and Ford Want everybody to by cars. That's how they eat. So once they have maxxed out the fleet sales, they will sell cars like they do now ... annual model upgrades, or at least regular model upgrades, tech upgrades in other departments too ... cars that are more aero, safer, lighter, use more plastic and carbon fiber, cars with recyclable body panels, electric cars, more energy-efficient hybrids ... you guys are so focused on bikes and AV you forget there is a huge auto industry out there.

As cars wear out, they will be replaced .... and a lot of people won't want to take a taxi any more now that they do now. i don't see any incentive. Taxis would have to be every bot as convenient and also significantly cheaper--otherwise, why make sacrifices? if there is no gain -0--In The Mind fo the General Public, not the LCF fanatics--then there is no reason ... as in, it would be unreasonable, crazy---to give up the convenience of personal transport.

And in any case, the car companies are not going to put themselves out of business. Unless they could sell about as many cars as taxis as they could as private vehicles, going all-fleet would be corporate suicide. No one is going to keep his or her job at GM by proposing a sales policy which will cost the company huge volume in sales.

i understand the appeal of everyone living a simply life, everybody learning to be happy with less, everyone walking more lightly and leaving smaller footprints. it wasn't a new idea when I cam across it more than four decades ago---I got it from Thoreau, and he got it from the ancient Romans and Greeks, I guess.

But ... notice how popular the idea is?

If you want to motivate people you have to speak to them in their own languages and show an understanding fo their value systems. it is a sales job ... and just saying :"It makes perfect sense to me and it is what i want" is a losing sales pitch.

You need to offer people more than "a deep sense of inner peace and deep satisfaction" because frankly, not everyone will feel that. We all walk different paths, and while you or i might seriously feel great to know we sacrificed a little immediate pleasure for just the chance of some long term benefit for the future inhabitants of the cosmos ... some folks simply don't feel that, and you cannot say they are wrong, any more than they can say you are wrong.

If you want to change people's behavior, you have to offer them things they want.

Right now people waste huge resources in every area to own and operate pickup trucks and SUVs ... more materials and more energy to make them, more money to operate them ... why do they do it? Because car makers appeal top what they know people want: safety, security, care fro family, power , performance, masculinity ... even if they don't deliver, they promise and create the image and people are happy to pay for the image.

Similar with phones---people buy the latest because they are convinced it will be better when the phone is not appreciably better, the camera is not appreciably better---people who take crappy pictures can do it with any camera---call quality isn't even an issue---it is a mass-produced middle-class luxury item. And most people like the illusion of luxury. they just do.

You might be different. You might have an ancient flip phone, and your computer might be running Windows 95---but if you are honest you have to admit, even among cyclists we are a rare breed. and among people in general ....

So ... what incentives are you offering to current auto owners so that they will not want to own cars? What incentives are you offering to car companies so that they will be happy making and selling fewer cars?

How are you going to convince people used to the convenience of car ownership----AND all that it means in modern society, because cars are a LOT more than just transport----status, social stratum, personal taste, identity----what are you offering to those people so that the will Not want to own cars?

That is the kind of thinking I don't hear much here.

yeah, We might see how a simple life is better ... but for a lot of people it seems not to be. Expecting everyone in the world to suddenly become entirely different people .... i don't see it happening. And frankly, we'd be offended if a bunch of people told Us WE ended to change. In fact, we have all probably faced some amount of flak from people who didn't understand why we want to "live here and be happy with less."

Instead of telling everybody else to change to think like us---which we wouldn't do for them---we need to think of ways to persuade them within their own frameworks. let me hear how we can convince people to travel less---and be happy. How to not go where they want to go---and then, not want to go there. How do you plan to convince people to be completely different people?

What's your plan?