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Thread: Autonomous Vehicles (new job ?)

  1. #101
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    I was watching a Jvlogger (Japan vlogger) I'm friends with and he was talking about self-driving cars and how he expects that this transition will be like the transition between the horse and buggy to the automobile...meaning in a few years everything will go toward self-driving cars very rapidly.

    Again, this is all based on the speculation that we'd be going to fully self-driving vehicles in let's say a decade. I seriously doubt that would happen, but just to play along...

    While that's a fascinating concept I think it would be met with a LOT of issues and questions that I figured I'd also discuss here:

    - Would self-driving cars promote ride-sharing services more where people just won't need or want to own vehicles?
    - Would non self-driving cars be considered a hazard by some governments who want to force older cars off the road and in that case...
    - Would more cars be retro-fitted with this technology, or are we going to have an overwhelming need to recycle/destroy old cars?
    - Would we need less lanes of traffic and would we start shutting down/re-purposing lanes of traffic that are no longer needed?
    - How radically would "car culture" be affected by these changes? Would people no longer consider the car as a status symbol the same way?


    As I mentioned before, once more cars are self-driving, I think we'll start seeing much lighter, smaller vehicles that won't require as much safety/luxury built in and I'm still not sure why people disagree with this concept. Once we have self-driving cars and a networked grid (theoretically), our commute times will probably be down to 1/3 of what they are now. If all cars are lighter and on a networked grid, there's much less need for heavy safety equipment, and it's a multiplying factor..the lighter the vehicle, the less damage done if it did hit an object.

    Yes, larger vehicles would still be needed for hauling things, but I predict for a lot of people they'll be rented for a short time basis.

  2. #102
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    I agree that self driving will be a fundamental change
    I think the two major things
    - road trauma decreases
    - move to "uber" style, dont own a car (or family has 1), you can just get a ride anywhere for anyone - kids, drunk, never had a license

    I dont think it will be 10 years. The cars arent ready yet, it could be 10 years before they start to sell mainstream.
    Maybe another 10 years before they are the dominant new vehicle and existing cars start to go. Actually I could see old cars quickly becoming worthless - a 5 year old bmw 3 series - worth nothing. Why? Well its not exciting enough for a drive-myself enthusiast. But too expensive to own and run compared to getting a ride service.

    As you mention above - the ride service would mean ownership is not a big deal. Sure you might still have some cool driving car (sportscar or maybe a "classic"). But most people wont be impressed.
    Another thing that will happen - look at a shopping mall - how much space is parking? Well that can mostly go. I think we will end up with a set of smaller parking areas where cars wait till needed. Here we also still have issues with surface roads that are "main roads" but have shops on them and parking on the road. We dont have as many strip malls - no enough space. The parking is crazy. Its a road that should be for driving, 3 lanes each way. One lane is parking. Then someone reverse parks and its now 1 lane for a minute. Usually big politics to get the parking removed - the shops and locals want to keep it. But without car owners needing to park, all that is needed is some much smaller drop-off bays.
    So I dont think we will lose lanes - maybe just how they are used. I can see "autodrive only" lanes.

    There will be some hassles while we are in transition, especially when infrastructure starts to change.

    Yeah I think its going to be a huge change to ownership, infrastructure and lifestyle.
    Ill probably still be driving when it finally hits. Ill be that old guy still wanting to drive his own car (which will be a manual)

  3. #103
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    - Would self-driving cars promote ride-sharing services more where people just won't need or want to own vehicles?
    Not sure why would anyone want to actually 'buy' a fully AV unless he or she is germaphobic. AV will probably become like planes, trains, buses... be pay per use. Unless you're really against sharing, I don't see why anyone would want to own an AV.

    - Would non self-driving cars be considered a hazard by some governments who want to force older cars off the road and in that case...
    Probably. However, thankfully cars do tend to break down over the years by themselves. If governments can't ban them, they'll probably at least give incentives to get rid of it... or perhaps just make it not economical to keep...

