How Driverless Cars Could Reshape Cities

Re:How Driverless Cars Could Reshape Cities by michaelt on Monday July 08, 2013 @06:37PM (#6009816)

  You are looking at an 80-85% drop in the required number 
  of cars in cities (even accounting for current peak 
  traffic volumes. see the KPMG report. I also came to the 
  same number back-of-the-envelope).

The KPMG report seemed very light on details. I'd be interested in reading a more fully worked through example if you know of one.

In a lot of things like city bike sharing there's an aggregate flow of bikes into the city at 9am and out of the city at 5pm, so trucks have to shuttle the bikes back in the opposite direction. Seems to me if one car shuttled three commuters into the city you'd have 1/3rd the number of cars on the roads, but each car driving 6 times as far as it has to drive out empty to pick up the next fare.

What kind of fill rate do you think it's reasonable to expect for cars driving from the city to the suburbs in the morning rush hour?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How Driverless Cars Could Reshape Cities by elchief on Monday July 08, 2013 @08:01PM (#6010243)

Don't have a link for you but I believe that in most cities max 12% of cars are on the road at peak rush hour.

My calculation was based on people using their cars at most 10% of the time, and a utilization rate of robo-taxis at about 60%.

[ Parent | on HN ]