
In a self-driving future, we may not even want to own cars - davidiach
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-1121-la-auto-show-future-of-driving-20141121-story.html#page=1
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walterbell
[http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/10/...](http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2014/10/google_self_driving_car_it_may_never_actually_happen.html)

 _" But the maps have problems, starting with the fact that the car can’t
travel a single inch without one ... all 4 million miles of U.S. public roads
will be need to be mapped, plus driveways, off-road trails, and everywhere
else you'd ever want to take the car. So far, only a few thousand miles of
road have gotten the treatment .., The company frequently says that its car
has driven more than 700,000 miles safely, but those are the same few thousand
mapped miles, driven over and over again.

... Safety is at stake here; Chris Urmson, director of the Google car team,
told me that if the car came across a traffic signal not on its map, it could
potentially run a red light, simply because it wouldn't know to look for the
signal. Urmson added, however, that an unmapped traffic signal would be "very
unlikely,"

... MIT roboticist John Leonard says it goes to the heart of why the Google
car project is so daunting. "While the probability of a single driver
encountering a newly installed traffic light is very low, the probability of
at least one driver encountering one on a given day is very high," Leonard
says. The list of these "rare" events is practically endless, said Leonard,
who does not expect a full self-driving car in his lifetime (he’s 49).

... "None of this reasoning will be inside computers anytime soon," says Raj
Rajkumar, director of autonomous driving research at Carnegie-Mellon
University, former home of both the current and prior directors of Google's
car project."_

~~~
pikachu_is_cool
This is kind of irrelevant. Sure, these are problems that will prevent the
technology from existing for at least another 10-20 years probably. But there
definitely is going to be a future with self-driving cars. These things just
need to perform better than a human, which isn't that hard all things
considered.

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MarkPNeyer
if you own a self driving car, you could either have it sit in your driveway
doing nothing - or you could hook it up to an api provided by uber to put your
car to work.

if everyone does that with their self-driving cars, the cost of transportation
will go down. it'll change the economics of car ownership; the cost of using a
car will go down because the cars that exist will be put to greater use - so
why bother buying one?

that whole thing could precipitate a sea-change in how the auto industry
works. we'll see far fewer cars, built to be maintanable with easily replaced
parts, sold to people who use them as investments that generate returns.

it's even going to change the _retail_ model if you think about it. couple the
ability to see anythign you want with an occulus-rift headset, and lower
traffic (thanks to fuller cars driving smarter) means it'll take less time to
get where you want to go, and the model of 'a target every 1 mile' will just
stop making sense.

the FUTURE!

~~~
seanmcdirmid
> You could either have it sit in your driveway doing nothing

Driveways are such an American luxury! There are many places in the world that
lack these. One reason I don't own a car in Beijing...where would I park the
damn thing? A parking space is a comparable expense to my apartment rent.

The real value of self driving cars is (a) optimizing road bandwidth and (b)
getting rid of the need for parking everywhere. I can't imagine people owning
their own cars as densities increase (which invariably will happen, even in
the states), especially if they don't _need_ to.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I've always been fascinated with the thought of driveways disappearing from
new homes in America once self-driving vehicles take off. Future generations
will see garages as a decadent luxury, akin to an indoor swimming pool or a
private, on-property tennis court.

~~~
waterlesscloud
I wonder what percentage of garages are used as storage/workshops/playrooms
now? In my personal experience it's very, very high.

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codingdave
Maybe it is because I live in a small town on a small hobby farm, but it seems
to me that the vision of self-driving cars is very much a city thing.

I can't see self-driving cars being used to drive around my fields, picking up
rocks, towing farm equipment, hauling hay, or any of the other things that
pickup trucks are used for.

Maybe they will be able to navigate 4WD roads to get up into the mountains or
out into the desert, but I'm not sure that would offer as much benefit as it
would in city traffic.

The visions people just look to me a lot like the future of public
transportation, and not at all the future of motor vehicles in general.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
I think this is right: people living in rural areas will probably be driving
on their own for a long time to come. But the world is increasingly urbanizing
at high densities, and this is probably the future of personal transport for
the majority.

It is not really "public transportation"; taxis are not public transit even
though they are pretty ubiquitous in cities (less so in the US, but more so
everywhere else).

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DanielBMarkham
During the War of 1812, word reached the East Coast of the U.S. that there was
going to be a battle near New Orleans.

There was a guy who _ran_ all the way from the East Coast to New Orleans. When
he got there, the battle was already over, so he ran back.

My point is this: technology is not just making us live happier and healthier
lives. It's also beginning to raise a generation who won't be able to self-
propel themselves over long distances, whether by foot, horse, car, plane, or
whatnot. This is going to have implications for the way cities handle
disasters.

I love this tech, but it stands to change the nature of what it means to be
human almost as much as the electric light did.

~~~
npalli
Sorry but this is so odd to hear, but why was this guy running to new orleans.
Didn't he have a horse. Also, why did he run back again once he knew the war
was over. He could have waited perhaps?

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Growing up in the East U.S. and being a bit of a history buff, I've heard
several stories of folks running incredibly long distances in times past.

Native Americans were known to put rocks in their mouths and run for hundreds
of miles. How they managed this over rough terrain is a mystery to me.

~~~
markdown
What did the rock do?

