Uber v Taxis

MajorRage

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="nzzp" data-cid="608319" data-time="1471921861">
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1. How much is the car worth to you if you can spend half your commute doing productive work related stuff. Reviewing reports, writing reports, talking to people on the phone, doing accounts. If your house costs $500k less and is another hours commute each way, does it pay off? I'd bloody say so in Auckland
 
2. How much does a plane to Wellington cost: $80 bucks? Plus a taxi or parking - $80 in Auckland, $40 in Wellington. $200 bucks for a one way flight, and you don't have a car when you get there. Compared to what - mileage on an electric car at $20 perhaps? Now put two people in the car - remembering that cars don't have to be designed like normal any more - can have proper comfy chairs. See an example below in the latest Honda Odyssey
 
 
3. Niche market. The market will be anyone who has to commute. Which to be honest is most people. I'm working on a development at the moment - carparks are valued over $100k, and have been sold in central auckland for $150k. Tell me that there aren't people who want to save time and money using a self driving car to commute.
 
So I'm agreeing to disagree. Depending on the cost of the package, I can see widespread uptake of it
 
Example from a current Honda model - sit back, sip on a few craft beers/cocktails, watch some TV/download some internet, kick back and relax:
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1. You can do all that now, for cheaper. People very rarely consider in the cost of depreciation on their vehicles vs using taxis/car services. Remember, you are not only trying to change people behaviour, you are trying to change psyche as well. when I leave work, I leave work. Like 99% of the population. It makes no difference to close to 100% of the workforce if you can do work on your commute or not. How many people do you see on trains/buses doing work?
 
2. Depreciation, technology updates, car maintenance, insurance. These things aren't free. But thats only the monetary aspect. Sitting in a luxury car overnight for 10 hours, car moving with traffic conditions, turning corners etc. vs your own bed, it's a complete no brainer!
 
3. The world biggest selling cars, are the cheaper cars low on tech. Because technology is expensive, and old technology is cheap. Yes, it will get cheaper as it gets commoditised, but come on - you think thats a 5-year window before you even see a small percentage in this model? No way.
 
And then the big thing - commuting is not moving towards the car model. The public transport model absolutely dominates it. The view that commuting is suddenly going to be much better because you don't have to drive yourself just totally ignores the real problem with commuting - the sheer volume of other commuters! Trains, buses, car-sharing, dedicated cycle tracks all can help reduce the sheer congestion on the roads. Self driving cars, simply don't.

NTA

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="MajorRage" data-cid="608333" data-time="1471923235">
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And then the big thing - commuting is not moving towards the car model. The public transport model absolutely dominates it. The view that commuting is suddenly going to be much better because you don't have to drive yourself just totally ignores the real problem with commuting - the sheer volume of other commuters! Trains, buses, car-sharing, dedicated cycle tracks all can help reduce the sheer congestion on the roads. Self driving cars, simply don't.
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Not as efficiently as a bus. But they DO allow a ride-sharing scenario that is more efficient than current single-person commuters in vehicles.
 
Part of the service is accepted that the self-driving vehicle picks up others on the way. So you will have >1 person in each vehicle in the majority of cases. That means less cars. How many vehicle commuters car pool now? Not many, because they don't have people in the same convenient hours and location. Ride sharing doesn't care who you are - it gives you a mechanism.
 
Throw in automated commuter platforms like electric buses and the latest generation of driverless trains, and you're reducing congestion. No doubt.

NTA

Note: I think you're absolutely right in that the change in psyche is the biggest stumbling block. Particularly when it comes to vehicle ownership! I think 5-10 years is a touch optimistic.
 
But I've already got the youngsters at work using GoGet cars and Uber and all that other stuff. Its not a long path from there, and I reckon maybe 10 years is the low bar.

antipodean

The uptake will be first recognised in professional driving roles. Then it will be among the upper middle class who are early adopters, as seen with electric vehicles today. Critical mass will ensure the price comes down whilst insurance premiums skyrocket for those who want to drive themselves.
 
I'm a revhead who participates in motorsport and I'm looking forward to driverless cars.

MajorRage

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="NTA" data-cid="608334" data-time="1471923674">
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Not as efficiently as a bus. But they DO allow a ride-sharing scenario that is more efficient than current single-person commuters in vehicles.
 
