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I can't see that working. You'll require a ton of cars taking individuals or small groups to and from work in a big city. That's not very efficient, and the rea

I can't see that working. You'll require a ton of cars taking individuals or small groups to and from work in a big city. That's not very efficient, and the reason we have a metro system in the first place. 1. That's a lot of pollution. 2. You have twice as much traffic, since these cars need to come to your house every morning, and drive back to their charging station in the evening. They can take those trips off-peak hours, but you still have a lot more cars on the road. They could stay at your house overnight to save on wasting energy, but at that point you're just owning a car, or renting one full-time. 3. Do many people take a taxi to and from work daily? No, and this is quite similar. It's too expensive, people take public transportation, or buy a cheap vehicle (this could be that vehicle). This is a replacement for the taxi, and for car rentals. If you live in a city and need to rent a car for a day, this would be a great situation. You don't even need a driver's license, so you just push a button, car appears, and you're taking it to your destination. I've lived in a dozen different cities, and this is something I'd use. I don't rent cars often because it's kind of a hassle, a little scary driving in a new city, and a little annoying searching for parking, but the convenience of pushing a button would encourage me to use it for certain trips. It should also be slightly cheaper than a taxi since you're not paying or tipping a driver. They could probably get creative and offer monthly plans, where you get up to X trips, and Y kilometers, for a slightly better rate than renting on a per trip basis.

prawn 12y ago
1. Less pollution than what we have now given that many people spend time hunting for a park when they arrive, or drive five-seat vehicles even though they're alone or with 1-2 others. I read something saying that in a city centre, often 30% of traffic is simply people hunting for a park. I know when I arrive near my office, I can spend 5-10 minutes driving around trying to get an all-day park. Three times a week I'm driving an SUV that can seat five and has a large boot (passengers are my wife and toddler), the other days I'm in a five seat sedan (and solo). 2. I'd say that depots will be interspersed around the city and suburbs, for one thing. Cars might move from suburban depots over night to densely-arranged city parking/depots during the day, waiting for the evening rush. A car that dropped you at work after your run in from the South is then immediately free to take someone from the city centre down South again, or be available for a courier job, or a tourist leaving a city hotel for a day trip. The mesh of cars communicating will determine the most economical use of the vehicles and anticipate demand. Further, cars communicating with each other will mean that typical causes of congestion (like traffic lights) will be better handled and less of an issue. 3. Taxis are expensive partly because there are salaried humans driving them. If these are electric vehicles and solar charged, fuel and driver are largely out of the equation.
- User9812 12y ago
  1. Not sure I agree with the first point. People hunting for a parking space once a day likely causes less pollution then a car driving itself to a charging station or depot twice a day. Plus, if these are an affordable method of commuting, you're going to be pulling people away from public transportation, and getting more vehicles on the road. If they're more expensive, then you'll just have people buying their own, and then they're in your situation, where they buy an SUV model since it's more versatile. 2. Moving some depots outside the city will definitely help. Yes, some of the cars going into the city will be used for courier jobs, or tourist day trips, but that's an incredibly small percentage. You might have 500,000 automated cars taking people to work. 450,000 sit in a depot waiting for the evening commute, and 50,000 are used for people active in the day. Once again 500,000 people take their car home, and about 450,000 sit idle again waiting for the next day. How does this work as a business? If you use one of these cars for work, you need to pay for 90% of the cost, because that car rarely gets used outside of taking you to and from work. Sure, you could do a ride share with a couple of other people, but still, the few of you are renting that car full-time. It doesn't work. 3. If these can be solar charged, then surely a taxi can be solar charged, so there's no difference in fuel cost. You're paying a driver, and someone in an office answering calls, so there is an extra cost, and I think they have a use case here. In short, these cars need to be on the road all day long, that's how they lower their prices and raise efficiency. That doesn't work for daily commuting. However, they would be an incredible taxi