

The driverless road ahead - digisth
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21564821-carmakers-are-starting-take-autonomous-vehicles-seriously-other-businesses-should-too

======
paulsutter
>Just imagine. [Driverless cars] could, for a start, save the motor industry
from stagnation...; and since [cars] would be able to drop off their
passengers and drive away, the lack of parking spaces in town might not matter
so much.

Strange that the Economist would catch the diminished need for parking spaces,
but miss the real economic impact of driverless cars: many fewer cars would be
needed as utilization rates rise far above the current ~4-7%[1]. This would
cause a total collapse of the car industry, not save it as suggested by the
article.

[1] 7500-15000 miles at an average of 25MPH is 300-600 hours a year or or
about 4-7% utilization.

~~~
peff
Is utilization over time important? If we assume that people will still travel
the same number of miles[1], then while there will be fewer cars on the road
at any given moment, they will wear out more quickly as they are utilized more
heavily.

Another way of thinking of it is that there is demand for a certain number of
vehicle-miles per year. In the aggregate over the long term, it is no
different if we buy 5 cars, each of which lasts 5 years, or if we buy one car
every year for 5 years as the old one wears out[2].

Higher utilization should make fleet replacement a smoother function over time
(whereas now, you can see dips and spikes as people decide when to put capital
in their cars based on factors like the overall health of the economy).

[1] It is not clear what the impact of driverless cars would be on mileage. It
would eliminate some useless trips (e.g., doubled miles for dropping somebody
off). But the convenience may mean that people simply use it more.

[2] I'm assuming that wear and replacement time are purely a function of miles
traveled. This is not entirely true, as age is a factor, but I think mileage
tends to dominate in the average car (i.e., one that is being used, not one
having its belts dry-rot over many years of neglect). Companies that maintain
car fleets probably have data on this.

~~~
tobiasu
It's an old chestnut that buying a salesman's car with lots of miles is a lot
better than buying the same vehicle from a housewife that only used it to go
shopping and shuttle the kids to school.

Besides, who says that the driverless car isn't more like industrial equipment
instead of the current consumer crap, made to go on "forever" to justify its
high price?

~~~
VBprogrammer
I think that is a very good point.

While designing cars to last longer would increase the weight of some
components, for example allowing more metal around the cylinders so that they
can be re-bored a number of times, this could be at least partially by having
a much reduced burden of crash resistance.

Some things could be alleviated simply by avoiding the maintenance / cost
cutting shortcuts used today. For example fitting grease nipples to ball
joints and greasing them regularly makes them last a great deal longer than
the sealed units which are riveted to swing arms today!

~~~
seanmcdirmid
You are missing the obvious: the cars could just as easily go electric and the
severe reduction of moving components will already increase their service life
dramatically (sans battery replacements depending on how battery technology
evolves).

------
cs702
This piece strikes me as too Utopian. While most people, _including me_ , will
likely adopt driverless cars, a substantial minority of the population will
never adopt them.

Should driverless cars become mainstream, criminals of all kinds will quickly
find ways to game the system to make vehicles driver-controlled, and (more
ominously) will figure out how to hack into other people's cars and use them
for nefarious purposes -- _vehicle botnets_ that can cause major economic and
physical damage. The police will need ways to override driverless vehicles to
keep up with criminals.

Moreover, many individuals who love driving their sports cars don't want
driverless vehicles; many law-abiding car hackers and tinkerers don't want to
relinquish full control over their vehicles; and civil-rights organizations
will likely end up fighting driverless vehicles in the courts.

Instead of an Utopian, smoothly-working, accident-free system that doesn't
need police, seat belts, or insurance, I would expect our road-traffic system
to evolve into a _more complex mix_ of driverless and driver-controlled
vehicles. The unintended consequences of the transition to this system, and
its ultimate legal and technological requirements, are really unknowable at
this point.

