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[sneakey pete]

Audi, Nissan, BMW et all will have their technology on the road a good decade or
two before Google gets their stuff on the road

Google is predicting mass market availability in 3 to 6 years, not decades. These things have already been on the road for quite a while. As of April 2014, they'd logged 700,000 autonomous miles.

In the very article you linked the author says that the 3-6 year target seems extremely optimistic....
As mentioned, the currently technology they use has major issues seeing through water mist and fog. Shrinking down and cheapening up what they use now might be doable in 6 years, but rolling out a new system to deal with bad weather in that time seems a bit harder. Not to mention the whole having to Map all roads the cars drive along before they drive it.

the 2 trillion dollars though. The cars still need to be bought, parts on them are
still going to break and you're still going to want insurance. Not all insurance claims are for vehicle accidents after all.

So what? If you free up only one trillion dollars instead of two, is that really so terrible?

Nothing wrong with it at all.
But its not the "Earth shattering" change that you're postulating in your post.

You still have all of your other non engine related issues. Suspension bushings, wheel bearings, etc. Maintenance is reduced, perhaps by as much as 2/3rds at a random guess, but not eliminated at all.

Let's say you're right. Why is a 2/3 cost reduction a bad thing? Who cares if it's not 100%?

I was merely pointing out that your article about maintenance costs was optimistic, the article was painting it as if you pretty much have to spend nothing ever.

We've pretty much hit the efficiency limit for solar panels,

It was cited earlier in the thread...if I recall correctly the number was an overall 7% increase in efficiency every year. As in multiply by 1.07, not add 7 to the efficiency number. It's slow, but it's still improving.

Also, they can't run during night hours.

Batteries. Also, there's nothing requiring individual vehicles to store all their power for the night. Having external storage is an option. Tesla motors is already working on that.

Higher efficiency cells in the future are probably going to be even more expensive of course, as the manufacturing methods and materials get ever more intricate.
However, you are right about batteries. I suppose one could have a lay-down yard in the outskirts somewhere with a massive solar array using cheaper panels.
That being said it'd be even cheaper, for now, to just hook it up to the grid! Gotta love dem efficiencies when generating 500MW's in a single plant and all. Maybe by the time we get self driving cars solar will be more competitive. I hope they will to.

I guess what i'm trying to say is that for the "costs reduced by 90%!" thing to come true you're making an awful lot of assumptions about technology, engineering, peoples habbits and situations.

Well, that's what they've said their goal is. If you read the Columbia University study, their case study figured that a city of 285,000 residents with 200,000 cars could replace 120,000 of them with 18,000 robot taxis. So, a 52% reduction rather than a 90% reduction.

That's still a lot.

Quite an impressive reduction actually.

Still, i have to wonder about the roll-out of something like this. Obviously you can't buy all 18000 vehicles at once, the capital outlay would be to large, and your usage wouldn't be high enough at the start either, as people would need to dispose of their vehicles. of course you could roll them out progressively, but that brings on the problem, if there aren't enough vehicles, the shared vehicle service wouldn't have enough vehicles to provide adequate service. Chicken and egg thing i suppose.


Edit: reading through the CU report, I have major issues with some of their cost methodology.
"Vehicles that are one forth the mass can be estimated to cost approximately one forth to purchase."
Lol, nope. A lot of parts of vehicles have an inherent fabrication cost, something which wouldn't scale unfortunately.
Additionally, they only assume medium size vehicles and the small sized vehicles. Unfortunately that won't work, and you will still need large size vehicles in numbers large enough to be available, so maybe 5% or so, which will also push up costs.

[alexandertnt]

How are in-cab advertisements supposed to subsidise the cost of the taxi? I imagine a lot of people are going to do what they do on public transport, pop in their earphones and listen/watch something on their smartphones. If many people do that I don't imagine the advertisements being all that effective and companies aren't going to pay for ineffective advertisements.

