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01-10-2018, 03:40 PM | #23 | |
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I still think the tech is decades away to get a Level 5 autonomous vehicle that can safely operate within a non autonomous traffic environment. I don't even think it is economically possible. In the US the political ramifications are serious IMO, but young people are not taught American history nor the unique political situation we have here; it is eroding quickly, so maybe that part I probably have wrong. I just don't see how the transition happens that is economically possible. You state AVs will have dedicated lanes. Very easy to say, extremely hard to implement. There are not enough lanes now. Hot lanes take decades to plan and build. It takes decades to just satisfy the environmental impact assessment to build a road. The legal challenges to build a new road or additional lanes are ridiculous. Throw in the legal battle when a L5 runs over a kid, kills an old lady, or runs into white dude businessman, and AV will be set back years. Comparing the advent of AV to cell phone tech is short sighted IMO. Trust me, I'm no Luddite by any stretch. Last edited by Efthreeoh; 01-10-2018 at 08:08 PM.. |
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01-10-2018, 05:26 PM | #24 |
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Let's tap this down a bit. There are really two issues we've been discussing. The first is whether and if autonomous vehicles will become viable. The second is what effect that would have on the legacy cars and their owners.
On the first point, I think the momentum is enormous. The investments by private companies around the world and there valuations are now well in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Further, many governments have made comments to support this transition. A lot of the technology is semiconductor based which has an extremely long and somewhat predictable history in terms of progress. Some of the technology is sensor technology which is also progressing at a brisk rate. The speed of the AI advancements is more problematic and creates more uncertainty. I'm not convinced the regulatory hurdles will get in the way. The states have been very proactive already and while the trial lawyers will get their share. it won't prevent the transition. For one thing, driving is already very unsafe. The current system allows 30,000 deaths a year and the trial lawyers haven't stopped the use of cars. In addition, the cost savings in both time and money at the personal and commercial level would drive the process. The analogy of space travel to Mars doesn't seem right. Space exploration has primarily been a nonprofit government project until recently. And the private sector does make money launching satellites. No one is going to make any money going to Mars. Autonomous vehicles, on the other hand, are a goldmine if they work, from both a private and a public sector perspective. So all the incentives are there except for the legacy technologies that would lose out. And I don't see them standing in the way. They're all trying to join the revolution. The transitions from cathode ray technology to digital imagery technology or from silver halide photography to digital photography are a lot better analogies than colonizing Mars. Of course, this is a lot harder, but the rewards are a lot bigger. On the second point - the transition from IC cars to fleet owned autonomous electric cars - is purely a matter of speed of adoption, which boils down to cost savings. Those cost savings are likely to be greatest in urban areas and in long--haul trucking. Since self-driven IC cars will be getting in the way of those cost savings (including public health issues), they will be slowly restricted. That might come in the form of which areas can be entered, which lanes can be used, or other forms of control. This isn't flying cars or Star Trek transporters or space colonization. And for what it's worth, I'm not an early adopter, gee-wiz, kinda guy. And maybe I'm being too optimistic about the speed of AI integration. But the writing is on the wall. |
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01-10-2018, 08:18 PM | #25 | |
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I used the analogy of space travel in the sense of tech advancement rather than profit motive. If already said, I just want to see a real transition plan. It's an interesting topic.