    - Would more cars be retro-fitted with this technology, or are we going to have an overwhelming need to recycle/destroy old cars?
    Yeah, this is probably the most likely option. If human error accidents start to cause more and more traffic issues, I'm sure regular cars will either be banned or retrofitted... or people may need to pass much stricter driving tests in order to keep our super licenses!

    - Would we need less lanes of traffic and would we start shutting down/re-purposing lanes of traffic that are no longer needed?
    Kinda doubt we'll ever make roads narrower... probably can repurpose them to be parking spots for unneeded AVs.

    - How radically would "car culture" be affected by these changes? Would people no longer consider the car as a status symbol the same way?
    I think that has already shifted. I remembered I can't wait to get my license before turning 16. Nowadays, my nephew has dragged his feet and didn't get his license until later in college!!! I think kids today are not into cars as much already. When cars become fully automated, surely people will care even less. But I suppose status symbol wise... the rich will still be able to hail a ride in a Rolls Royce and the regular folks can only afford to hail rides in a Honda still...

    I wonder what will happen to car companies like Ferrari and Porsche. Will consumers like DN be enough to continue to support them... or will they eventually go out of business. Later is more likely I think.

  4. #104
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    There should be priority for frequent brand hailers. For example, if I regularly hail a Subaru then when there's a typhoon I'd better get mine as a matter of priority. It'll be like airlines and frequent flier points.

  5. #105
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    Pretty much everyone expects car ownership to drop off but interestingly ownership rates in the OECD countries is still increasing (slightly). With the rise of car sharing, ride sharing, urban living etc it's something which no-one can actually explain. That said, I'm quite confident that quite soon car ownership will start to drop away, the only question is how quick that will happen.

    Parking is an interesting one and one that I think could lead to some interesting side effects because so much is changing in this space. If cars are autonomous even if they're owned they can park themselves, instantly this means you can put a lot more cars into the same space if all the cars in that space can drive autonomously and of all the autonomous tasks manoeuvring in a controlled space at low speed is one of the easiest, hell, self parking is a pretty common feature in cars now. As things move to ride sharing then everything from building design to town planning will change. Already we're seeing apartment blocks going up with less parking as rather than having a standard 1 or 2 carparks per apartment the builders are assigning parks to car sharing and then only having enough parks for a small percentage of the apartments to option in at purchase. The amount of space we'll assign to parking is going to dramatically reduce.

    Traffic and things is an interesting one. What I think will start to happen is that certain lanes/roads/areas will become autonomous only. Once all cars are autonomous and connected things like traffic signals become redundant because it is far more efficient to have the whole thing orchestrated by some big arse traffic control computer. Or lots of little ones, I'm not sure which. (actually, probably both)

    I'm not sure about retro-fitting, samoht would probably be best placed to talk to that. I can see retro fitting of telematics/connected car equipment but retro-fitting autonomous capabilities I'm a bit dubious on.

    I don't think cars will ever be banned, best analogy is the horses imo. They make no sense from a transport efficiency perspective but there's still lots of people owning, riding, sharing horses and still a lot of sport based around horses. I'll still own a car but in 50 years will I be able to drive that to work? Unlikely, but I'll certainly be able to drive it somewhere whether that be a race track or an area with country roads where crazy people in crashable hand driven cars can still play.

    Theres a bunch of other impacts arising from other aspects like rise in electric cars, car sharing etc. For example I wouldn't be investing in a dealership these days, they are dead men walking and are desperately trying to find ways to make money (servicing basically but electric cars takes a lot of that away as well). There's things like whether there will be a rise of coach builders because its so much easier now to design a car, will existing OEMs split into designers and manufacturers (think about an iPhone) and will anyone still do both. If you have your own car and have some sort of blockchain based finance on it if you miss a payment will the car start in the morning or will it drive back to the financier to repossess itself. Or to the auction house because the financier is actually 10,000 individuals spread around the globe.

