The Coming Zombie Robot Driving Apocalypse of You

ging84

antrobus wrote: »

Apparently not.

The cost of refining is about 1.5p per litre. Which is the equivalent of less than $4 a barrel.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15462923

It costs 1.5p per l if you happen to already have a refinery, which many oil companies do, but there is still a refiners margin, but because it is essentially all part of the oil company supply chain, it's hard to separate it out from the cost of the oil, calculating it based on the whole sale fuel costs vs the oil price per barrel shows it varies quite wildly month to month due to hedging, but averages out to a lot more than 1.5p per L

antrobus

ging84 wrote: »

It costs 1.5p per l if you happen to already have a refinery, which many oil companies do, but there is still a refiners margin, but because it is essentially all part of the oil company supply chain, it's hard to separate it out from the cost of the oil, calculating it based on the whole sale fuel costs vs the oil price per barrel shows it varies quite wildly month to month due to hedging, but averages out to a lot more than 1.5p per L

No, that 1.5p is the refiner's margin. Not the refiner's cost. At least according to the people who produced the figures that the BBC quoted. Probably not the whole conversion cost, come to think of it, oil tankers, pipelines and the suchlike much cost something.

Not sure that it matters that much. The Google prototype Zombie Robot car is electric. Which is why it has a top speed of 25 mph.

I've now found that the relevant Wikipedia page says that it has about $150,000 of kit onboard. Sounds like they've made progress from that $250,000 figure quoted from 2012. If they can get that down to $1,500 we might be in business.:)

Generali

antrobus wrote: »

No, that 1.5p is the refiner's margin. Not the refiner's cost. At least according to the people who produced the figures that the BBC quoted. Probably not the whole conversion cost, come to think of it, oil tankers, pipelines and the suchlike much cost something.

Not sure that it matters that much. The Google prototype Zombie Robot car is electric. Which is why it has a top speed of 25 mph.

I've now found that the relevant Wikipedia page says that it has about $150,000 of kit onboard. Sounds like they've made progress from that $250,000 figure quoted from 2012. If they can get that down to $1,500 we might be in business.:)

That kinda implies down to $54,000 in 5-6 years and down to under $20,000 in a decade if the cost goes in a straight line.

If we move to a model of cars on demand, perhaps that cost is being shared across 3 or 4 people. Over a decade lifetime of a car that's a couple of bucks per person per day.

michaels

I guess there will be a desire to 'over-engineer' - or in otherwords require safety standards 2 orders of magnitude higher than current driver operated cars to address public concerns about the technology.

One can assume that in the near future on a typical day 10 people will die in accidents resulting from driver error and one person will break a finger nail in an automated car and the later will be all over the national news whilst the former is ignored.

antrobus

Generali wrote: »

That kinda implies down to $54,000 in 5-6 years and down to under $20,000 in a decade if the cost goes in a straight line....

Might be faster or slower. Don't know. All I know is that if you can shift to mass production you can really get the cost down. What did it take, 20 years? to get a £3k mobile phone down to a £5?

antrobus

michaels wrote: »

I guess there will be a desire to 'over-engineer' - or in otherwords require safety standards 2 orders of magnitude higher than current driver operated cars to address public concerns about the technology....

Very likely. Probably something like 99% of people in the developed world will have seen at least one Terminator movie.

michaels wrote: »

...One can assume that in the near future on a typical day 10 people will die in accidents resulting from driver error and one person will break a finger nail in an automated car and the later will be all over the national news whilst the former is ignored.

I think it's more like 5 people get killed every day on Britain's roads. Most of them probably could be blamed on 'driver error' in some way, I'd guess.

But I'm not convinced that robot cars will reduce the figure to zero. If a pedestrian steps out in front of a car then there is still a strong possibility that the car will hit and kill them. A robot car might well (potentially) have a faster reaction time, and so you'd getter better outcomes, but there's bound to be times when the outcome is a fatality.

globalds

antrobus wrote: »

I've now found that the relevant Wikipedia page says that it has about $150,000 of kit onboard. Sounds like they've made progress from that $250,000 figure quoted from 2012. If they can get that down to $1,500 we might be in business.:)

In the book I linked to in another post I read that if this tech was mass produced for a full production vehicle it would add around $350 to each vehicle .. The tech just needs a mass market

Generali

antrobus wrote: »

Very likely. Probably something like 99% of people in the developed world will have seen at least one Terminator movie.



I think it's more like 5 people get killed every day on Britain's roads. Most of them probably could be blamed on 'driver error' in some way, I'd guess.

But I'm not convinced that robot cars will reduce the figure to zero. If a pedestrian steps out in front of a car then there is still a strong possibility that the car will hit and kill them. A robot car might well (potentially) have a faster reaction time, and so you'd getter better outcomes, but there's bound to be times when the outcome is a fatality.

Almost a death a day plus almost 4 serious injuries caused by drink driving would presumably be entirely eliminated.

http://m.bbc.com/news/uk-23529736

Maybe if your car is being centrally serviced to a known guaranteed standard with criminal liability thrown in, levels of mechanical quality of older cars would rise too.



http://www.safermotorways.co.uk/statistics/

That link has some interesting statistics. If true, plenty of deaths and injuries would be saved by a Zombie Robot Apocalypse.

antrobus

globalds wrote: »

In the book I linked to in another post I read that if this tech was mass produced for a full production vehicle it would add around $350 to each vehicle .. The tech just needs a mass market

Yes, like I said "if you can shift to mass production you can really get the cost down".

Basically, as with any new tech, you need customers who are willing to pay what (in retrospect) is an extortionate price for the product, in order to kick-start the market. (I mean, three thousand pounds for a Motorola 8000X and you can't even do text messaging; you're kidding right!:)) But yet, there were people out there willing to pay that kind of money just for the convenience of being able to make a phonecall from practically anywhere.

I suppose you could say that with a robot car; you don't need a driving license to drive a car, you don't need to be sober to drive a car, you don't need to be physically capable of driving a car to drive a car, and it doesn't matter about your NCD, or how many accidents you've had in the past five years, or your age, sex, or anything; insurance is still only £50 a year.

Maybe there will be enough ladies-who-lunch who fancy the idea of an instant on-demand taxi parked on the driveway, alcoholics, senile half-blind OAPs, teenage boys, and just plain bad drivers, who will at least consider paying £20k for the equivalent of a robotised Hyundai i10 as opposed to £10k for a normal one, and get things off the ground.

antrobus

Generali wrote: »

...That link has some interesting statistics. If true, plenty of deaths and injuries would be saved by a Zombie Robot Apocalypse.

I have no doubt that the Zombie Robot Apocalypse would indeed drastically reduce the number of road deaths and injuries. Which would be good news for everybody, except those on the waiting list for organ donation.

The point I was making that, for example, in 2012 there were 1,754 road deaths, and 420 of those were pedestrians, about a quarter of whom were drunk at the time. With the best will in the world you're therefore never likely to be able to reduce the number to zero.