Part of the service is accepted that the self-driving vehicle picks up others on the way. So you will have >1 person in each vehicle in the majority of cases. That means less cars. How many vehicle commuters car pool now? Not many, because they don't have people in the same convenient hours and location. Ride sharing doesn't care who you are - it gives you a mechanism.
 
Throw in automated commuter platforms like electric buses and the latest generation of driverless trains, and you're reducing congestion. No doubt.
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So now your nice luxurious, great working environment where you can speak to people and work is in a shared space with somebody else? Thus all work etc cannot be confidential, and you can't really do phone calls at all? Ok, so there goes one argument.
 
People can carpool now ... but they don't. So why would they when instead of driving themselves, they have no driver. Why don't they carpool with taxis etc - have carpooling apps with taxi's taken off? 
 
Driverless trains are irrelevant to this discussions. Buses, less so, but I fail to see why people who won't use a bus now, will decide to start using a bus because it has no driver. There seems to be some sort of view that driverless vehicles are going to be much quicker and efficient. I just can't see it.

NTA

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="MajorRage" data-cid="608338" data-time="1471924067">
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So now your nice luxurious, great working environment where you can speak to people and work is in a shared space with somebody else? Thus all work etc cannot be confidential, and you can't really do phone calls at all? Ok, so there goes one argument.
 
People can carpool now ... but they don't. So why would they when instead of driving themselves, they have no driver. Why don't they carpool with taxis etc - have carpooling apps with taxi's taken off? 
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Now you're taking nzzp's posts and my posts and using them against each other to put a global stop on the idea. Remember that not everyone is a drone who is going to use ride sharing and automation the same way. 
 
The reason people don't carpool now is convenience - THEY don't want to drive THEIR car out of the way to cater for someone else's hours or location. 
 
When the car is not owned by an individual, it changes the landscape. If someone requests confidentiality as an individual, the network will cater for that. If they have four people from the same workplace they won't need it.

MajorRage

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="antipodean" data-cid="608337" data-time="1471923962">
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The uptake will be first recognised in professional driving roles. Then it will be among the upper middle class who are early adopters, as seen with electric vehicles today. Critical mass will ensure the price comes down whilst insurance premiums skyrocket for those who want to drive themselves.
 
 
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I think this will be very very key in how this evolves. Insurance of a driverless car vs insurance of a driven car. Especially when it comes to driverless vs driven car accidents. Driverless vs Driverless car accidents are going to have to be 0% in total in my view.

MajorRage

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="NTA" data-cid="608339" data-time="1471924407">
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Now you're taking nzzp's posts and my posts and using them against each other to put a global stop on the idea. Remember that not everyone is a drone who is going to use ride sharing and automation the same way. 
 
The reason people don't carpool now is convenience - THEY don't want to drive THEIR car out of the way to cater for someone else's hours or location. 
 
When the car is not owned by an individual, it changes the landscape. If someone requests confidentiality as an individual, the network will cater for that. If they have four people from the same workplace they won't need it.
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Please don't interpret anything as trying to put a global stop on an argument - I'm just trying to explain my point of view, and will counter arguments from various posts to do so. I'm enjoying the discussion, so lets not go all silly and start talking about straw-man etc etc.
 
When the car is not owned by an individual, it is no different to taking a taxi, or using a taxi-sharing app. And has the take up on these been so signficant that we can really expect driverless cars to be such a game changer?

nzzp

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="MajorRage" data-cid="608343" data-time="1471924771">Please don't interpret anything as trying to put a global stop on an argument - I'm just trying to explain my point of view, and will counter arguments from various posts to do so. I'm enjoying the discussion, so lets not go all silly and start talking about straw-man etc etc. 
When the car is not owned by an individual, it is no different to taking a taxi, or using a taxi-sharing app. And has the take up on these been so signficant that we can really expect driverless cars to be such a game changer?</blockquote>
 
When the cost of taking a driverless Uber is less than the cost of owning a car then yes absolutely. 
Even now Uber know that lower costs induce demand. I use uber for trips because it is cheap. 
Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

NTA

Fair point.
 
I didn't even know taxi-sharing was a thing. The problem remains that taxis are expensive, because taxi plates are expensive, and paying drivers is expensive. The other problem is that taxis are unreliable and have human limitations.
 