\--

 _PS. In response to paulsutter below, this is not "dystopian terrorist hacker
paranoia!" All I'm saying is that the transition will be a lot less simple and
smooth, and will have more unintended complex consequences, than suggested by
this piece. That's usually how it goes when society makes fundamental changes
to the architecture of a large, widely used, complex system!_

~~~
seanmcdirmid
They won't have a choice, actually. Emerging economies like China will eat
this up to solve their traffic congestion problems in big cities, and are
totalitarian enough to mandate it. Once it becomes a huge economic advantage,
the other economies will have to follow just to keep up. Governments are lazy,
they will want to push more traffic into their road systems at less cost
because you hate traffic and taxes!

Hybrid solutions are also possible: there will be certain roads (controlled
access interstates) where driverless is mandatory while certain streets where
driver intervention is required. You still get most of the traffic
optimization benefits if the driverless roads are congestion bottlenecks.
However, the real benefit doesn't come until we have driverless cities, where
people don't need to own cars and a roaming fleet of autonomous vehicles serve
as pervasive taxis. You could even get rid of parking lots!

The system can easily trace what cars are bad actors and adapt accordingly
(shut down traffic in a region with a bad actor until police arrive).

------
tokenadult
Other comments have criticized this article as too utopian, but I like the
submitted article a lot, as a summary of several effects of the development of
driverless car technology. Technology projections are often too ambitious in
the near term, but underambitious in the long term. I think the submitted
article here, which discusses trends we can reasonably expect without being
really specific about dates, gets the general picture about right. There will
be surprises from the introduction of driverless cars that perhaps this
article has not anticipated.

I think the article "Why Driverless Cars Are Inevitable--and a Good Thing"

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087239639044352490457765...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443524904577651552635911824.html)

by Dan Neil of the Wall Street Journal, published last month, is a good
commentary on why ordinary people will mostly be glad to use driverless cars,
and regulators and insurers will be glad to nudge drivers to use them.

"As a mature, postindustrial society, the U.S. has in many ways topped out
economically (population growth, consumption) compared with younger
competitors on the world stage. Americans are learning hard lessons about the
value of their work in a race-to-the-bottom global economy.

"The one brilliant part of the U.S. economic profile is productivity. It turns
out, Americans are a little nutty when it comes to work.

"If autonomy were fully implemented today, there would be roughly 100 million
Americans sitting in their cars and trucks tomorrow, by themselves, with time
on their hands. It would be, from an economist's point of view, the
Pennsylvania oil fields of man-hours, a beautiful gusher, a bonanza of reverie
washing upon our shores."

Driving here in Minnesota, I can't wait until the typical Minnesota driver's
low-grade performance is replaced by the performance of road-certified
driverless car systems. And I most definitely look forward to having much more
time to think and to enjoy undistracted conversation in a driverless car than
I can now safely achieve while driving. That indeed will be a boost to my
productivity and to the quality of my family life.

Another subthread here talks about the trade-offs between owning a personal
driverless car versus taking rides from a driverless taxi service. My family,
like many families in the United States, considers the issues of the one-car-
per-adult lifestyle versus the one-car-per-household lifestyle. Most United
States families with children would probably make their choices about car
ownership with that being the key decision point. I can see a lot of United
States families deciding to have one owned family car that is filled with all
of their favorite things to have along during road trips (so that the car is
one more personal storage unit, in part) that would accumulate a lot of
pleasant memories of family outings and so forth. But the family's second car
(in some families, the third car) would be replaced with a subscription to a
driverless car service, which would reliably pick up family members on a
moment's notice for trips to the grocery store, the soccer game, a music
lesson, a party while the other parent is still at work, or whatever. If the
driverless car services become reliable enough to whisk a child (with or
without parent) over to an urgent care center for sudden injuries and
illnesses, one major reason parents keep a second "transportation car" besides
the main commuting and traveling car would vanish. I fully expect individual
rates of car ownership per household to drop when driverless cars become
reliable.

------
emperorcezar
I love reading the articles on driverless cars. Every single one conveniently
forgets that, at this point, we're no where near solving the fueling issue for
any car.

Teens aren't getting cars because they are too lazy to take the drivers test.
It's because the cost, fuel, and maintenance just aren't worth it to them.
Even if it drives itself.

~~~
mtgx
I think Tesla will solve this problem for just about anyone within 10 years.
They already did with the Tesla Supercharger network (free charging), but the
pricing of the cars is not accessible for everyone right now. In 10 years it
will be. Pretty sure there will be an under $20,000 model within 10 years.
From what I've noticed Tesla looks to cut the price in half every 3 years for
their new models.

~~~
emperorcezar
Even under $20k isn't low enough for many people. If you live in a city and
are happy with your public transit options, then it's only around $100 a
month. Which is way way less than car payment + insurance + maintenance. Even
without paying for fuel.