[10ebbor10]

(Commercial) Trivia quiz on the end of the ride.

[shadenight123]

So, once Google gets the taxis, how far until it also gets the drones from Amazon and becomes 'Googon'? And then, down the line, acquires the capacity for churning out robotic handlers?
And from there...there shall be no Skynet.
There shall be Skygon.

[LordBucket]

How are in-cab advertisements supposed to subsidise the cost of the taxi? I imagine a lot of people are going to do what they do on public transport, pop in their earphones and listen/watch something on their smartphones. If many people do that I don't imagine the advertisements being all that effective and companies aren't going to pay for ineffective advertisements.

Simple solution:

Imaging getting into the car and saying "Hey, I want to go to a chinese place. What's close?" And then imagine the response: "Chen's Chinese is half a mile. Estimated travel charge is $1.50. But Chang's is three quarters of a mile. Estimate cost: Zero dollars, because they'll pay for your fare if you eat there."

You go to Chang's, and they happilys pay google $1.50 for a guaranteed customer in the door because it's is vastly less than they'd pay for conventional advertising that gives no guarantee at all.

Obviously you can't buy all 18000 vehicles at once, the capital outlay would be to large

I think you don't realize how much money google has. Their gross revenue ranks within the top 40% of GDP of all soverign nations on planet earth. They have dozens of billions in assets, operating income of nearly a billion dollars per month and they routinely toss around hundreds of millions at a time on speculative ventures. Sometimes billions, like when they bought Motorola for 12.5 billion dollars. Or youtube for 1.65 billion.

If google wants to buy 18,000 cars for laughs, nobody's going to stop them.

Vehicles that are one forth the mass can be estimated to cost approximately one forth to purchase."
Lol, nope. A lot of parts of vehicles have an inherent fabrication cost, something which wouldn't scale unfortunately.

I don't know enough about vehicle manufacturing to say how realistic that cost estimate is, and I'm guessing neither do you. But, we do have other precedents to compare to. For example:

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



Looks an awful lot like the podcar, doesn't it?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/15/tata-nano-3000-car-coming_n_1967753.html

Short version: car costs $3000. They're adding features for a planned 2015 US release that will up the price to $8000. I think it's pretty reasonable to suggest that an electric robo taxi with no mechanical interface like steering wheel, pedals etc might be cheaper to produce. But at the same time it also has to have computers, camera, etc. We don't know yet how much that's going to cost. But we do know that the most expensive element of the system, the lidar, which cost $70,000 in the original prototypes is expected to cost $250 per unit. That's a pretty big cost reduction. And we know that Audi's system cost only a 'couple hundred dollars. And simply looking at the general trend of diminishing costs in electronics in general, I think it's reasonable to suggest that the costs don't need to be astronomical. Cameras, processors, LCDs, GPS and wifi are not expensive.

So let's arbitrarily stick with the $8000 figure. Hey...let's bump it up to $10,000 per unit, because why not? 18,000 vehicles at $10,000 each? That's only $180 million.

Google could do that every single month, year after year, and it would still only be roughly half of what they've been averaging in acquisitions over the past five years.

[alexandertnt]

Simple solution:

Imaging getting into the car and saying "Hey, I want to go to a chinese place. What's close?" And then imagine the response: "Chen's Chinese is half a mile. Estimated travel charge is $1.50. But Chang's is three quarters of a mile. Estimate cost: Zero dollars, because they'll pay for your fare if you eat there."

You go to Chang's, and they happilys pay google $1.50 for a guaranteed customer in the door because it's is vastly less than they'd pay for conventional advertising that gives no guarantee at all.

Whoops! I should have clarified. I can see that working (after all, we basically already do that with things like tourist buses), but what about this:

That's ok. Just agree to listen to some adds during your trip.

I assume you were hinting at in-cab ads or something similar that are supposed to reduce the price of the fare.