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01-10-2018, 09:07 PM | #26 | |
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As I stated earlier, I do not necessarily buy into the OPs timeline. I expect to own an EV sometime by 2030. I wouldn’t be willing to bet I’ll be able hop in an autonomous ride share vehicle before 2050. And it might take far longer than that. Or hell, maybe it won’t. But either way, I do think that the progress being made will continue, and I think that tech and regulatory issues will continue to be tackled and solved. Never is a long time, so when I hear “It’ll never work”, I wonder what the person making that assertion believes about 1000, 10,000, 100,000 years, centuries, millennia from now. It’s a different type of thinking that to me comes with some level of onus. Hey, 1 + 1 will never equal 3, right? Some things just wont ever be. It’s not like you have a group of highly motivated people working on making 1 + 1 equal something else, maybe just a little bit more than 2, you know? Like, hey if we could just get it to equal 2.00001 guys maybe we’d eventually get to 3? No. Nope, that ain’t happening. So, sure I’ll go on record saying 1 + 1 will never equal 3. And if you ask me why, I’ll tell you it’s because 1 + 1 has always equaled 2 and no one - no matter how hard you try - can nudge that even one step toward 3. Fifty years ago you could point to a car and say, that thing cannot drive itself. And you’d be absolutely right. Today, you can point at a car and say that, and then you can go online and watch a similar car - one that came off an assembly line just like the one your own vehicle did - with modifications made by smart people, do just that. So, we are not talking about a zero progress situation. In fact, we are talking about real progress that you can see with your own eyes - not just read about in someone’s lab notes or white paper. That’s all I’ve got for now. This thread isn’t gong anywhere so I’ll make sure to drop in every twelve months to take stock of where we are. And if the autonomous vehicle movement dies and disappears, I’ll be the first one to say, “I’ll be damned - the naysayers were right and I was wrong.” |
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01-10-2018, 09:25 PM | #27 |
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Google also has a "future" problem. They have more money than God and a huge future stream of income from online ads. So they need a project with extraordinary profit potential to meaningfully increase their profitability. They already do maps, big data, and AI. They also have started designing their own chips for their cloud services. So why not turn to a market that sold 17 million units last year?
Two observations on the AV profit front. First, this only works if AV drives consumer prices down. The plan is to drive down costs as fast or faster than prices and thereby maintain or increase profits. Win/Win. Can costs go down relative to IC cars? Well, battery costs are falling and that's considered a technology with a lot of room for improvement. So "fuel" costs per mile should fall. Certainly, semiconductors have demonstrated declining costs over time. The decline in moving parts and the number of parts may lower costs and repairs. To the extent it is safer, insurance costs decline. If AV are fleets, the fewer number of models should save costs. How much could Lyft or Uber lower prices if they didn't have to pay for a driver and could buy two or three models in bulk? What would happen to your costs if you could share a car with someone with a different schedule and the car could autonomously shuttle itself between the two of you? |
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01-10-2018, 09:35 PM | #28 | |
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01-12-2018, 06:26 AM | #29 | |
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<http://www.businessinsider.com/gm-cruise-fully-autonomous-electric-car-no-steering-wheel-2018-1> The big guys are moving fast. GM bought Cruise Automation, Cruise Automation bought Strobe, a maker of miniature LIDAR. Yes, the average age of the US auto light vehicle fleet is over 11 years. AV will take a long time to complete. But it's happening way faster than a lot of people think. Last edited by STK; 01-12-2018 at 06:35 AM.. |
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01-13-2018, 06:47 AM | #30 | |
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Regarding solving the safety issue. The engineering challenge is this, develop a sensor suite, communication hardware, control electronics and control mechanisms, and software all to replace the human. These various technologies are all in a pretty advanced state and have been for several decades. Military weapon systems have had such tech since shortly have the Reagan build up of the military. Space exploration drones have been exploring the solar system and planets since the late 1970's. Just two examples. The autonomous traffic management system either has to be (a) primary individual control at the vehicle level, or (b) primary traffic management at the system control level. Primary individual control is what we have now. It's humans driving cars and reacting to every near-field vehicle in your realm of influence. Situational awareness, experience, and vehicle control skills are massively important to this traffic control methodology. There is some system traffic control in that mix, being road signs and traffic signals. The other methodology is primary system traffic control where there is a surveillance system monitoring vehicle position and each flight (drive) is pre-planned and constantly monitored, this is the methodology the world's air traffic control system uses. There is some low-level human control in the traffic management system, but it is the system that controls the flight (the drive). Situational awareness, experience, and vehicle control skills are important here too, but system redundancy and infallibility are massively important. My informed opinion is that the DOT will pick (b) in a truly Level-5 autonomous traffic environment. Industry thinks it can manage traffic via (a) at the vehicle level to achieve a truly Level 5 traffic environment. The industry methodology (a) of vehicle-to-vehicle separation relies on situational awareness via those technologies discussed earlier. The engineering challenge is to get those technologies at a level of infallible redundancy produced at an economical price. When someone can point to software that is bug-free operating on a infallible hardware platform that humans have so far produced, then I'll take interest in what they are saying about vehicle-level traffic control autonomy. The air traffic control system is really very good. It's vehicle collision avoidance technology is excellent (try to think to the last time when two commercial airplanes have collided in mid air, or even on the ground), but it is chock full of redundancy and relies on several disparate technologies if one of the others fail. But what makes the air traffic management system safe is the distance kept between aircraft; 5 miles enroute flight AND altitude (ground vehicles lose altitude as a space to place vehicles). And keep in mind there are tens of thousands of humans involved keeping airplanes separated from each other. The air traffic management system (b) probably doesn't scale-up to control automobile traffic in any economic fashion. I don't think the industry methodology of vehicle-to-vehicle management is economically infallible to the level of drastically reducing vehicle collisions. At it's end-state of Level 5 operation, I don't think the rate of vehicle occupancy deaths will reduce much under an AV system, unless traffic density is drastically reduced and vehicle speeds are lowered by at least half. Less people getting around at a slower rate, doesn't seem very progressive.