service. Imagine you have a fleet of 100 automated cars, people use an app to set their pickup/destination, and the cars find the most efficient way of organizing the routes and schedule. A car breaks down, and another one automatically reroutes itself. You could give people the option of carpooling with a checkbox. Let people register on the app, and upload a photo. So, you set your destination, and it says it'll be $10 and 15 minutes, or you can carpool with John (25/male), and it'll cost your $7.50, and 20 minutes. This could even happen while you're in transit. You get a pop-up on the dash. Want to lower your rate and share a ride with the person in this photo? Say yes, we'll credit $5 to your account, and take a 5 minute detour to pick them up. Worried about safety? You could review passengers, and only car pool with people that have a high rating and good feedback. I think that's exciting, it should offer lower rates to consumers, and you get to socialize with new people at the same time, so you might make some friends on your next taxi ride.
jfoutz 12y ago
I think you're underestimating the amount of pollution/resources that go into making a car. Reducing the overall number of cars produced would offset a huge number of those extra trips.
- newaccountfool 12y ago
  I think people forget about this point, especially tyres. They take a ton of effort to make and you cant really resuse them for much afterwords.
  - mikeloeb 12y ago
    I keep hearing the "there would be fewer cars" claim, but my counter-claim is that the mileage would be the same, so wear and tear would be the same. Look at how quickly taxis decay to see this. Furthermore, I looked up reuses for tires. There is already a large, multi-stage chain of reuses and recycling for them, for all kinds of applications, from burning for cement kilns to civil engineering and agricultural products.[0] [1] [2] As one article put it "Those same characteristics, which make waste tires such a problem, also make them one of the most re-used waste materials" [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tire_recycling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tire_recycling [1] http://www.designrulz.com/product-design/2012/12/20-ideas-of-how-to-reuse-and-recycle-old-tires/ http://www.designrulz.com/product-design/2012/12/20-ideas-of... [2] http://www.earth911.com/living/travel-living/recycling-mysteries-tires/ http://www.earth911.com/living/travel-living/recycling-myste...
facepalm 12y ago
It will presumably be cheaper than taxis, that is kind of the point. I think most people don't even realize how expensive their car really is (is there such a thing as a "cheap car", if you take into account taxes, insurance, gas prices, maintenance, time wasted looking for parking and waiting in traffic jams). Convenience of autonomous cars might quickly win them over. Charging: maybe you have a point for people who commute from suburbs. But you could have charging stations in the suburbs. I think there will be algorithms for determining optimal distribution of cars and charging stations. Apparently the Tesla can be charged at a normal power socket. If that goes for other cars as well, there would be no reason not to have lots and lots of charging stations (contrary to gas which is explosive and toxic, so you don't want to have a gas station near your house). Anybody with a house front could perhaps offer a charging station to earn some money on the side.
lars512 12y ago
You're right, public transport isn't going anywhere and still has huge efficiency benefits. But these cars can make it better, by solving the first/last mile problem. I imagine them ferrying people frantically to and from mass transit hubs, especially between low-density suburban housing and trains.
- danielweber 12y ago
  You are going to have to, first, make the mass transit so awesome that people voluntarily leave their cars behind to get on the train. As you get more cars off the road, other people will use the open roads to travel into the city. Note that "you have to make mass transit awesome enough that people use it" is not "make driving suck." You will never make any headway in a democracy by telling the majority of the people they should re-arrange their lives to follow your utopian model.
pwf 12y ago
I imagine this working a lot like car2go, which I've used to commute in Austin. The cars are rarely at a central depot except for maintenance. They're left wherever you last used them until someone else gets in. This could only be better than that, as users won't have to walk to find one. There's no reason for the cars to drive back into the city every evening. They could charge themselves while you're at work if they had to charge daily.
digikata 12y ago
If you have automated cars at either end of a rail system, you get rail efficiency in the middle. This alleviates one big reason not to use trains to commute - the stations are farther than walking distance at one end. If you get an automated ride to cover the gap between the station and your work - it complements both systems.