~~~
maxerickson
If the cars cost $20k and drive themselves, droves of those people will be
able to access them for some of their transit needs (because they will be
available, cheap!, on a per mile basis).

~~~
emperorcezar
This is actually a use I can really see. I've heard it called "Robotaxi".

------
SlipperySlope
Driverless cars solve these problems that most people have ...

1\. A need for status. Driverless cars will first greatly distinguish luxury
cars from more ordinary cars.

2\. Convenience and comfort. Driverless cars will remove the stress from rush
hour commuting. Driverless cars will be much more comfortable for long-
distance trips.

3\. Safety. Driverless cars will obey the traffic laws. "drivers" and
passengers of such cars will much less likely be arrested for driving under
the influence of alcohol or drugs.

4\. Efficiency. Driverless cars will use less fuel than otherwise comparable
self-drive cars. For example, cooperating driverless cars can draft at highway
speeds. Additionally, driverless cars can smooth out stop-and-go traffic,
coast down hills and otherwise conserve momentum. And once driverless cars are
commonplace, intelligent intersections will permit cooperating driverless cars
to interleave without stopping - while accommodating self-drive cars with
conventional signs and signals.

~~~
mibbitier
1\. Can you imagine Top Gear proclaiming driverless cars as the way to get
status? No. They'll be ridiculed by anyone who knows anything about cars (Same
way people who drive an automatic are ridiculed). Imagine "Drag and drop
programming is the future of software development!!!"

2\. Not convinced anyone really gets stressed driving, and not convinced that
"not being in control of the car" would make anyone less stressed. Personally,
when someone else is driving the car, I'm always more stressed not less. If I
knew it was being driven by some software, my stress level would hit the roof.
Everything I own that has "software", crashes every now and then. I don't
really want my car to have more software than it needs.

3\. Software bugs are plentiful in any system. Simple mechanics, and humans
will always trump software for things like this. Surely if this stuff was so
easy to automate, we'd have software flying planes already (Which seems a
substantially easier problem).

4\. Considering that we still can't make automatic cars that change gear at
the right point, I'm skeptical.

~~~
SlipperySlope
1\. Agreed that its hard to imagine Top Gear writing that way. For example,
for Mercedes they write: "Packed with every conceivable gadget, the S-class is
traditionally a place where new technology is debuted – and because this is
Merc’s flagship it usually works faultlessly." Car and Driver writes:
"Mercedes also claims its new sedan is its safest yet. S-classes equipped with
optional Distronic Plus cruise control go beyond the standard car's safety
features with a short-range radar system that "looks" at an area closer to the
front of the vehicle than the long-range radar used by the cruise control."

2\. Regarding stress and strain while driving - here is a research paper that
might convince you:
<http://www.ectri.org/YRS07/Papiers/Session-9/Schiessl.pdf>

3\. Experience with diverse embedded software systems, from medical
electronics to military jets, has demonstrated that software can be indeed
engineered, and verified, to be more safe than simple mechanical and purely
human controlled systems.

4\. In fact current automatic transmissions are now more fuel efficient than
manual transmissions: [http://green.autoblog.com/2010/08/18/greenlings-why-do-
autom...](http://green.autoblog.com/2010/08/18/greenlings-why-do-automatic-
transmissions-now-get-better-fuel-e/)

~~~
mibbitier
3\. Why does everyone sigh when they find a "software" on off switch compared
to a hardware one? Because the software one invariably doesn't work, or
doesn't work immediately.

4\. I'm sure it's possible to make an automatic transmission better for fuel
consumption, that's an easy problem. But make an automatic transmission that
knows what you as a driver want (I'm betting that's rarely "fuel efficiency")
- that's the holy grail, which certainly hasn't been achieved yet.

------
saosebastiao
New York City grew over 500% since the advent of the mass-produced automobile.
It has grown ~30% since the advent of the internet. The car may have
distributed our density a little more evenly, but it has not diminished the
importance of cities. We will always continue to live, work, trade, eat, and
buy in cities. It is one of the trademarks of our social evolution. We also
continue to work during the day and sleep during the night, despite the advent
of electricity. We go to work in the morning, and we return in the evening.

Combine those two unavoidable traits of human existence and we get what is
called Rush Hour. And it is not going away. At best, driverless cars represent
a minor improvement in the pain of rush hour, but it doesn't abolish it...nor
does it rid us of the need for public transit. There are simply too many
geometric facts in the way.

1.3 million people commute to Manhattan every weekday. At 1.2 cars per person
(typical for a morning commute) that is still more than a million cars
fighting for some 2000 miles of road space. Even without any need for parking
(assuming they would all be taxis, which is unlikely), that is still 1 car
every ~10 feet of road length...including intersections. In other words,
geometrically impossible, unless you want to argue that no bottlenecks would
exist anywhere (such as intersections or bridges).

Driverless cars will be nothing more than a minor improvement in congestion
and parking costs.

Where the real improvement comes from is driverless trucks and buses. A
driverless truck reduces per-mile costs of road freight by about 40%, while
allowing for 24hr days (13 more than the max possible with one driver, and 15
more than the average), making all road freight more than twice as fast. That
is transformative for commerce. And for city buses, 85% of the cost is going
to drivers. We could literally be offering buses at 4x the frequency at the
same cost. That is transformative for cities.