    There are a whole bunch of technologies converging atm and while that won't mean existing cars will suddenly disappear (just have a look at how many fixed line phones still exist. I mean wtf!) that also doesn't mean that there won't be radical and profound shifts in how we transport ourselves and I'm very much in the camp that thinks this will happen faster rather than slower.

  6. #106
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    Quote Originally Posted by IMOA View Post
    Traffic and things is an interesting one. What I think will start to happen is that certain lanes/roads/areas will become autonomous only. Once all cars are autonomous and connected things like traffic signals become redundant because it is far more efficient to have the whole thing orchestrated by some big arse traffic control computer. Or lots of little ones, I'm not sure which. (actually, probably both)
    Skynet!

    I think while there are still humans driving they will keep lights. It could be a long while till all cars/trucks/emergency/military vehicles are auto-drive.
    But I could see lots more use of "flashing lights" to say you must slow and give way and the auto-drives just work it out, maybe even communicate to each other.

    Traffic jams should be lessened if the cars and the traffic signals can talk. I think there will also be an increase in the smarts of traffic lights. Some trick down of the car technology - if traffic lights have better sensors and can decide to change phase based on waves or gaps in the traffic flow. This could happen before majority auto-drive if the technology becomes cheap and trusted. It would still have basic safety sanity (not green in all directions!). But the timing and/or sequence could make much smarter decisions. So often Im at a red light, no cars coming the other way, then just as the first cars come the lights change and now they wait. If only it changed 10s earlier, it could have finished and gone back for them, much less waiting.

  7. #107
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    Quote Originally Posted by IMOA View Post
    Traffic and things is an interesting one. What I think will start to happen is that certain lanes/roads/areas will become autonomous only. Once all cars are autonomous and connected things like traffic signals become redundant because it is far more efficient to have the whole thing orchestrated by some big arse traffic control computer. Or lots of little ones, I'm not sure which. (actually, probably both)
    I was thinking the same thing, but that's the scary part...as soon as a central computer controls lots of traffic, people will try to hack it and bring down the grid and literally stop an economy

  8. #108
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    I think the latest iteration of Skynet is that there won't be a central computer, right? Just like crypto-currencies or block chain stuffs, which I'm not very familiar with..., all I know is that the future won't involve a central computer. The entire network will be the 'central brain'. Of course hackers could still disable portion of the network...

    That's the main issue I have with AVs, what if the systems crashes while I'm riding at highway speeds? Considering how easy it is for our computers/phones or whatever electronic devices to crash or freeze up... and not to mention being hacked by somebody with malicious intent...

    I guess that'd be the equivalent of me getting involved in a crash in a commercial airplane? Yeah, shit happens, sometimes you end up flying with terrorists..., but hopefully it happens very rarely...

  9. #109
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    Hopefully its a set of computers so that if any fails it can fall back to something that runs, even if its limp mode.
    A well designed distributed system should be fairly reliable. I just hope they are running something better than Windows!

  10. #110
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    Update - https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/12/bo...f-up-for-sale/

    Basically, the initial 2017-19 attempt to create a truly driverless taxi turned out to be well beyond a fairly small company like ours, and no-one was up for funding a small British company to expand to take on such a huge challenge.

    Our second 2019-21 approach was to create a platform for testing and validation of self-driving software in the hope that others would use it; I think probably what we've found is that the big players aren't amenable to exposing their data etc to third-parties in this way, even though when they did dip in a toe, our stuff was somewhat useful to them.

    Given this, plan C of being bought by one of the big players, such that our tech can become an integrated component of their overall programme, is probably the sensible way forward. While the financial result for us doesn't match some of the sky-high dreams that were mentioned by some in the early days, I'm getting a decent chunk of cash out of it as an option-holding employee, so definitely a positive outcome. It'll be interesting to see what it's like working for Bosch, and whether I can get employee discount on parts for my flakey old Merc

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