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A manual transmission can be set to "comfort", "sport", and "track" modes simply by the technique and speed at which you shift it; it doesn't need "modes", modes are for manumatics that try to behave like a real 3-pedal manual transmission. If you can money-shift it, it's a manual transmission. "Yeah, but NO ONE puts an automatic trans shift knob on a manual transmission."
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01-13-2018, 08:16 AM | #31 | |
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/12/b...T.nav=top-news |
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01-13-2018, 08:24 AM | #32 | |
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https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/12/b...T.nav=top-news I would have linked you to the previous post but haven't figured out how. I apologize for the redundant posts. |
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01-13-2018, 09:13 AM | #33 | |
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37,000 people in the US are killed in vehicle accidents. Break that down and about 60% involve alcohol. 5,000 are motorcyclists. So maybe 25,000 people are killed otherwise. Take out cell-phone distracted driving and another 5,000 deaths drop off (my guess). So, we're going to spend trillions of dollars to make personal travel more expensive and less convenient because of behavioral problems and vehicle types. I'd rather see more required and better driver education and stricter driving penalties to weed out the people who decide not to take the responsibility to drive properly to solve such problems. If you want to text and travel, or don't want/can't learn to drive correctly, then just take public transportation. Today you can get to almost any place in the world via public transportation and can text your but off the entire time. I have no doubt that AV can be technically accomplished. But at what cost and is it significantly going to reduce traffic deaths?
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A manual transmission can be set to "comfort", "sport", and "track" modes simply by the technique and speed at which you shift it; it doesn't need "modes", modes are for manumatics that try to behave like a real 3-pedal manual transmission. If you can money-shift it, it's a manual transmission. "Yeah, but NO ONE puts an automatic trans shift knob on a manual transmission."
Last edited by Efthreeoh; 01-13-2018 at 09:23 AM.. |
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01-13-2018, 12:41 PM | #34 | |
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Similarly with safety. If AV is less safe it will not be successful. Also, I think you might be applying the wrong standard to safety. If the standard is commercial air travel, then I'm with you - AV cars are decades away. But if the standard is significantly beating current car safety (accidents/death per mile), then AV will be coming much sooner. The GM announcement is sooner than I expected. I'm also not sure why you think it would be less convenient. Certainly in an urban and close suburban environment, having an app-based program bring a car to your door in a couple of minutes and not having to park at you destination is pretty damn convenient. That's why Lyft and Uber are already valued in the billions. Also, well designed AV should make traffic move faster by reducing the accordion effect of stopping and starting that is a major cause of congestion. That's why I think own--driven cars will be slowly eliminated from city centers and cities. Once AV reaches critical mass, the own-driven cars will be really slowing things down. Finally, for most folks, the ability to do other things than drive while commuting/traveling is a big convenience - sleep, entertainment, work, whatever. My guess is only a small percentage of people really like to drive, especially on commutes. I think increased driver training, stricter drunk driver laws and stricter texting laws are a bigger fantasy than AV. Like it not, society has been letting idiots drive cars forever. It's not like society doesn't know that drunk driving and texting kill people. Yet we've chosen not to strictly enforce the rules and not to provide rigorous driver training. Most of the gains in safety come from safer cars. So yeah, interesting times. |
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01-14-2018, 02:08 AM | #36 |
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Sometimes when I'm driving I have to yield to horse and buggy. Horse and buggy is not obsoleted by car in all countries. Even in the United States, especially in Amish areas, you will also have to yield to horse and buggy.
