
Retired People Could Be Ideal Customers for Self-Driving Cars - jkuria
https://www.economist.com/business/2019/02/23/why-retired-people-could-be-ideal-customers-for-self-driving-cars
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burlesona
This seems like really obvious -- in a good way -- market targeting.

For the very old, that ship has already sailed. Thinking of my surviving
grandmother, her take on losing access to the car is "it's a bummer but I
didn't have one until I was twenty five anyway."

And many younger people would prefer not to need a car at all by virtue of
living in a human-scale environment.

But for my parents (baby boomer) generation, what I hear from them is "I don't
know what I'm going to do when I can't drive anymore, that's just terrifying."
They love their cars, and feel crippled when they can't drive anymore, as they
lose access to the suburban lifestyle they've spent their whole life pursuing.

Thus, going after the "active retirement" people who have money and want their
"freedom" back is probably the best possible place for a self-driving car
business to start.

(edited for clarity)

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TaupeRanger
You must live in a big city huh? I know zero young people who would give up
the convenience of a car, and I suspect this is the case for a majority of the
country.

~~~
dahfizz
People on HN tend to have this huge misconception that the entire world is one
dense urban core.

Many more people live in suburbs than in cities. The suburban population is
actually growing faster than the urban population [1]. For this plurality of
people, cars aren't only convenient but irreplaceable.

[1] [http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/05/22/demographic-and-
ec...](http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2018/05/22/demographic-and-economic-
trends-in-urban-suburban-and-rural-communities/)

~~~
wongarsu
> the entire world is one dense urban core

Suburbs as a place where you can only survive with a car are mostly an
American phenomenon. Most other countries mix low density commercial and
residential areas a lot more, making a car-less lifestyle much easier.

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judge2020
Sadly not the retired people of today. This is a little pessimistic, but fully
self-driving cars where they basically guarantee that you won't have to touch
the wheel, or are level 5 autonomous, will likely take another 30+ years to
mature. Hopefully we'll see this in the lifetime of boomers, and we'll get to
hear tales about how everyone used to text and drive, while now everyone just
texts while the car drives itself.

~~~
tigershark
30 years ago the most powerful intel cpu was a 386. I’d be very careful to
make predictions with absolute certainty like you given that we have already a
level 4 commercial self driving service in Phoenix and it will expand in other
cities during the course of the year. It’s also worth noting that until 5
years ago the absolute earliest and optimistic prediction was to have self
driving cars in 2020, and this prediction has already been beaten.

~~~
superkuh
Self-driving cars don't exist. Self-driving cars that work only in areas of
the country where real winter doesn't happen do though.

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wongarsu
Which is "good enough". People who have the choice between "no car" and "self
driving car that sometimes refuses to start because of the weather" will still
prefer the latter, as long as it's not too frequent in their climate.

Not being able to drive on certain roads because of road quality and other
restrictions also become much more acceptable if you alternative is not having
a car at all.

~~~
superkuh
No, no. It's not about refusing to start or anything like that.

In places that have winter it's not some roads. It's all roads. The surfaces
will be completely covered for months. There will not be reliably or static
visual indicators. People will park haphazardly and arbitrarily. People will
act like people and form new arbitrary lanes to drive in. Parking lots will be
free for alls. This is not something that only occurs during snow events. It's
a multi-month permanent thing.

Interpreting this all and driving safely requires an general understanding of
the environment and human behavior that machines just won't have for a very
long time. It's hard enough for humans.

~~~
wongarsu
I live in a place that has a month of snow or so each year. But we also have
snow plows and road salt, so the time roads are actually covered in snow are
limited unless you are in the middle of nowhere.

Of course there are places where it's worse, and the US tends to have more
extreme winters because of their unique geography (no mountain ranges that
block wind from the North, combined with a huge land mass in the North). But
that's the exception, most inhabited places have very managable winters.

~~~
superkuh
Ok. I am talking specifically about Minnesota, Wisconsin, (upper) Michigan,
(northern) Iowa, North and South Dakota. These are not desolate places in the
middle of nowhere. They are very inhabited. I specifically live in a state
university city. These places have well established snow infrastructure. And
what I said before is still true.

The winter I describe does exist. It exists for many tens of millions of
people in the USA in many states.

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grogenaut
My mom is getting up there and when I think about this and Lyft/Uber really
the Gap is with Lyft/Uber you don't always know if you'll get a driver that
will help you with heavy or bulky objects. With a taxi you wait longer but you
can request it. But with Lyft/Uber there is still a good chance there would be
help (currently).

With self driving there is no one to help.

As you get older you would want someone to make sure you got into the place.
Someone to help you with groceries or other objects to the door.

This would nessiciarily drive you away from local business and to delivery for
everything (online likely). And make it less likely you'd take the car if you
needed assistance.

Eg as you get older where you have trouble driving you're likely going to need
additional assistance that just a car can't provide.

~~~
silencio
Ha, if the Lyft/Uber/taxi driver even gets to the address! It's a constant
annoyance for many at my dad's dialysis clinic that every car service
basically decides to stop in the middle of a lane on a large street and leaves
after 30 seconds, rather than pulling into the parking lot with loading zone
in front of the waiting room. Even if you put the pin in the right spot.

