Instacart (YC S12) wants to be Amazon with 1 hour delivery

Re:Instacart (YC S12) wants to be Amazon with 1 hour delivery by rogerbinns on Wednesday August 01, 2012 @11:34PM (#4327110)

Nope. But self driving vans can do things humans can't. For example they can wait in a neighbourhood until an order comes in so they don't need to drive back to base. Or care that the wait is 3 hours. Or that they are working at 3am. Heck they don't ever even need to return to base, instead just making small efficient local journeys (and using electricity instead of petrol).

Remember that anyone locally would also need to spend a similar order of magnitude in fuel (and likely more) if they went to get things themselves.

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Re:Instacart (YC S12) wants to be Amazon with 1 hour delivery by nl on Thursday August 02, 2012 @01:53AM (#4327485)

For example they can wait in a neighbourhood until an order comes in so they don't need to drive back to base.

I don't think people have fully thought through the impact of this yet.

A year ago I dared to suggest on HN that self-driving cars could potentially cause congestion (because it would be cheaper for an electric car to sit stationary traffic rather than paying for a park).

Back then I was downvoted to oblivion. I hope now people think it through a bit more.

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Re:Instacart (YC S12) wants to be Amazon with 1 hour delivery by rogerbinns on Thursday August 02, 2012 @02:30AM (#4327590)

You are being too negative. In high density areas there is far less likely to be downtime, and the vehicles can wait just outside that area in a sensible parking place, such as one with electrical chargers. It is the suburban areas where they are more likely to need parking, and more likely to have it.

I reckon self driving cars will also lead to significantly less car ownership. Taxis will become cheaper, more flexible and more plentiful (political shenanigans aside). The Zipcar model works too as the car can come to you.

And of course the cars can be coordinated to alleviate congestion. For example the system may work out that a particular car going at 29mph for a stretch instead of the limit of 30mph would avoid a glut of traffic 5 minutes ahead, or take a different route, or tell it to wait 5 minutes when it is empty.

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