[IronyOwl]

I wonder how much the triggers for insurance claims cost in lost revenue?

According to this overall us auto insurance loss ratio was 69.1% in 2011. For every $100 collected in insurance payments, the industry paid out $69.1 to claims. Though other sources seem to suggest that it's been 55% in previous years. If we plug in the 55 billion estimate edited into the post above yours...55 billion paid by consumers for auto insurance, and 38 billion paid out to auto insurance claims in 2011.

I was more referring to lost revenue from possible consumers being injured or deceased, having equipment damaged, and so on. I believe median income in the US is a little lower than $30,000, so if you count taxes as revenue and somewhat generously assume accident victims have a mean age of 39 (assuming they start at 18, stop at 60, and have an even chance of dying throughout, which we know isn't true), further assume they retire at 60, spend everything they make, and don't cost anything or otherwise prevent revenue in some other manner by living, we get $630,000 in lost revenue per person killed in a traffic accident. Assuming that's true, at 30,000 deaths a year that'd be $18.9 billion lost to traffic deaths annually just from loss of consumption.

Of course, unlike most of the "lost" revenue discussed elsewhere in the thread, this isn't really just spent elsewhere, because we can loosely assume the person was a valuable asset whose expenditures were representative of the value they provided by existing. There are obviously a lot of complicating factors there, but you can probably chalk something vaguely approaching that value up to completely lost potential.

So, once Google gets the taxis, how far until it also gets the drones from Amazon and becomes 'Googon'? And then, down the line, acquires the capacity for churning out robotic handlers?
And from there...there shall be no Skynet.
There shall be Skygon.

I prefer Googolor, because it's more amusing to whisper fearfully as the reason the sky is synonymous with terror.

Whoops! I should have clarified. I can see that working (after all, we basically already do that with things like tourist buses), but what about this:

That's ok. Just agree to listen to some adds during your trip.

I assume you were hinting at in-cab ads or something similar that are supposed to reduce the price of the fare.

Well, look at advertising in its current state: not exactly streamlined or subtle. Would advertisers be willing to risk you putting your bag over the screen and plugging your ears with music in exchange for the off chance you'll find the advertisement interesting or pay attention to it anyway? Don't see why not; they're already paying to let you flip past magazine advertisements, fast forward through commercials, and completely ignore banner ads.

Granted, the fact that you have to physically make the car move removes some of the nearly-free why-nots you can get over the internet. But I suspect, similar to television, that competition would be high enough to cover a surprising amount of cost. Especially since at a bare minimum, and somewhat similarly to internet ads, the car knows where you're going, and therefore at least one thing you're at least marginally interested in. Chang's doesn't necessarily have to bribe you outright to let you know they exist and are close by, after all, and they're going to be hard-pressed to let you know any other way.

Throw in persistent accounts or phone data, or god forbid linking either of those to every other piece of information they're harvesting from you (or someone they suspect is you) everywhere else, and even non-local advertisers might consider the chance to target you with ads they're pretty sure you'll like to be overwhelmingly tempting.


EDIT: You know, this is worse than I thought. Imagine instead of explicitly demanding to go to Aardvark Pizzeria, you simply tell the Googles to deliver you to a restaurant. It then displays a list of such establishments, sorted by food type, waiting time, travel time, estimated prices, user ratings, and so on. It lists their menu, likely with appetizing pictures of each entry, along with flattering images of the restaurant proper. Should you declare your intention to be delivered there, it automatically contacts the establishment in question to reserve you a place.

Now imagine it only does this for Google Trusted Associates^TM who are on time with their fees. And sure, they can say no, but then they don't show up in the lists and therefore get zero customers who aren't explicitly looking for them, willing to dig through a few extra menus to find them, and ready to forgo a bunch of convenient features to visit them... or who are really old-fashioned and so still own a car at great expense, for no particular reason, and in exchange for a non-neglible amount of risk and inconvenience. So in a lot of cases, maybe they can't actually say no, which means in effect that Google's basically a shareholder at the very least.

