From the New York Times:
… a common narrative in Silicon Valley: The major engineering problems withcars have essentially been solved, and their widespread adoption is inevitable. Ask “when?” and you’ll usually be told, “Much sooner than you think.”
Some lawmakers are even talking about scaling back investments in mass transit, which they claim will be unnecessary in a world full of robot chauffeurs. …
Motorways and freeways are the low-hanging fruit of autonomous driving; everyone is moving in one direction at the same relative speed, and there are no pesky pedestrians to get in the way. Much of what is passed off today as “autonomous driving” is some variation of this sort of advanced cruise control.
But there is an elephant in the cab with even this rudimentary form of autonomy. Many companies are planning cars that, in the event of an emergency, hand back control to the human driver …The much harder, and still mainly unsolved, autonomous driving problem involves not highways but cities, with all their chaos and complexity. Self-driving cars still struggle with simple potholes; no one has come even close to demonstrating a completely driverless car that could do the work of a Manhattan taxi driver on a rainy day.
The sad reality of autonomous car technology is that the easy parts of have yet to be proven safe, and the hard parts have yet to be proven possible. We’re nowhere close to Silicon Valley’s automotive “Tomorrowland.” ….
In February … a Google car caused its first accident; a bus collision with no injuries. A few weeks later, Google made a significant, if little-noted, schedule adjustment. Chris Urmson, the project director, said in a presentation that the fully featured, truly go-anywhere self-driving car that Google has promised might not be available for 30 years, though other much less capable models might arrive sooner.
Historians of technology know that “in 30 years” often ends up being “never.”
Full article here.
As Canada moves relentlessly towards a record 2 million vehicles sales this year.
Not everything happens at once. Massive changes like this come in stages. Like the first cars. Or airplanes. Or the cell phone which was invented conceptually in the 1960s, physically tested as prototypes in the 1970s and in the 1980s had several thousand users but in earnest took off in the 1990s with crude phones and basic texting capabilities (remember ? 2 keys per letter ?). Then in the 2000s we had basic “smart”phones like the PalmPilot. Only in the 2010s did the SmartPhone take off with the iPhone. So, 50+ years from invention “it works in principal” to mass adoption.
So I’d say that AV cars today are like the 1970s cell phones. They work in principal. Given that a phone costs less than $500, and is used maybe 3-4 years, then upgraded, but a car costs 30-50 times that and is used perhaps 7-12 years it will take far longer for mass adoption.
It will come in four stages, with stage 1 here today:
Phase 1 – foot off
Phase 2 – hands off
Phase 3 – eyes off
Phase 4 – brain off
To wit: We rented a Volvo in Munich in May and I put it into phase 1 on a 2h trip to the Alps, i.e. set the speed and the safe distance to a car ahead of us. I set it to 160 km/h and “medium distance”. Of course sometimes we could go that fast, but often traffic was too heavy or cars pulled in and the car slowed down to maybe 40 km/h at times .. and then accelerated again, say to 125 km/h, then slow again to 80 km/h for a few minutes, then fast to 155 km/h … for maybe a 45 minute cruise over perhaps 70-80 km. But that was on a smooth Autobahn. But conceptually it would work in a city too. Phase 2 is almost here today. You plug in the destination and it steers itself.
But now you throw in rare, but overall very common events like potholes, fog, accidents, bikes weaving into the car lane, detours, ambulances, failed traffic lights, unmapped side roads and the system will likely be unable to cope with all these situations. So phase 3 and 4 are a ways off, but will work in limited circumstances, say toll highways, say in the late 2020s.
It will be interesting. 30 years ? I’d say far longer than that to get all the bugs out and all the agreements with cities, insurance firms, software firms, sensor firms and car firms. Vancouver doesn’t even have Uber yet and that is now what, 5 years old ? And we think we can hail an Uber-enabled AV in 2030 ? ha !
But, it will come, in stages, bit by bit. Can’t wait as driving in cities is not much fun. I’d rather have the machine take me from A to B, while I blog on pricetags ! Maybe 2025 ?
Until we are pricing road space (per square foot of vehicle plus headway per minute) and externalities (noise, pollution, risk) there will remain a giant market incentive to take advantage of this for whatever purpose the market will come up with. This will result in a vast loss of a public good – quiet, pollution free, safe streets.
Do you really want to live on a street with 4 lanes of “nose to tail” AV’s zooming by at 100 km/hr 24×7? If not, why are we pushing AV ‘s instead of pricing the externalities and road space pricing?
AV’s don’t actually ever have to succeed in a mass sense to “win” – they just have to capture people’s imaginations in the way that freeways and that automotive city did in 1939, and suck all the air and capital out of any non-automotive investment plan.
https://twitter.com/jonorcutt/status/748201794522619904?s=03
The right picture is incorrect. AVs eventually can ride closer to each other when they are “smart” i.e. connected. We might not even need traffic lights anymore as the machines talk to each other and they all flow through the intersection much much smoother.
See here for example: http://www.itsa.org/industryforums/connectedvehicle
Loads of new developments coming. But of course we do not even have a rapid bus on Broadway that can set the traffic light green when 100 people come on #99 bus and one person or 2 cars want to cross. 100 have to wait. Much more is coming that can, and in time, will be done to improve throughput.