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01-14-2018, 06:27 AM | #37 | |
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So back to the real discussion. My using the air traffic control system was about the prevention of vehicle collisions, rather than deaths per 100 million miles traveled (the main metric used for safety evaluation). 99.999 ground vehicle deaths are due to collisions; a few people do die while driving and then crash. When planes collide in air most everyone dies since the planes fall out of the sky an impact the ground, which is why the FAA tries to prevent air collisions in the first place. I agree, a lot of the reduction in ground vehicle deaths is attributed to safety apparatus and better vehicle design introduced into the automobile since the 1960s, but preventing collisions in the first place is the key to low death rates. Preventing collisions is the primary argument for the move to AV. I'm highly skeptical that AV is actually going to reduce the amount of vehicle collisions while maintaining the same amount of passenger miles driven per year at the same average rate of speed per mile. I certainly do not think vehicle collisions are magically going to decrease while AV is somehow transitioned into the current traffic environment of human-driven cars. I think collisions and deaths will increase during the transition period. Trust me, the DOT is not going to tolerate that situation. Why I think AV will be less convenient is in the future where people envision a less total vehicle population in the US and a person just summons an AV car service to come pick them up; where AVs are a shared asset, constantly moving about picking people up and dropping them off on individual trips. This will be inconvenient as compared to now, walking out to your car and driving somewhere. It will be inconvenient because the overall speed of travel will be reduced, not increased, so it will take longer to get some place. And as Uber proves, it will cost more per mile.
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A manual transmission can be set to "comfort", "sport", and "track" modes simply by the technique and speed at which you shift it; it doesn't need "modes", modes are for manumatics that try to behave like a real 3-pedal manual transmission. If you can money-shift it, it's a manual transmission. "Yeah, but NO ONE puts an automatic trans shift knob on a manual transmission."
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01-14-2018, 06:28 AM | #38 |
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I was going to comment, but I'm not...
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A manual transmission can be set to "comfort", "sport", and "track" modes simply by the technique and speed at which you shift it; it doesn't need "modes", modes are for manumatics that try to behave like a real 3-pedal manual transmission. If you can money-shift it, it's a manual transmission. "Yeah, but NO ONE puts an automatic trans shift knob on a manual transmission."
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01-14-2018, 08:41 AM | #39 | |
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I should have made it clear that I meant that comment in the context you alluded to in your OP. That is, an autonomous rideshare fleet that can fully replace the need for personal vehicle ownership. That means I’ll need to be able to summon one 24/7/365 in more or less the time it takes me to grab my things and walk out the front door. That absolutely isn’t happening in 2019 and probably not 2029 either. 2039? Perhaps. I think 2049 is more likely.