I've been trying to convince my dad to use GoGoGrandparent instead of using
the Lyft app so someone else can deal with ensuring the driver isn't an idiot,
but he actually WANTS to track the driver himself.

Anyway, I'm feeling like by the time level 5 autonomous cars are around, we'll
also have worked on improving helper robots for a big chunk of those needs.

~~~
grogenaut
Something's gotta get the robot in and out of the car.l unless they're all
accessible. Which given the demographics they may be

~~~
unilynx
The robot can stay at home.. the mall or medical center will have its own
robots.

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Animats
It's workable, but there's a problem. The fake-it-til-you-make-it self-driving
car companies have unicorn-sized valuations. One that's actually doing it is
measured on cost and return on investment. This competes with taxi and van
services. You get rid of the driver cost while taking on lots of new costs. On
a small scale, it probably loses money.

Navya and Local Motors, with their little slow shuttle vans for airports and
such, have this problem.

~~~
ghaff
It seems as if there’s a common assumption that taking out the driver opens up
fundamentally different use cases. Even if we assume self-driving cuts costs
in half (not obvious), that’s a big drop but is it a fundamentally change how
people can use cars drop?

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umeshunni
The thing I don't get about how most companies are approaching self driving
cars is why they are trying to first get them to run on regular roads. It
seems like getting them to work well on contained campuses with limited
traffic like old age homes, universities, hospitals, corporate campuses etc
seem like they'd be ideal places to test and deploy low speed self driving
vehicles rather than setting them free on public roads as their first market.

~~~
panic
As far as I can tell, these companies convinced their investors that they're
going to be the next Uber, so they need to look like they're making direct
progress toward that goal. Driving around a retirement home might seem like a
distraction when Tesla claims to be shipping a fully autonomous car by the end
of 2019.

~~~
Piskvorrr
Tesla claims things, and this is a perpetually moving goal. IIRC, they first
announced it in 2015, to be completed by 2016. Well...I assume it could be a
_business_ tactic, to force competitors' energy in this direction, just as you
have noted.

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cityboy2
Or we could just build things closer together. Pros:

1\. We’ve known how to do it for 5,000+ years and it still works. 2\. People
can walk or bike so they don’t wind up on My 600-lb Life. 3\. Reduced
greenhouse gas emissions. 4\. Reduced stress from traffic. 5\. Reduced traffic
deaths. 6\. Doesn’t rely on billions of dollars of unproven tech that may net
work and we can get started today. 7\. Reduces the soul-crushing boredom of
suburbia, which has about as much character as a glass of water. Social
interaction is important for humans.

~~~
frosted-flakes
Cons: You have to live in a shoebox and experience the soul-crushing boredom
of urban cities, which has about as much character as a slab of concrete.

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tzhenghao
Full disclosure: I work for Drive.ai, and these might not be the views of my
employer.

But yes, retired people or just sleepier communities with an older population
makes sense. It's not just because of an early stage rollout of self driving
cars for a good tech shakedown, but also communities like that stand to
benefit the most from it.

My dad back in the motherland retired recently and have generally poor
eyesight in the dark, so he'd rather take a Grab than driving by himself if he
needs to go out at night. Self driving cars could fill this need.

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kwhitefoot
So long as it is a car that CAN self-drive not one that CAN ONLY self drive
then that sounds great.

Retired doesn't mean crippled!

My mother in law is 84 and is a perfectly competent driver. I suspect that she
would find a self driving car more difficult to manage than the Land Rover she
currently drives simply because the UI will be unfamiliar. I'm 63, and
retired, and while I enjoy the additional features that my Tesla S has I don't
want them instead of being able to drive the car myself.

~~~
smegger001
My 90 year old grandmother took a drivers test at the instance of he children
last year. She passed both written and driving portions. My other grandmother
who is about ten years younger on the other hand is a menace that should of
had her license taken away years (and multiple accidents) ago.

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okonomiyaki3000
The remake of Driving Miss Daisy just isn't going to be the same...

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ungzd
The same way as nuclear fusion will help retired people to spend less on
electricity. Both things will likely never happen.

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0j
Here is recent a talk/lecture by Oliver Cameron, CEO of voyage, explaining in
detail why they chose retirement communities and how they built their company.

[https://youtu.be/-j0tc0Y1CIE](https://youtu.be/-j0tc0Y1CIE)

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skocznymroczny
These cars will have accidents, and they will have victims. Perhaps there is
another hidden benefit for offering them to retired people - they have already
lived most of their lives, and if an accident happens, it will be less of a
loss.

~~~
Piskvorrr
I don't think EH was in either of those categories.

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nradov
In general there are lots of ideal customers for all sorts of non-existent
products.

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pawelmurias
It would create a bad image from a marketing point.

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Causality1
Oh really? People with money to buy a car but who can't safely drive are the
ideal customers for self-driving cars? Mind-blowing!

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LoSboccacc
Also insurance payouts will be lower on crashes.

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sitkack
So is mass transit. This sounds like a solution looking for a problem.

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1ste
Paywall. How are commenters reading the full article?

~~~
gdy
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