At that point, Google might be willing to cover the cost of advertising for things themselves, since they own it all anyway. Even if you're just going to a friend's house and therefore aren't giving them any hints about what you might like to spend money on, throwing random ignorable hardware store advertisements at you might end up being worth it in the long run.

This also naturally brings us back to my earlier concern about Google being the only one in on this with a vengeance. There was fairly recently some hubbub about YouTube basically strongarming independent artists because it could, I wonder what they'd be able and willing to do here.

[LordBucket]

I assume you were hinting at in-cab ads or something similar that are supposed to reduce the price of the fare.

That was the original scenario proposed earlier in the thread. But targeted advertising addresses the specific problem you brought up. And it's very easy to imagine companies going for it. Wouldn't be much different than offering coupons.

I suppose ultimately it depends on just how cheap it is to run these things. Among the various articles I've seen estimates ranging anywhere half to 10% the cost per mile of owning a vehicle. Which is 60 cents per mile.

So if cost to google to maintain the fleet actually does reach the lower end of that: 6 cents per mile...that's crazy cheap. Can you imagine 60 cents for a ten mile drive? Even pay-per-click web ads are around 90 cents each. For a click. If it only costs google 60 cents to pay to keep you a captive audience for ten mile drive, that's easily cheap enough that it might be plausible to have the things be universally free to ride through some sort of paid advertising.

I was more referring to lost revenue from possible consumers being injured or deceased, having equipment damaged, and so on. I believe median income in the US is a little lower than $30,000, so if you count taxes as revenue and somewhat generously assume accident victims have a mean age of 39 (assuming they start at 18, stop at 60, and have an even chance of dying throughout, which we know isn't true), further assume they retire at 60, spend everything they make, and don't cost anything or otherwise prevent revenue in some other manner by living, we get $630,000 in lost revenue per person killed in a traffic accident. Assuming that's true, at 30,000 deaths a year that'd be $18.9 billion lost to traffic deaths annually just from loss of consumption.

Of course, unlike most of the "lost" revenue discussed elsewhere in the thread, this isn't really just spent elsewhere, because we can loosely assume the person was a valuable asset whose expenditures were representative of the value they provided by existing. There are obviously a lot of complicating factors there, but you can probably chalk something vaguely approaching that value up to completely lost potential.

As for the deaths part, wouldn't that be better with driverless cars? The assumption is that they'll be safer. Fewer accidents, fewer deaths.

As for the rest, yes. Reduced consumption, reduced velocity of money, reduced work requirements, fewer jobs. That was touched on in the OP. This could put quite a few million people out of work and render many industries more or less obsolete. And the fewer accidents means less need for mechanics, insurance agents, tow truck drivers and dispatchers, hospital staff, etc.

I think that's something we're going to face as a society sooner or later.

[IronyOwl]

As for the deaths part, wouldn't that be better with driverless cars? The assumption is that they'll be safer. Fewer accidents, fewer deaths.

That's what I was trying to say. It may have come across backwards because most of the "lost" revenue we've been talking about so far has been assuming the things currently costing money no longer do so, while this was talking about theoretical revenue that's currently being "lost."

As for the rest, yes. Reduced consumption, reduced velocity of money, reduced work requirements, fewer jobs. That was touched on in the OP. This could put quite a few million people out of work and render many industries more or less obsolete. And the fewer accidents means less need for mechanics, insurance agents, tow truck drivers and dispatchers, hospital staff, etc.

I think that's something we're going to face as a society sooner or later.

Personally, I think stone tools are going to destroy the hunting and gathering industries, and that's just terrible. Half the tribe will be unemployed!

[LordBucket]

Personally, I think stone tools are going to destroy the hunting and gathering industries,
and that's just terrible. Half the tribe will be unemployed!

