We're already to the point where if your commute is less than 8 miles or so, using Uber daily is cheaper than the cost of ownership on a $30k vehicle. Just imagine what self-driving cars will do to that equation.
Which brings up the question: why the hell would anyone buy a $30k vehicle for 16 miles of commuting?! You can get a perfectly reliable car that's even reasonably safe and comfortable for regional road trips @ well under $10k, without even looking for sales or deals.
Until true driverless (no driver in vehicle, no insurance policy needed) happens, ownership will always be cheaper than daily taxi rides.
I did it because I wanted an electric car, and specifically a 2014 or later and there were very few 2014s for sale and those that were for sale were overpriced, IMO (in some cases, more than the net price of a new one).
Our other car is indeed a sub-$10K 2005 CR-V with 180+K miles on it.
The true line right now (where car ownership becomes more expensive than Uber) based on my experience is probably closer to an 8-mile commute and a $15k car. That line gets much lower when you add in things like financing, overpriced insurance, and leasing, which do affect a majority of the population.
I should actually do a writeup about this. I have access to all my numbers on it but I've only ever done rough estimates (which were clear enough that choosing Uber/Lyft was obvious). Now I'm curious to see exactly how the costs compared.
Such as keeping your car in a minimum condition. Or having legacy system support. It needs to get patches to update to newer network types.
Completely unattended driving (enter destination and taking a nap) is still up for debate. Requiring a machine to be watched seems like a pretty easy-to-pass regulation.
Current traffic laws are written for human drivers. If there are robotic drivers on the road other traffic laws will be passed for those.
Requiring a human to watch implies a means for the human to intervene and take over. Having a human second-guess the machine will increase accidents. And having the controls available for the human to do so will increase complexity and decrease reliability.
Driverless cars will probably not be magic pods that whisk you around. It's still a vehicle that needs to navigate terrain. And roads are not perfect everywhere.
Yes. I regularly fly in planes, which I have no control over, and which spend most of their time on autopilot. I also regularly deal with machines that do their jobs far better than I could, and I feel no desire to take over and do those jobs worse. Why should that answer change when the stakes get higher and the cost of a mistake goes up?
(That doesn't mean I want to beta-test an experimental driverless car; it does mean I'm eager for a non-experimental one.)
> But people will still want to intervene when it doing something dumb like driving into a pond, or gets stuck on a median and cannot figure out how to get off.
A vehicle that did any of those things would be considered broken in a deadly way. The solution isn't to hand people broken vehicles that they sometimes need to take over from; the solution is to not call a car driverless until it handles those situations (generally by not getting into such situations in the first place).
> Driverless cars will probably not be magic pods that whisk you around.
Yet.
Aircraft operate in essentially empty space, and barring major mechanical failure the pilots typically have tens of seconds up to many minutes to act to avoid disaster. In a car you often have less than a second to react, and certainly never more than 4-5.
Aircraft hardware and software is tested, retested, tested again, and certified. Auto hardware and software is pushed out the door with reckless disregard for reliability.
There is really no comparison.
Those planes with their auto-pilot system still have a means for the pilots to intervene. That's not quite the same as being in a vehicle for which no human has the possibility of intervening. (It's also a bit disingenuous to imply that it is.)
Some accidents also occur specifically when pilots ignore/override the automatic systems; I'd be interested to see statistics on that, too, but I haven't found any.
"What's it doing now?" is a common question in the industry, and the subject of this excellent American Airlines training seminar video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pN41LvuSz10&t=21m41s
(The whole video is good, but that's the specific automation confusion question.)
Yes, it would almost definitely be safer than a lot of drivers I've been in the car with, if not all of them. And it's be far less nerve-wracking than with some drivers.
Do you ever ride in taxis? Or as a passenger in any car? How is that situation any different?
edit: source that I haven't read, but there are numerous sources from a simple web-search: http://www.illinoisherald.com/articles/2014/q4/chicago-red-l...
They also save pedestrian and motorist lives.
Getting rid of drivers is a high priority for that industry. Human drivers are expensive and they can only drive 70 hours a week. [1]
Oh, and Uber is dying to get rid of all its drivers too. [2]
1. https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/new-hours-servi...
2. http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/01/27/how-ubers-autono...
There are numerous tasks shipboard which aren't readily automated, and once you have one person aboard, you tend to need more (cooks, maintenance, multiple shifts, mechanics, etc.).
The reduction in employment in shipping since the 1950s, particularly relative to cargo handled, is already immense, much of that from containerisation though.
Now, let's talk about this again when someone makes a decent R2 unit.
Also, as the other commenter said, the laws will adapt. The purpose of traffic laws is to maintain $X level of revenue, so if revenue starts to drop, local governments will increase the number and complexity of traffic laws until revenue is back to the expected level.
Even if local governments tried to increase the complexity of traffic laws, the fleet owners would increase spending on fighting tickets; this would result in an arms race which would be costly for the local government. It's much easier to extract rent from the little guys.
The worry I have is of increased enforcement of local non-traffic laws to make up revenue.
If the car is already driving, why should a a passenger know which rule the car was following at the time an officer said a moving violation occurred.
The concierge could access the car's driving records on the fly and provide specific reference to traffic laws at that specific jurisdiction. The officer and the concierge could hash out the entire interaction roadside and it could recorded.
Meanwhile, the passenger/"driver" would be sitting there mouth shut, hands on wheel, and hopefully not attracting any attention beyond the moving violation.
creating a competitive advantage for least ticketed cars.
why wouldnt google just constantly update the software to comply with all applicable laws at all times? or Ford or Tesla
certainly Uber would have an interest in software that would follow all applicable laws, given the impression your robot driver getting pulled over would give to a passenger.
That's going to decline significantly once driverless cars are scrupulously following the rules of the road. And any tickets that get written will be going against a giant corporation like Google, with detailed information about what the car was doing at the time of the supposed infraction, a lot more financial ability to fight the ticket, and a lot more incentive to protect their reputation.