prawn 12y ago

1. Less pollution than what we have now given that many people spend time hunting for a park when they arrive, or drive five-seat vehicles even though they're alone or with 1-2 others. I read something saying that in a city centre, often 30% of traffic is simply people hunting for a park. I know when I arrive near my office, I can spend 5-10 minutes driving around trying to get an all-day park. Three times a week I'm driving an SUV that can seat five and has a large boot (passengers are my wife and toddler), the other days I'm in a five seat sedan (and solo). 2. I'd say that depots will be interspersed around the city and suburbs, for one thing. Cars might move from suburban depots over night to densely-arranged city parking/depots during the day, waiting for the evening rush. A car that dropped you at work after your run in from the South is then immediately free to take someone from the city centre down South again, or be available for a courier job, or a tourist leaving a city hotel for a day trip. The mesh of cars communicating will determine the most economical use of the vehicles and anticipate demand. Further, cars communicating with each other will mean that typical causes of congestion (like traffic lights) will be better handled and less of an issue. 3. Taxis are expensive partly because there are salaried humans driving them. If these are electric vehicles and solar charged, fuel and driver are largely out of the equation.

User9812 12y ago
1. Not sure I agree with the first point. People hunting for a parking space once a day likely causes less pollution then a car driving itself to a charging station or depot twice a day. Plus, if these are an affordable method of commuting, you're going to be pulling people away from public transportation, and getting more vehicles on the road. If they're more expensive, then you'll just have people buying their own, and then they're in your situation, where they buy an SUV model since it's more versatile. 2. Moving some depots outside the city will definitely help. Yes, some of the cars going into the city will be used for courier jobs, or tourist day trips, but that's an incredibly small percentage. You might have 500,000 automated cars taking people to work. 450,000 sit in a depot waiting for the evening commute, and 50,000 are used for people active in the day. Once again 500,000 people take their car home, and about 450,000 sit idle again waiting for the next day. How does this work as a business? If you use one of these cars for work, you need to pay for 90% of the cost, because that car rarely gets used outside of taking you to and from work. Sure, you could do a ride share with a couple of other people, but still, the few of you are renting that car full-time. It doesn't work. 3. If these can be solar charged, then surely a taxi can be solar charged, so there's no difference in fuel cost. You're paying a driver, and someone in an office answering calls, so there is an extra cost, and I think they have a use case here. In short, these cars need to be on the road all day long, that's how they lower their prices and raise efficiency. That doesn't work for daily commuting. However, they would be an incredible taxi service. Imagine you have a fleet of 100 automated cars, people use an app to set their pickup/destination, and the cars find the most efficient way of organizing the routes and schedule. A car breaks down, and another one automatically reroutes itself. You could give people the option of carpooling with a checkbox. Let people register on the app, and upload a photo. So, you set your destination, and it says it'll be $10 and 15 minutes, or you can carpool with John (25/male), and it'll cost your $7.50, and 20 minutes. This could even happen while you're in transit. You get a pop-up on the dash. Want to lower your rate and share a ride with the person in this photo? Say yes, we'll credit $5 to your account, and take a 5 minute detour to pick them up. Worried about safety? You could review passengers, and only car pool with people that have a high rating and good feedback. I think that's exciting, it should offer lower rates to consumers, and you get to socialize with new people at the same time, so you might make some friends on your next taxi ride.

jfoutz 12y ago

I think you're underestimating the amount of pollution/resources that go into making a car. Reducing the overall number of cars produced would offset a huge number of those extra trips.

newaccountfool 12y ago
I think people forget about this point, especially tyres. They take a ton of effort to make and you cant really resuse them for much afterwords.
- mikeloeb 12y ago
  I keep hearing the "there would be fewer cars" claim, but my counter-claim is that the mileage would be the same, so wear and tear would be the same. Look at how quickly taxis decay to see this. Furthermore, I looked up reuses for tires. There is already a large, multi-stage chain of reuses and recycling for them, for all kinds of applications, from burning for cement kilns to civil engineering and agricultural products.[0] [1] [2] As one article put it "Those same characteristics, which make waste tires such a problem, also make them one of the most re-used waste materials" [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tire_recycling http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tire_recycling [1] http://www.designrulz.com/product-design/2012/12/20-ideas-of-how-to-reuse-and-recycle-old-tires/ http://www.designrulz.com/product-design/2012/12/20-ideas-of... [2] http://www.earth911.com/living/travel-living/recycling-mysteries-tires/ http://www.earth911.com/living/travel-living/recycling-myste...

facepalm 12y ago

It will presumably be cheaper than taxis, that is kind of the point. I think most people don't even realize how expensive their car really is (is there such a thing as a "cheap car", if you take into account taxes, insurance, gas prices, maintenance, time wasted looking for parking and waiting in traffic jams). Convenience of autonomous cars might quickly win them over. Charging: maybe you have a point for people who commute from suburbs. But you could have charging stations in the suburbs. I think there will be algorithms for determining optimal distribution of cars and charging stations. Apparently the Tesla can be charged at a normal power socket. If that goes for other cars as well, there would be no reason not to have lots and lots of charging stations (contrary to gas which is explosive and toxic, so you don't want to have a gas station near your house). Anybody with a house front could perhaps offer a charging station to earn some money on the side.

lars512 12y ago

You're right, public transport isn't going anywhere and still has huge efficiency benefits. But these cars can make it better, by solving the first/last mile problem. I imagine them ferrying people frantically to and from mass transit hubs, especially between low-density suburban housing and trains.

danielweber 12y ago
You are going to have to, first, make the mass transit so awesome that people voluntarily leave their cars behind to get on the train. As you get more cars off the road, other people will use the open roads to travel into the city. Note that "you have to make mass transit awesome enough that people use it" is not "make driving suck." You will never make any headway in a democracy by telling the majority of the people they should re-arrange their lives to follow your utopian model.

pwf 12y ago

I imagine this working a lot like car2go, which I've used to commute in Austin. The cars are rarely at a central depot except for maintenance. They're left wherever you last used them until someone else gets in. This could only be better than that, as users won't have to walk to find one. There's no reason for the cars to drive back into the city every evening. They could charge themselves while you're at work if they had to charge daily.

digikata 12y ago

If you have automated cars at either end of a rail system, you get rail efficiency in the middle. This alleviates one big reason not to use trains to commute - the stations are farther than walking distance at one end. If you get an automated ride to cover the gap between the station and your work - it complements both systems.