------
ari_elle
One problem that nobody seems to see is:

-) As soon as software controls something it's the question about if you control the software, or if the software controls the user

One of the big arguments rms always had about free software, but think about
it:

Let's say i have a self-driving car, how do i know that there isn't a backdoor
in there? How about my car being hacked and being remote controlled?

How about my car being pulled over by the police by remote control if i don't
stop?

And what about spontaneity in driving?

Will i still be able to make a U-Turn whenever i want?

Having navigated through big cities with cars i can tell you that it's more
than just reading signs and staying on the correct lane...

Once we got self-driving cars then all of the above points will be issues and
we should seriously think about all of this in my opinion.

If i could make sure that non of the above is valid i might still fancy it for
boring highways. For cities or narrow situations i will always trust myself.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
_You_ may trust yourself, but as I ride around on my motorcycle, _I_ don't
trust you at all. Give me self-driving cars anyway.

~~~
ari_elle
I don't want to start an argument, especially since i myself ride a
motorcycle.

But even i witnessed my fair share of motorcyclists, who just played daredevil
on the street.

The way many behave on roads is not acceptable and this goes for drivers of
cars and drivers of motorcycles.

Counter question: Would you trust a self driving motorcycle?

So why should i - as a in my opinion perfectly good driver - trust a self
driving car at all times?

~~~
SoftwareMaven
First, I'm with you on the surprisingly large number of people who are plain
stupid on bikes.

The question of self-driving motorcycles is an interesting one. Would I trust
them? Yes. The reaction time and ability to process multiple streams of
information of computers _far_ outweigh that of humans.

Would I want to? Sometimes. There are times when I'm out riding and it's all
about the curves of the canyon. Just like any driving enthusiast, I'm there
for the experience. But crossing Wyoming on I-80? Bring it on!

I have no doubt that there will be a Honda Goldwing or BMW R1600 that includes
a self-driving mode along with a HUD-based entertainment system in your
helmet. And maybe I'll be able to afford it by then. :)

------
LeafStorm
While driverless cars do provide advantages over normal cars, there are two
counterpoints I would like to make.

First, there are people who simply will not trust the driverless cars. I was
talking to a friend yesterday who said that he wouldn't ride in a driverless
car, and he wouldn't want to drive on the same road as one. Uptake is _not_
going to be as fast as people seem to expect once the cars are practical for
market.

And second, in the words of Jarrett Walker [1]: "Technology never changes
facts of geometry." No matter how small you can make the engines, airbags, and
frame, as long as you have each passenger in a separate, self-propelled,
hopefully crash-proof shell, they are always going to take up far more space
than a bus or a train, and require far more resources to construct.

[1] [http://www.humantransit.org/2012/08/bus-stigma-and-
driverles...](http://www.humantransit.org/2012/08/bus-stigma-and-driverless-
cars-email-of-the-month.html)

~~~
ari_elle
If driverless cars, why not a driverless buses ?

~~~
rayiner
Because the cost of the bus service has almost nothing to do with the cost of
the bus driver.

~~~
akgerber
In the United States, the federal government will subsidize capital
investments for mass transit systems (a/k/a buses, in most cities, also
railway/busway in some), but not operating costs (drivers & mechanics). Labor
costs are, in fact, one of the major costs of location transportation
authorities.

When I lived in San Diego, the bus line by my house ran at half the frequency
using buses twice as large on weekends, which I can see no explanation for
other than saving money on labor by making transit service much less useful.

------
gwern
> When people are no longer in control of their cars they will not need driver
> insurance—so goodbye to motor insurers and brokers.

This is a bit delusional. _Someone_ will have to pay for accidents and
injuries.

~~~
EwanG
The presumed model is that the manufacturer will buy fleet insurance since it
will now mainly be design flaws causing accidents rather than needing to
prepare premiums based on each individual driver.

And yes, that will probably be a smaller market although you can still sell
add-ons, etc.

------
ftwinnovations
I think that once driverless cars are mainstream, which I have no doubt will
eventually happen, it can usher in the age of the (driverless) flying car...
_finally!_ There seems like quite a bit of technological overlap, and from a
safety standpoint I would much rather have people flying around in automated
vehicles than human controlled.

