The Coming Zombie Robot Driving Apocalypse of You

antrobus

globalds wrote: »

So we are talking about a vehicle that will be sold all over the world ..That could as easily be on the streets of Beijing as Birmingham ...I think these ..The simplest ones could be very very cheap....

We already have vehicles that are sold all over the world. They are already to be seen on the streets of both Beijing and Birmingham.

antrobus

N1AK wrote: »

I assume most of his calculations here are based on the assumption that low use drivers, or all drivers, would rent autonomous cars as required. It's a reasonable assumption for that scenario....

Possibly. But low use drivers already have an alternative to car ownership. They are called 'car clubs'.

N1AK wrote: »

..I think a fairly strong case can also be made for autonomous vehicles averaging higher lifetime mileages on average (though I think 1 million very optimistic)....

'Very optimistic'? Is that your polite way of saying 'wrong'?

I think the idea that you can get some massive increase in the utilisation of vehicles simply by making them autonomous is not credible. And for the same reasons that explain why the load factors in public transport systems are frequently less than 20% .

N1AK wrote: »

...I'm a massive believer in autonomous vehicles. I think they are going to make a huge change to society and do it soon.

Oh, I believe that sooner or later we will indeed see autonomous vehicles on our roads, and that eventually the Zombie Robot Driving Apocalypse will indeed arrive. But I suspect it will take some time.

N1AK wrote: »

.. I don't think there's any need to overstate the benefits to explain why.

Yes, but apparently we are not allowed to say that.

N1AK

cells wrote: »

If you dont like my guesses then fek off and don't reply to them

If you don't like people responding to your posts on a public forum then:
1/ Grow up and stop acting like a precocious child
2/ Follow your own advice

I'm perfectly happy for you to spout nonsense anywhere you like without responding, as long as I don't have to suffer seeing/hearing it.

N1AK

antrobus wrote: »

Possibly. But low use drivers already have an alternative to car ownership. They are called 'car clubs'.

Most low use drivers don't have that luxury. I'd also suggest that low use would encompass people using cars 3-4 times a week, and perhaps travelling 3k miles a year, not just exceptional users (people in London who use public transport, and car club once a month to get stuff back from Ikea etc).

antrobus wrote: »

Oh, I believe that sooner or later we will indeed see autonomous vehicles on our roads, and that eventually the Zombie Robot Driving Apocalypse will indeed arrive. But I suspect it will take some time.

Which I think nicely sums up the small difference in our position :beer:

cells

antrobus wrote: »

There is a problem with your 'guesses'. They have little connection with commercial reality.

Like your claim that "robo-taxis might get 1,000,000 miles but over a 3 year period". Do the math. A vehicle would need to cover 38 miles each and every hour, of each and every day, in order to get that kind of mileage over three years. Your guess is wrong by about a factor of ten.

Like your guess about the size of the world taxi market was wrong by about a factor of ten.:)

The capital cost guess was over a million mile life, its not so important if that million miles is reached over 3 years or 5 years or even 10 years


Also a robo-taxi would hit a million miles in 3 years if it did 60mph on average and was working for 15 hours a day. Does not seem implausible for motorway taxis. eg shuffling people back and forth from Birmingham and London

antrobus

cells wrote: »

The capital cost guess was over a million mile life, its not so important if that million miles is reached over 3 years or 5 years or even 10 years...

The average life of a car is 200,000 miles. That million mile figure is a number that only exists inside your head.

http://www.cardealpage.com/column14.html
http://business.time.com/2012/03/20/what-you-only-have-100k-miles-on-your-car-thats-nothing/

cells wrote: »

..Also a robo-taxi would hit a million miles in 3 years if it did 60mph on average and was working for 15 hours a day. Does not seem implausible for motorway taxis. eg shuffling people back and forth from Birmingham and London

The average daily commute is 16.7 miles.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2325262/Rise-super-commuter-Number-Britons-travelling-hours-day-work-soars-50-cent-years.html

That's what you should be basing your calculation on. Not the distance from London to Birmingham.

antrobus

N1AK wrote: »

Most low use drivers don't have that luxury. I'd also suggest that low use would encompass people using cars 3-4 times a week, and perhaps travelling 3k miles a year, not just exceptional users (people in London who use public transport, and car club once a month to get stuff back from Ikea etc)....

Don't know the percentage of the UK population that have access to a car club. I know that there are quite a few about.

http://www.carplus.org.uk/car-sharing-clubs/list-ofcar-clubs/

I mention them because, obviously their existence provides information regarding the economics of the car sharing model. For example City Car Club charges £60 a year, £5 an hour, plus 22p a mile for a small car. Which isn't that cheap.

N1AK wrote: »

...Which I think nicely sums up the small difference in our position :beer:

If you look at the driverless car trials now taking place in the UK, only the BAE Wildcat is actually a car. The Meriden shuttle is just a big golf-cart and the Lutz pod thing is just a Sinclair C5 with delusions of grandure. So I think we are a few years away from take-off. As in actually being able to buy a robotised Ford Focus or equivalent.

Generali

I love how on these threads people get so angry about whose wild guess is the most wrong.

cells

antrobus wrote: »

The average life of a car is 200,000 miles. That million mile figure is a number that only exists inside your head.

http://www.cardealpage.com/column14.html
http://business.time.com/2012/03/20/what-you-only-have-100k-miles-on-your-car-thats-nothing/

The average daily commute is 16.7 miles.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2325262/Rise-super-commuter-Number-Britons-travelling-hours-day-work-soars-50-cent-years.html

That's what you should be basing your calculation on. Not the distance from London to Birmingham.

I don't think 200k miles life for a human cars is at all average, my last car I scrapped at 95k miles and the one before that at 60k miles.

also internet search says average age of scraped cars is ~13years and average mileage is less than 8000 miles per car which would put the average mileage done by an average car at around 105k miles which sounds much more correct to me than your suggested 200k miles


If the current fleet of cars can be replaced by 10 million robo cars that would put the average robo-car at about 27k miles a year

So yes a million miles life does seem too high for an average, however the take away point wasn't that robo cars would do a million miles on average, the point was that the capital cost per mile will drop

So we currently have something like, ~£15k for the car and ~100,000 miles = 15p a mile capital cost

Average Robo cars might have something like 250,000 miles life which would bring the capital cost down from 15p a mile to 6p a mile


As you can see, the fall fom 15p to 6p a mile is still very dramatic and represents a greater saving than the total cost of fuel

---

but I still think in the transition period before full adoption will see higher utilization of robo taxis

the comparison now would be taxis which are shared by 2 drivers, they do maybe close to 100,000 miles a year and the robo taxis would work at an even higher utilization.

Thrugelmir

antrobus wrote: »

I mention them because, obviously their existence provides information regarding the economics of the car sharing model. For example City Car Club charges £60 a year, £5 an hour, plus 22p a mile for a small car. Which isn't that cheap.

What does a car cost to own though? With the advent of PCP everybody wants a new car.