I'm not saying it's a bad thing. But the transition to a post scarcity society might be difficult. According to a study done by Oxford University, 47% of all jobs are at risk of automation even with current technology.

It's extremely likely that there are people preparing for college right now who will never work a job for money in their entire lives. I think that an awful lot of people aren't mentally prepared for that.

[alexandertnt]

I was more thinking of my own scenario, driving one hour to Uni and one hour back. In this case there is no advertisement for the specific destination (since I know specifically where I want to go), and I would just listen to music/something similar on the way (like I do now).

Many people I know are in a similar situation, and I would think such a situation would make up the majority of time on the road overall (or at least a large minority). This is Australia after all, you bring a good book or something when you intend to go anywhere

they're already paying to let you flip past magazine advertisements, fast forward through commercials, and completely ignore banner ads.

But you still see them, thats where they are effective. When you flick through a magazine to find a page you are still processing whats on the advert pages inbetween, and you certainly are going to notice (even for a split second) the banner ads on websites.

As an example, some older TV recorders used to let you skip ads altogether. As you could imagine the broadcasting companies weren't too thrilled about this, but they were much less concerned with the ability to simply fast forward through them.

It's a bit of a different situation when somebody just focuses entirely on their iThing and does not even register the existance of the advertisements. I imagine that many people on longer journies are going to do something like this.

But I suppose advertising would probably work to some degree for shorter trips, where people may not bother with such things.

[Leafsnail]

I've realised the fundamental problem with the suggestion that this technology would somehow slash vehicle usage by 90% - the fact that most people use their cars at the same time.  Yeah, most people don't drive their cars for more than 2 hours a day, leaving you with 90-95% "downtime".  But most people use their cars in roughly the same 2 hours.  That is, most people need to go to work, drop off the kids, come back from work, pick up the kids, and so on.  In other words you'd need about as many taxis as there are cars during the rush hour periods for the taxi model to fully take over, and then you'd have dozens of taxis just idling about (on the roads, apparently) doing nothing for the rest of the time.  I don't see how that would reduce congestion, and I also don't see how that's a viable business model, let alone one that slashes costs by 95% or whatever.

[freeformschooler]

Personally, I think stone tools are going to destroy the hunting and gathering industries,
and that's just terrible. Half the tribe will be unemployed!

I'm not saying it's a bad thing. But the transition to a post scarcity society might be difficult. According to a study done by Oxford University, 47% of all jobs are at risk of automation even with current technology.

It's extremely likely that there are people preparing for college right now who will never work a job for money in their entire lives. I think that an awful lot of people aren't mentally prepared for that.

The less brainwashed college age people are supporting transitional movements like basic income.

Being unemployed is not terrible if it doesn't mean destitution. I think we can do better than SSI and whatever it is Utah is trying to do.

[Nirur Torir]

If the adverts are too horrible, buy an iPod or MP3 player or something and just listen to music with your eyes closed.

I don't see much of a reason why the ads would need to be annoying. Businesses paying round-trip transportation fees to their regular customers is a powerful way to increase customer loyalty. Just set the screen to "This trip paid for by Generimart. We value our customers; thank you for shopping with us." for five seconds.

[alexandertnt]

I don't see much of a reason why the ads would need to be annoying. Businesses paying round-trip transportation fees to their regular customers is a powerful way to increase customer loyalty. Just set the screen to "This trip paid for by Generimart. We value our customers; thank you for shopping with us." for five seconds.

Advertising does not just magically make stuff cheaper, the revenue has to comes from somewhere. The only reason Genericmart would pay for your fare is if they think they can extract more money from you then you otherwise would have spent.

A one-off fare subsidy to take you to their business makes some sense, they absorb the cost and make up the difference with profit from new customers regularly spending money in the future.

But in Genericmart's case, they have to make up the lost money they keep spending on you somewhere, and it's going to have to come from their "loyal customers" through various means (increased price of groceries, for example). So all your really going to do is make the fare look free.