Driverless cars don't suffer that. Electric have the need to recharge (automated in the next couple of years - perhaps wirelessly), and a service window (also can be automated for the most part). Otherwise, they're on the road.
 
That part goes back to nzzp's central point around cost: nothing makes money sitting still. Cars sit still a lot.

Nepia

I think I'm in the MR camp in that I can't see this happening in a 'big' way anytime soon. Of course if it takes off we can revisit this thread and I'll apologise to you driverless car zealots assuming of course I'm not already dead.

NTA

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="Nepia" data-cid="608353" data-time="1471926690">
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and I'll apologise to you driverless car zealots assuming of course I'm not already dead.
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Killed by a driverless car overloaded with 10 people

Nepia

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="NTA" data-cid="608356" data-time="1471927569">
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Killed by a driverless car overloaded with 10 people
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Probably malfunctioned after being stuck behind 10 abreast lycra wearing cyclists!

nzzp

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="Nepia" data-cid="608353" data-time="1471926690">
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I think I'm in the MR camp in that I can't see this happening in a 'big' way anytime soon. Of course if it takes off we can revisit this thread and I'll apologise to you driverless car zealots assuming of course I'm not already dead.
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The thing about disruption is that you often don't see it coming. The iPhone and smart phones are an example - 10 years ago, there was no iPhone, but now smartphones are everywhere, and damn near everyone has one.
 
The reality is no-one knows how they will go, when they deploy and what it will mean. And that's the cool thing - this will go the way it goes, without any of us affecting it. It is possible that these things are fatally flawed, but I would be very surprised given that 
(a) every man and his dog is pumping money into these programmes, and
(b) Google have already had extensive successful trials (ie millions of km under their belt).
 
So, let's reconvene here in a decade. I'll bet my goddamn avatar that there will be off the shelf driverless cars available for sale in multiple companies, which are legal to buy and operate. Given the price drops in tech that we see, I'll be very surprised if we don't see affordable cars within a few years of that.

NTA

Tesla also have a swiftly-growing database of autopilot data as well - from earlier this year:
 
<a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='https://electrek.co/2016/05/24/tesla-autopilot-miles-data/'>https://electrek.co/2016/05/24/tesla-autopilot-miles-data/</a>
 
"Tesla is now gathering more data from autonomous miles driven in a day than Googleâ€™s program has logged since its inception in 2009. As we discussed last time the subject came up, Googleâ€™s miles are city miles, while the Autopilot is for highway driving which gives a distinct advantage to Tesla in term of racking up data based on miles driven."
 
Also relevant to note that Tesla are gathering data while the car is NOT in autopilot in order to do comparisons and make improvements.
 
<img src="https://electrek.files.wordpress.com/2016/05/autopilot-position-in-lane.jpg?quality=82&strip=all&w=753&h=421" alt="autopilot-position-in-lane.jpg?quality=8">

TeWaio

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="NTA" data-cid="608334" data-time="1471923674">
<div>
Not as efficiently as a bus. But they DO allow a ride-sharing scenario that is more efficient than current single-person commuters in vehicles.
 
Part of the service is accepted that the self-driving vehicle picks up others on the way. So you will have >1 person in each vehicle in the majority of cases. That means less cars. How many vehicle commuters car pool now? Not many, because they don't have people in the same convenient hours and location. Ride sharing doesn't care who you are - it gives you a mechanism.
 
Throw in automated commuter platforms like electric buses and the latest generation of driverless trains, and you're reducing congestion. No doubt.
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</blockquote>

This is doubly true because so much congestion on roads is due to human drivers being fucking useless.
 
As in, take heavy traffic that is still moving at the speed limit, then some dipshit on their phone brakes unnecessarily as they weren't paying full attention, which cascades back down a motorway and caused actual stationary gridlock 5 miles back.
 
Take out the disphit on the phone, add in cars that constantly talk to each other so they traffic can move at higher speeds and with less separation, and the capacity of your existing road network increases massively without any traffic jams. 
I think I've posted this before, but its just so amazing when you see it happen. Most traffic jams happen for no reason whatsoever. This is the most frustrating thing ever, and can be largely remedied by driverless cars.

MajorRage

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="TeWaio" data-cid="608402" data-time="1471940756">
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This is doubly true because so much congestion on roads is due to human drivers being fucking useless.
 