If this came to be, coupled with high speed wireless, I would go so far as
predicting the end of cities as we know them. They would serve essentially no
purpose anymore.

~~~
akgerber
Flying cars are uncommon not because they are dangerous, but because it
requires a huge amount of energy to defeat gravity in addition to propelling
the vehicle forward.

Cities are more populous and wealthy than ever before because there is no
substitute for human proximity in a service economy, and more humans in close
proximity makes for more productive services.

------
mibbitier
Driverless cars are just another segway. No one will buy one, because they do
not solve a problem most people have.

~~~
mertd
I'll buy one. I hate wasting time driving.

~~~
mibbitier
I'll bite. How in the world do you consider driving to be wasted time? Don't
you _think_ while you're driving? Don't you work through problems in your
mind? Don't you rest, listen to music/radio? Don't you have interesting
discussions with fellow passengers?

~~~
mertd
Here is my reasoning. You can do the activities you mentioned in places that
are a lot more comfortable (sofa), more social (cafe) or more beneficial (gym)
than the driver's seat.

More importantly, I don't trust my brain's thread scheduler to drive with full
attention and think about something else productively simultaneously. How many
of us can say that they have never been in a dangerous scenario because they
were lost in thought while driving?

------
rayiner
Unsurprisingly, site full of left coast people think driverless cars will be a
revolution. Guy sitting in Manhattan doesn't get what all the fuss is about.

~~~
akgerber
If you're under 34 years of age, a motor vehicle is the thing most likely to
kill you. Pedestrians are close to 50% of the motor vehicle deaths in NYC. All
too many collisions are caused by dangerous driving such as speeding or
violation of pedestrian right-of-way in a crosswalk.

Many measures that would increase pedestrian and cyclist safety are blocked by
members of the entitled minority motorist class: speed cameras because many
motorists believe themselves unable to drive at a speed safe for other road
users, and bike lanes and wider sidewalks because drivers feel the region of
the public roadway they have colonized for the storage of private property is
a permanent entitlement. Automated vehicles would better obey speed laws and
make nearby street parking less necessary.

------
DanielBMarkham
Every generation has a thing that defines itself -- something that changes
everything.

Seems like we've been a while since the last one, which was the internet. To
me the next two look like driverless cars and advanced 3-D printing.
Affordable fusion _might_ be one, but I'm not holding my breath.

There are a lot of other cool things out there, of course: Elon Musk and his
rocket program, trans-humanism, progress towards strong AI. But assuming we
all actually stay individual people and don't become something like a hive
mind (which is a big assumption), being able to go places without effort and
make our own goods at home will empower people in ways never seen before. 50
years after these technologies mature, it'll be a completely different world.

------
marshallp
Everyone's missing that drones (flying cars) might take off too at roughly the
same time. The challenge of making driverless cars completely safe
(intelligent sensing and control) is also the challenge for flying cars.
Flying cars would beat out road cars and so the reenvisioning of society is
greater than what people like Brad Templeton have done. With flying cars, all
investments in roads become useless and huge swathes of land become
inhabitable. Real estate prices should consequently plummet and a worldwide
financial panic occurs (this can all happen within 5 years). However, this
will be a good thing since it will clean the current mess of unproductive
activity that is land owning and leasing.

What the mainstream media also aren't realizing is that the technology for
driverless cars is also the same technology that automates away most
factory/farming/mining/retail/distribution jobs. The effect in the west might
not be so large, but in the rest of the world it could be devastating, leading
to riots and civil wars.

~~~
andreasvc
What is your argument that flying cars would beat out road cars? Flying
requires way more energy and energy has always been scarce up till now.

~~~
marshallp
It's not as simple as that. People fly now as well. If everything's about
energy efficiency, people wouldn't leave their house. If by flying you can
commute from a much cheaper place than it's worth it. Also, you have to factor
in the road construction/maintenance costs which flying doesn't have.
Especially in the third world where roads aren't built yet. Also, the flying
can be in the form of airships which are energy efficient.

~~~
andreasvc
The most dramatic counterargument is with distribution of goods, which mostly
occurs with cargo ships, trucks, and trains--simply because those are way
cheaper & more efficient than flying. The simple physics argument is that it
requires extra work to keep something flying, which is better avoided. So
roads and rails will need to be kept anyway, and it's highly unlikely that
people wouldn't use them.

On the other hand, I do have to say I'm a big fan of airships, but I'm not
holding my breath for their return. I even doubt people would accept that
travelling has to be so much slower in an airship, now that he jet age has
arrived.

~~~
marshallp
That's all about bulk cargo though. For people movement and last mile delivery
like pizza, energy isn't the major consideration. And airships don't compete
with jets. They're either bulk cargo or scenic travel. If airships are
commonplace some people will choose to live in airships permanently, gliding
with magnificent views, like some people currently do with boats and rv's.