~~~
dingaling
> What did the rock do?

Possibly the same trick that the Foreign Legion used in the Sahara; a small
stone held in the cheek tricks the mouth into generating more salivia,
reducing the perceived 'thirst'.

The underlying hydration isn't addressed but it does psychologically increase
endurance between drinking.

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bentcorner
I'm really excited about this aspect of self-driving cars.

In the future, one day a father may need to schedule a doctor's appointment
for his son. He will schedule it after his son's school, and a self-driving
car will pick up his son in the pick-up loop (just like how he's dropped off
in the morning). Dad will also schedule a self-driving car to meet his son at
the doctor. He will receive notifications and photo/video of the pick-up of
his son at the school. They will arrive at the doctor's office at the same
time.

There's way more things that will change, but I think family planning and
dynamics around travel will be one of them.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Wouldn't your intelligent agent (Google Now, for example) schedule the
necessary legs of the trip with your preferred mobility provider, and keep
both parties updated about location and arrival time?

"Google, make an appointment with Tony's doctor for $datetime, and arrange
transportation for both of us there."

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Havoc
Makes sense from an efficiency point of view. Not exactly keen on the hygiene
aspect of shared cars though.

~~~
petercooper
We (mostly) resolved the issue with things like hotels. A car or bus could
essentially become like a tiny, travelling hotel room and return to base for
"housekeeping".

~~~
schoen
I guess if it were designed appropriately inside, you could actually use it as
an accomodation and plan to sleep in it during an overnight trip, much as
we've had night trains with beds onboard.

~~~
bentcorner
In the far future we'll see the inside of cars the same way we see the waiting
room at a restaurant or doctor's office. A common place that we all don't mind
sitting in for awhile, but it's really not ours to do with as we please.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Like a bus or a train?

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mikerichards
More likely is that the government will (via regulations) make it very hard to
own cars. There are downsides to self-driving car though. Eventually you will
have to give up anonymity and the freedom to go where you want, when you want.
The government will surely "own" the system that runs the self-driving cars
network. Self-driving cars aren't autonomous.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Many governments already make it hard to own cars: Beijing as a lottery for
the privileged of owning a car, given the traffic problems we have here (too
many cars, not enough road, horrible smog). But I think I'm OK with that, it
is necessary.

Self driving cars could be autonomous, unless you believe that technology
freezes in time from today and won't get better in the future. But the main
value of self driving cars is optimizing road bandwidth, especially in dense
cities like the one I live in, and it makes sense that they would be
coordinated rather closely.

It is unclear that the government would own the cars themselves though...just
like governments often don't own taxi companies.

~~~
mikerichards
_It is unclear that the government would own the cars themselves though...just
like governments often don 't own taxi companies_

The government doesn't need to own the cars, since government will own the
kill switch so you can't go anywhere.

Oh, and nice downvotes for not going with the anti-car hive mind that infests
HN.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
They already own the kill switch. Haven't you ever been subject to a road
block before? Beijing was closing down a bunch a ring roads a couple of weeks
ago because of visiting dignitaries; and there is always the occasional land
slide/avalanche backing up traffic when travelling between cities through
mountains.

~~~
mikerichards
_They already own the kill switch. Haven 't you ever been subject to a road
block before?_

You seriously want to compare a government controlled kill switch to a
landslide or a roadblock?

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Whatever you want to compare against or not compare against, the point is that
the kill switch is already there; cars are useless without roads, and roads
are fairly easy to shutdown.

~~~
mikerichards
Except the kill switch isn't already there unless you think that there's a way
for the government to shutdown every road.

If you're fine with governments having real kill switches, then please make
that argument, but please don't make these silly comparisons that are
obviously false.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
> unless you think that there's a way for the government to shutdown every
> road.

Isn't that what they* did in NYC during 9/11? And whenever the president comes
to town, they'll shut down whole corridors. Now, it is inconvenient (not to
mention expensive), and so they don't do it often. Also, our road systems are
pretty fragile outside of cities, there are very few corridors where your car
becomes basically useless if they happen to be shut.

* I assume you are being US-centric here, correct me if I'm wrong.

~~~
mikerichards
I assume you're being very non-US-centric since you brought up Beijing.

But you're still not getting it. This isn't about martial law, which is what
you're essentially describing. Even with martial law, the U.S. way too many
road, way too many people, for that to be effective, but that's besides the
point, so let's focus on the kill switch.

Assume that self-driving cars would be not be really autonomous in the sense
that you would have a very detailed local map or GPS that the government
doesn't have their hands in. I think that's pretty reasonable considering what
we know about government (at least the U.S. government and many other western
governments).

If that's a reasonable assumption say 45-50 years from now, then any
individual, groups of individuals, any area (big or small), any groups of area
can be kill-switched with the press of a button. That is not ANYTHING like
what you are describing as possible now with "roadblocks".

Don't you find that in the least bit disturbing, in that a fundamental of
travel is very easily disabled for just about everybody and anybody?

I love the idea of self-driving cars. Driving is a nuisance for me as well as
most people out of their teens, but for people that value freedom, you have to
take a realistic look at what the cost will likely be.