Also: as fees or gasoline gets more expensive cars get smaller. Most European cars, on average, are smaller as gasoline costs double. So that same picture would show twice as many vehicles and twice as many people. maybe not quite twice. Say 50-80% more.
“So that same picture would show twice as many vehicles and twice as many people”
Possible. Also possible, government mandates that distances between vehicles on the road adhere to the old ‘two second’ rule when following another motorist (which few people abide by) and we end up with the same amount or fewer vehicles in the same place. Also possible — as cars become autonomous as the same time as fewer people can afford them, they turn into rolling lounges for the well-off and stay the same size or get bigger — taking up even more road space at any speed. Note the current trend of celebrities foregoing regular limos and ‘town cars’ for massive SUV and transport van variants. Here’s Rolls-Royce’s idea of a two-seater self-driving status symbol.
http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/16/11952304/rolls-royce-vision-100-concept-car-photos
With volume prices come down. A/C, electric window openers, head rests, seat belts and a right side mirror where once luxuries when I was a kid. Today even the most basic Kia has it. Eventually every car with have AV features. Today only high end luxury cars have some of them, say parking assist or that Volvo auto-distance feature I mentioned above. Eventually it will be standard.
Bit by bit. In stages (foot off, hands off, eyes off, brain off). The Uber enabled AV that picks me up and zooms 20 cm behind another car at 80 km/h through Vancouver is a long LONG way off though. But as we see with car-sharing, it’ll come.
Three trends are all upon us: more electric vehicles, more automated, and more shared !
“Here are the major mainstream automakers’ average transaction prices in April, including all brands sold by each company, and the amount the average price rose or fell in April from the month a year ago:
• Volkswagen Group (Audi, Volkswagen, Porsche), $39,203, down 0.9%.
• General Motors (Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC), $38,632, up 2.9%.
• Ford Motor (Ford, Lincoln), $35,406, up 3.3%
• Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, (Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Jeep, Ram), $33,901, up 3.3%.
• Toyota Motor (Lexus, Scion, Toyota), $30,463, up 1.1%.
• Nissan North America (Nissan, Infiniti), $27,767, up 2.4%.
• American Honda (Acura, Honda), $27,564, up 1.9%.
•Hyundai Motor Group (Hyundai, Kia), $24,980, up 4.7%. “The redesigned Sonata, up 7.9%, helped the Hyundai brand to a 4.2% gain, while the Kia Sedona, up 16.5%, lifted the Kia brand 5.2% in April,” said Tim Fleming, analyst for Kelley Blue Book.”
“The average pay increase for non-unionized employees is projected to be 2.9% next year, which is one percent higher than the forecasted inflation rate of 1.9%, says the Conference Board.”
http://careers.workopolis.com/advice/report-canadian-salary-increases-for-2015-by-province/
For the time being at least we see that automakers are pretty savvy at keeping the percentage increase in money they take from consumers about even with how much more money they are making. Which wasn’t even the point I was making, but thanks for the opportunity to provide data to suggest your argument that cars will become more affordable is probably untrue, esp. if purchasing power diminishes for the working majority of people.
link for new car pricing source.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2015/05/04/new-car-transaction-price-3-kbb-kelley-blue-book/26690191/
What’s your point, Chris ? That cars are unaffordable ? Or that NEW cars are too expensive ?
You can get a decent used car (say a Toyota Yaris or a entry level KIA) that is say 3-4 years old for well under $10,000 these days and put it on your credit card if you want.
As I said above, since AV features for cars, UNLIKE cell phones will cost far more and are used far longer it will take far longer for the pickup. Today almost every phone has a camera, whereas 10 years ago that was not the case. How many cars do not have a backup camera today that still drive ? 50% ? 75% ? 85% ? This simple and fairly cheap feature is now in most new cars, but to turn that around and have say even a 50% of cars have a camera might be ten to 15 more years. Ditto with electric cars. It will take decades until the majority of cars are electric.
My point was that your optimistic claim of nearly doubling the carrying capacity of automobiles through autonomy may not be as carved in stone as you claim. You chose to ignore my point and make another one, which I’ve also shown to be up for debate.
Auto mfrs, like any good business, will charge what the market can bear — unless they can’t make a profit. Then they will close their doors (or come to the taxpayer for handouts). If purchasing power is hit hard for any reason, or the product can’t be made at a price people can afford, then bold claims of massive consumer uptake are likely to be completely erroneous.
Equating autonomous vehicles requiring legislative changes, unproven technology, and consumer acceptance with the addition of a backup camera (existing technology, no new rules, no consumer skepticism) is a pretty weak argument frankly.
Autonomous vehicles will probably reduce the carnage on our roads to some extent. That may be the only positive that comes from this evolution of the automobile. Hard to say at this point. But, importantly, as others have noted, dedicating public funds to this transportation option is not the best use of our money compared to wobbly diesel buses LOL.
Be careful what you ask for:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-12/your-car-s-been-studying-you-closely-and-everyone-wants-the-data