As in, take heavy traffic that is still moving at the speed limit, then some dipshit on their phone brakes unnecessarily as they weren't paying full attention, which cascades back down a motorway and caused actual stationary gridlock 5 miles back.
 
Take out the disphit on the phone, add in cars that constantly talk to each other so they traffic can move at higher speeds and with less separation, and the capacity of your existing road network increases massively without any traffic jams. 
I think I've posted this before, but its just so amazing when you see it happen. Most traffic jams happen for no reason whatsoever. This is the most frustrating thing ever, and can be largely remedied by driverless cars.
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Undboutedly this is true. But it's not true when there is a mix of driverless and driven cars on the road. If we could switch to 100% driverless overnight, it would be quite amazing - everything moving uniformly, it would enable logistics guys to work our quickly where true bottlenecks exist and where changes are required.
 
Again, this is a situation I can't see happening for a long long time. Certainly nothing like the 5-10 year timeframe mentioned by many others on here.

TeWaio

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="MajorRage" data-cid="608410" data-time="1471942115">
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Undboutedly this is true. But it's not true when there is a mix of driverless and driven cars on the road. If we could switch to 100% driverless overnight, it would be quite amazing - everything moving uniformly, it would enable logistics guys to work our quickly where true bottlenecks exist and where changes are required.
 
Again, this is a situation I can't see happening for a long long time. Certainly nothing like the 5-10 year timeframe mentioned by many others on here.
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But even a few driverless vehicles in the mix would be enough to break up the "cascade" effect you can see in the clip above, that turns one person's unnecessary braking to a traffic jam back down the road. In the circular queue above, if there were, say, 4 consecutive driverless cars with near-perfect reactions and much closer spacing, it would be enough to stop the shockwave from moving further down the traffic column. 
 
So you don't need 100% driverless cars to get these benefits. You might see noticeable results with only 20-30% penetration - I am only guessing here, but because traffic is a snowball-effect phenomenon, taking just a few humans out of the equation will certainly help!

gollum

<blockquote class="ipsBlockquote" data-author="nzzp" data-cid="608373" data-time="1471933891">
<div>
The thing about disruption is that you often don't see it coming. The iPhone and smart phones are an example - 10 years ago, there was no iPhone, but now smartphones are everywhere, and damn near everyone has one.
 
The reality is no-one knows how they will go, when they deploy and what it will mean. And that's the cool thing - this will go the way it goes, without any of us affecting it. It is possible that these things are fatally flawed, but I would be very surprised given that 
</div>
</blockquote>
 
For me its the fact that it is on the face of it, stupid - driving & accepting people dying while sleepy, drunk, texting etc. And its hard to think of anything that is that dumb that has surviverd the technology coming in.
 
Look at tech disruption last 10 years,
 
The mobile as you note, 15 years ago if you were meeting someone & they weren't there you were fucked. That's even ignoring the smart phone stuff like maps, email, plance boarding passes etc.
Cashless, in some scandi countries its pushing 50% cashless now. I can easily go a week in London without using cash, It's not that long ago I was shoving a Â£20 note into a machine to get a cardboard pass for the tube, now I just wave my phone at the gate, within a couple of years I'll just need the phone in my pocket as I walk past .
Amazon, I can literally buy anything I want & have it delivered tomorrow. I can set it up so once a month I get 24 toilet rolls, 5kg of laundry detergent etc every month, without thinking about it. 
Books v KIndles, I used to get a physical newspaper that I'd miss when travelling, US magazines were either imported & expensive (and late) or not available, now straight to my Kindle worldwide. I can sit in Khartoum & have the Sunday Times & The FT turn up 
Streaming / record TV v having to watch shit live or you miss it.
It's a BIG list
 
Wasted lives & time driving can't go one now tech is basically there. It's the same deal where 10 years ago people said Amazon wouldn't work because who can trust the internet with their credit card details?!!

nzzp

The reason I get a bit excited about this is that it is potentially a game changer for transport. Self drivers start to open up any travel time for other things. It would be like having a full time chauffeur, but free. How cool would that be - have to pick something up from a mate - don't worry, I'll just send the car around and you can load it in. Most of hte benefits start without changing any other aspect of the transport system.

The Silver Fern

Uber v Taxis