Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[alway]

...maybe we should just stop cramping millions of people into spaces too small for them? We already have all the technology required for long-distance communication.

We tried that; that's how the suburbs happened. Which is the root cause of most of the traffic issues. Fact of the matter is, apartment elevators are cheaper than a commute. The problem is precisely that it's a case of people wanting to get into and out of certain places, not that you have a high density living and working locally.

[Sheb]

Although you have other forms of mass transit. Tramways are almost as efficient as subways (especially since they often have a dedicated lane around here) and since they're above-ground cost a fraction of what a subway would cost.

[Helgoland]

On car/subway price comparisons: Gasoline is waaaay cheap in the US - about a quarter of the German price, IIRC. And we're the Autobahn country! If you factor in the externalities, car fuel costs go through the roof.

[DJ]

...maybe we should just stop cramping millions of people into spaces too small for them? We already have all the technology required for long-distance communication.

Now, we should be cramping more people into smaller spaces. Suburbs are devouring wilderness like crazy, and we really ought to have more wilderness.

[LordBucket]

On car/subway price comparisons: Gasoline is waaaay cheap in the US - about a quarter of the German price, IIRC.
And we're the Autobahn country! If you factor in the externalities, car fuel costs go through the roof.

Probably irrelevant. The robot taxis will be electrical. Battery capacity improves about 8% per year, and cost of solar electricity drops about 7% per year. If that keeps up, by 2020 solar generation will be cheaper than nuclear and by 2023 electrical vehicle range will be better than gas vehicles.

Combustion engines will be obsolete soon.

[Frumple]

On car/subway price comparisons: Gasoline is waaaay cheap in the US - about a quarter of the German price, IIRC. And we're the Autobahn country! If you factor in the externalities, car fuel costs go through the roof.

About that...

[DJ]

Anyway, there is something really screwy with out economy if a car is actually cheaper to run per passenger than a train. R142, a subway train used in NY, has just 1.68kW worth of engine per passenger. A typical European car has a 65kW engine and seats 4, so that's 16.25kW per passenger, ie almost 10 times the energy cost. It's no wonder we're having an oil crisis.

As for solar energy, doesn't it require copper to make the panels? We've kinda hit peak copper, so going for mass production would drive up the prices of all electronics, including the panels themselves.

[Sheb]

On car/subway price comparisons: Gasoline is waaaay cheap in the US - about a quarter of the German price, IIRC.
And we're the Autobahn country! If you factor in the externalities, car fuel costs go through the roof.

Probably irrelevant. The robot taxis will be electrical. Battery capacity improves about 8% per year, and cost of solar electricity drops about 7% per year. If that keeps up, by 2020 solar generation will be cheaper than nuclear and by 2023 electrical vehicle range will be better than gas vehicles.

8% per years for batteries? Got a source for that, I'd love to look into it.

[LordBucket]

8% per years for batteries? Got a source for that, I'd love to look into it.

I just typed it into google. Quote is attributed to Elon Musk of Tesla Motors, speaking specifically of lithium ion batteries.

http://sequence-omega.net/?p=155

Looking elsewhere for corroboration, here's a site that says it's 6%:

http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/the_future_battery

Here's a site that says battery energy density doubled from 1995 to 2005. That's about 7.2% per year

http://kk.org/thetechnium/2009/07/was-moores-law/

Here's another site that says 7-8%:

http://electronicdesign.com/power/here-comes-electric-propulsion

[GlyphGryph]

Anyway, there is something really screwy with out economy if a car is actually cheaper to run per passenger than a train. R142, a subway train used in NY, has just 1.68kW worth of engine per passenger. A typical European car has a 65kW engine and seats 4, so that's 16.25kW per passenger, ie almost 10 times the energy cost. It's no wonder we're having an oil crisis.

It's got nothing to do with the economy, just the fact that the energy cost of moving the vehicle is a rather small part of the total cost of being able to get from A to B.

On a further note:
If the government got it's own auto-taxis, we could stop needing to make subways handicap accessible too - my city already provides them transport to replace the bus, but it's super expensive, and it would be pretty great for keeping down subway costs to enable an alternative and actually affordable means for transporting them. Making stations handicap accessible is a not-insignificant increase to contruction and maintenance costs, especially when you're reconverting already existing stations to support it.