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01-14-2018, 10:12 AM | #40 | |
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As for the first, I guess we'll have to wait and see. I was surprised to read that GM had a petition at the DOT to roll out a 2,500 AV fleet in SF or Scottsdale in 2019. We'll see if DOT approves. GM claims that its AVs are safe. It's not as if the nascent AV industry hasn't thought about the problems you raised. They're spending billions trying to solve them and the investments are rapidly increasing. The tech guys and the money guys see big progress. All we know for sure is that the technology will improve quickly over time as semiconductor, sensor, and AI improve. I think you agreed that this was feasible in an earlier post. So its really a matter of time. I'm trying to think of another industry of this magnitude where everyone was all in -- in this industry every car manufacturer is devoting massive dollars, the two leading CPU/GPU companies - Intel and Nvidea - are all in, the parts guys are all in, several tech companies (Google) are in, the truck producers are in, and the ride services are all in. The Uber example kinda disproves your point. Prior to Uber, the cost and inconvenience (as well as regulation) of taxis, limited their use. Today Uber is valued in the billions because it is able to provide on-demand taxi service in minutes with ease of payment. That convenience and cost has caused the demand for those services to explode making it feasible to leave the car at home, do without a car all together, and make a trip that would not have otherwise been made due to inconvenience or cost. The fleet model makes great sense for the urban environment. AV will take over that expanding market when its overall cost is less than an IC Uber. As this scales, there will be less driver-owned vehicles on city streets and less need for street and underground parking. Less congestion. The biggest benefits are in the most densely populated and congested cities. Less congestion means everything is faster. (Unless you assume poor technology.) As for rural areas, it's likely AV will be individually owned, at least at first due to the lack of density. Pretty simple economics - if the total cost of ownership for AV is less than IC, it will take off. That total cost includes the convenience of not having to drive. It depends how you (and the market) value your time. So when you do your comparisons, make them apples to apples: fleet to fleet or individually owned to individually owned. Also,the convenience factor will expand the ratio of fleet to individual ownership over time. The long-haul trucking future is subject to the same economics. So at the end of the day, I think your argument boils down to how quickly the technology develops. The cost saving trend is already baked into the underlying declining-cost technologies (batteries, sensors, and semiconductors) and scale.. |
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01-14-2018, 10:37 AM | #41 |
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future can be seen.. auto wipers, auto lights, auto braking, auto parking, auto steering, auto autos.. but autonomous higways etc ll take at least like 30 years i believe.. till then i ll be above 60 so its ok hehe..
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01-14-2018, 09:17 PM | #42 | |
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Everyone thinks because their iPhone can take a picture and instantly send it across the world to another person, AV is just going to pop out in 5 years and be error free. That is apples and oranges. |
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01-14-2018, 10:40 PM | #43 | |
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Good question. Given the timelines of the major manufacturers, I'd guess less than 10 years for autonomous vehicles. Once that happens, it will take over urban markets pretty quickly. Given the speed and safety improvements, areas of the city, beginning with the center and moving successively outward, will ban driver operated vehicles. I also see the introduction of autonomous long haul trucking. Lots of money to be saved. I see a mix of autonomous fleets, autonomous individual owned, driver-driven electric, and legacy IC cars for quite a while. It will also depend on where you live - city, burbs, exurbs, or rural. The low hanging fruit seems to be AV fleets in urban areas and long-haul trucking. Low and behold, a day or two after the OP, GM announced plans for a 2,500 AV urban fleet in 2019. I got lucky in my prediction but the economics aren't hard to figure -- Uber w/o drivers. If it works, I see this spreading to the close-in burbs pretty quickly - 2029 isn't unrealistic in congested urban areas. In the exurbs and rural areas it's likely going to take longer for a bunch of reasons. Primarily because it will take longer for the costs savings in both time and money to kick in -- there is less congestion, less density, and lower incomes. In addition, the US IC fleet is enormous and modern cars last a long time. The average car on the road is 11 years old. No one is going to ban IC cars for a long time but there will gradually be limitations on where non-AV cars can go. And if the effects of global warming increase, carbon taxes will increase the cost of IC relative to AV. Another reason I see this moving more quickly than many is because GM, Ford, BMW, MB and the other big boys are involved. These guys know how to produce cars in high volumes, know how to work a supply chain, and have tons of manufacturing and logistical experience. I'd be much less optimistic if it were all start-ups. And costs will come down quickly because of scale. No one really gives a damn about the performance of their ride share as long as its comfortable and clean. People will care more about infotainment and connectivity than performance. It will become commoditized. |
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01-14-2018, 10:51 PM | #44 | |
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On the congestion point, even with your extreme example, there won't be a need for parking in the city center which would greatly alleviate congestion. Typically, 2 out of the 5 or six lanes of a downtown street are parking as are 2 of the 3 lanes of a side street. Imagine if they were open. |
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