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A comment on California to allow testing of self-driving cars without a driver present. Parent comment

Re:California to allow testing of self-driving cars without ... by dmix on Tuesday February 27, 2018 @11:08AM (#16474700)
Urban parking lots would essentially become high traffic charging stations. Those cars will need to charge every 100-200km, so owning parking lots will become highly profitable soon.

If I was a long-term real estate developer I'd be buying up a bunch of urban parking lots and converting them into charging stations. Then selling a stock of them to Tesla/Uber in 5-10yrs at a high mark-up.

Apartment/grocery stores/office/etc buildings with underground parking could technically lease out their land as well.

It would still very likely free up far more land than is needed for charging, as so much parking space is used for far longer than the average charging/waiting-for-fleet-calls would need. Not to mention the AI space optimization they would utilize.

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Re:California to allow testing of self-driving cars without ... by djrogers on Tuesday February 27, 2018 @12:16PM (#16475520)
> Those cars will need to charge every 100-200km

More like every 400-500km. Even current electric cars generally have ranges in the 350km+ range, and they're getting better every generation. Unless my work provides me free charging, I'll be charging at home where my electricity is supplied by my solar panels.

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Re:California to allow testing of self-driving cars without ... by dmix on Tuesday February 27, 2018 @12:45PM (#16475865)
Oh wow, it was actually 200 miles for a Tesla 3 which is 350km. And it's only going to improve.

That means in an urban environment they'll be able to drive for quite a long time before charging... that's interesting as it means even less real estate needed for charging.

The implications of this technology on daily life in the next decade will be nearly as interesting as the deployment of consumer internet in the 1990s. There are so many possibilities, it's very exciting...

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Re:California to allow testing of self-driving cars without ... by maccard on Tuesday February 27, 2018 @04:06PM (#16477875)
Interestingly That's not far off the range of an average petrol/gas car according to [0] - I can't vouch for the numbers in that article though.

[0] https://solarchargeddriving.com/2011/05/13/whats-your-gasoli...

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Re:California to allow testing of self-driving cars without ... by ckinnan on Tuesday February 27, 2018 @02:37PM (#16477066)
Yeah, the demand for parking will collapse, which would bring down the value of parking lots, that's going to be a far bigger trend than space for charging.
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Re:California to allow testing of self-driving cars without ... by erikpukinskis on Tuesday February 27, 2018 @11:18PM (#16480638)
I don’t see why they’d need to charge near demand though. Charged vehicles can move into dense areas, drive around for a couple hours and then grab one rider to go out to a charge station in a cheap area, then grab someone else and head back in to the city center.

Seems like there will be plenty of fungibility in charge locations.

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Re:California to allow testing of self-driving cars without ... by dmix on Thursday March 01, 2018 @12:19PM (#16493966)
It's not just charging though, space is also needed for waiting for a fleet call while conserving energy. I'm sure the usage time will be highly optimized but there are still going to be significant differences in demand/number of cars on the road between surge/peak hours and usual demand. Potentially meaning extra vehicles needed for surge are not being used 75% of the day.
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