[LordBucket]

Anyway, there is something really screwy with out economy if a car is actually cheaper to run per passenger than a train. R142, a subway train used in NY, has just 1.68kW worth of engine per passenger. A typical European car has a 65kW engine and seats 4, so that's 16.25kW per passenger, ie almost 10 times the energy cost.

Fuel costs are insignificant in both cases. A car doesn't require 33 full time employees to operate every 1 mile of road.

We've kinda hit peak copper, so going for mass production would drive up the prices of all electronics, including the panels themselves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_copper

"World discoveries of new copper deposits are said to have peaked in 1996.[8] However, according to the US Geological Survey, remaining world copper reserves have more than doubled since then, from 310 million metric tons in 1996[9] to 690 million metric tons in 2013."

The whole "peak X" thing is basically an accounting illusion. Those calculations are based on the assumption that the world's total reserve of whatever X is is limited to known minable sources that are financially profitable at the time of calculation. To put it another way...they assume that no new mines will ever be found, refining technology will never improve, and no financial pressure will ever exist to make it worthwhile to mine less efficient sources. So yeah, we've been in "peak oil" and "peak copper" and peak a bunch of things for decades.

Also:

Copper is a fairly common element, with an estimated concentration of 50–70 ppm (0.005–0.007%) in Earth's crust (1 kg of copper per 15–20 tons of crustal rock).[18] If all this copper were extractable, that would provide humans with a nearly inexhaustible supply of the element (millions of years worth), from that concentration adding up to around 2 quadrillion tons over the mass of the crust."

Basically, it's highly unlikely we'll ever run out of copper.

It's no wonder we're having an oil crisis.

I'm pretty sure we're not. Remember we were originally supposed to reach "peak oil" in the 60s or 70s. And yet decade after decade we increase production and the doomsaying keeping getting push back. Now they're saying 2050.

Keep in mind that the US is known to have one of the largest untapped oil reserves in the world that we're not even bothering to tap because we'd rather pay to have it shipped from across the world. Also don't forget oil shale:

"The United States has the largest known deposits of oil shale in the world, according to the Bureau of Land Management and holds an estimated 2.175 trillion barrels (345.8 km3) of potentially recoverable oil"

That works out to supplying the entire world with oil for roughly 65 years.

We're not going to run out of oil. We're going to stop using it long before we do.

[Leafsnail]

I don't understand what makes these robot taxis so different from regular taxis.  I can already order a taxi online and get it to take me wherever I want with a pretty fast response time in urban areas, that part is nothing new.  Is the slight decrease in operating costs associated with not needing drivers really meant to be something revolutionary that will destroy buses or other public transport as a concept?  Buses will still be cheaper due to the fact that they can service more people at once (particularly since there's no reason they can't also go robotic).

[Leafsnail]

The direct comparison of subway and personal vehicle costs is not valid.  The idea that you could get 20km to the liter in a dense urban area is laughable.  This would be even more true if everybody who took the subway ditched it in favour of cars/robot taxis - indeed, no-one would really get to go anywhere due to the city being congested to hell.

[GlyphGryph]

Because taking a taxi anywhere and back requires more than entire days worth of pay for most people? Because four round trips in a taxi islikely to be more than the cost of owning a car?

"Affordabel" is nothing to scoff at, and the savings that are likely even under worst case scenarioes.

And the taxis would be cheaper to run than the buses in a fuckton of situations - being able to service more people at once isnt a benefit unless you are servicing enough people to make it cheaper.

And the whole bus situation of essentially being the only person on the bus or being crushed from all sides isnt exactly pleasant.

And even in places where public transit is heavily used, most people dont use public transit.

[GlyphGryph]

If the public transit system really wants to compete, they should get their own fleet of small autovehicles to supplement the bus system, allowing them to cut lines siphoning money but still service those areas.

That just isnt an affordable alternative, even with heavy subsidies, right now. Autovehicles would change that.

And make the roads a lot safer and traffic less problematic to boot.