The Coming Zombie Robot Driving Apocalypse of You

cells

The impact on trains will be massive. Imagine a robo taxi that is set to work between Birmingham and London taking passengers from one to the other.

if there was say 500 robo taxis set to do that journey you would have one arrive every 30 seconds and take 6 passengers and set off. The next one arrives 30 sec later and gets its 6 passengers and sets off. Etc.

you have effectively created a 'train line' with a capacity of 720 passengers per hour in each direction. No need for a £50B spend ro build a track. And at £10 per ticket and no waiting customers are much happier than paying £100 for the train and waiting 20 mins at the platform.


also it would be more energy efficient too. Although trains are more energy efficient than cars the train system isnt. Even the london underground is only as efficient as driving a new car with no passengers but the driver. So these could be 80% more fuel efficient than even trains.

also its an incremental infrastructure. If you need more capacity from Birmingham to London just allocate a few more dead cheap robo taxis. If you find in the future that people dont need to travel between Birmingham and London so much just reallocate the taxis to other routes. With trains once the track is built its a sunk investment even ifits never used aagain

lostinrates

cells wrote: »

You are assuming it will be loke the current taxi fleet. It will instead be a fleet of around 10 million sepf drive taxis in england alone.

so all the cars you see around you now, imagine half of them were robo cars. So plentiful that even rural is easily cateted for.

even a tiny village of say 50 homes would have at least 10 robo taxis for them.



Where it wouldn't work so well is TRUE rural like the hace in America or Australia. Eg where the next house is 20 miles away. But that doesn't exist in the UK and even where it does exist it represents much less than 1% of the population.

My last village was six homes. I can't all the inhabitants of that place getting by with six cars.

lostinrates

Generali wrote: »

The way I see it then, things go one of 2 ways, either it simply becomes so expensive to drive yourself that only very rich people get to live in the countryside or (more likely) poor people in the countryside will simply have to live near where they work or live a less pleasant life.

As for commuters, I can envisage people looking to have more staggered starts. Running an office from, say, 7-7 on shifts makes a lot of sense and would smooth peaks in car demand.

Sounding less and less fun, huh? . I think it sounds like people would work from home more, or maybe me taxied to trains and taxied on again.


Thes poor people in the country side living near where they work is great in theory. But in reality it struggles. Like so many of these ideas.....they sound fine theoretically, but in real like they struggle I think.

Unlike the car which still sounds ace.

cells

lostinrates wrote: »

My last village was six homes. I can't all the inhabitants of that place getting by with six cars.

However many car that village has can be replaced by the same number of robo cars. What it might mean is that the cist per mile is the same as it is now for private human vehicles. While everyone else will see transport costs fall from over 30p a mile to under 10p.

cells

lostis_nrates wrote: »

Sounding less and less fun, huh? . I think it sounds like people would work from home more, or maybe me taxied to trains and taxied on again.


Thes poor people in the country side living near where they work is great in theory. But in reality it struggles. Like so many of these ideas.....they sound fine theoretically, but in real like they struggle I think.

Unlike the car which still sounds ace.

Worse case is you buy a self drive car that is yours and you own it.

you are still better off as insurance bill will be lower, fuel bill lower, accidents lower and less traffic and faster speeds.

There is no negative over what exists today

the potential positives are however huge. To the tune of tens of billions and maybe upto £100B a year each year in just the UK

lostinrates

cells wrote: »

However many car that village has can be replaced by the same number of robo cars. What it might mean is that the cist per mile is the same as it is now for private human vehicles. While everyone else will see transport costs fall from over 30p a mile to under 10p.

That seems more realistic than six for a village of fifty homes in practicality.


I think the problem with rural is while the comparison with other countries where homes are further apart is very valid, the issue here is that the how far your neighbours are isn't really the issue, its where your work and your spouses work are . Which could be an hour in opposite directions. Or one home or land based, one town based. And land and home based jobs sytill need access to services. PC repairs, tractor repairs/agricultural merchants, vets, shops.




Which makes , in this lets call it a thought experiment (though I recognise the technology is far from that...but the impact projections era is in that realm, ) current planning laws of expanding communities seem truley bizarre and the shire based nimbies really might well be right but not for the reasons they think. Development of lower cost housing as being actively sought in rural communities might be poverty traps of the future?

cells

lostinrates wrote: »

That seems more realistic than six for a village of fifty homes in practicality.


I think the problem with rural is while the comparison with other countries where homes are further apart is very valid, the issue here is that the how far your neighbours are isn't really the issue, its where your work and your spouses work are . Which could be an hour in opposite directions. Or one home or land based, one town based. And land and home based jobs sytill need access to services. PC repairs, tractor repairs/agricultural merchants, vets, shops.




Which makes , in this lets call it a thought experiment (though I recognise the technology is far from that...but the impact projections era is in that realm, ) current planning laws of expanding communities seem truley bizarre and the shire based nimbies really might well be right but not for the reasons they think. Development of lower cost housing as being actively sought in rural communities might be poverty traps of the future?

I don't know what you are quite on about to be honest.

Robo cars will make transport cheaper for any and all cases but moreso in dense areas than true rural. Also what may people think of as rural in the UK would come under the heading dense. Eg there are villages in the UK that are byilt at densities of over 3,000 per sqkm which by any reasonable definition is urban.

Also the world is tendig towards 90% urbanisation and the west is closer to that and may well exceed it. The 10% rural can also be split into true rural and more dense rural. Probably 90% of the rural areas can see similar savings to urban areas.

so overall 99% of the population could see transport costs fall from over 40p a mile to 10p a mile. The 1% true rural will see their costs fall from over 40p a mile to under 40p a mile but not as big a fall as the urban or near urban 99%

lostinrates

cells wrote: »

.jpg there are villages in the UK that are byilt at densities of over 3,000 per sqkm which by any reasonable definition is urban

%[/QUOTE

I haven't disputed it. In fact I went further and made the point its NOT how far you are from your neighbour but your centre of employment.

That you are not understanding it might well be my failure of communication, I'm happy to accept that, as I understand your arguments, just don't necessarily buy in to them as fully developed or feasible.

cells

lostinrates wrote: »

That seems more realistic than six for a village of fifty homes in practicality.


I think the problem with rural is while the comparison with other countries where homes are further apart is very valid, the issue here is that the how far your neighbours are isn't really the issue, its where your work and your spouses work are . Which could be an hour in opposite directions. Or one home or land based, one town based. And land and home based jobs sytill need access to services. PC repairs, tractor repairs/agricultural merchants, vets, shops.




Which makes , in this lets call it a thought experiment (though I recognise the technology is far from that...but the impact projections era is in that realm, ) current planning laws of expanding communities seem truley bizarre and the shire based nimbies really might well be right but not for the reasons they think. Development of lower cost housing as being actively sought in rural communities might be poverty traps of the future?

I still don't quite understand the point you are trting to make. But I think you are tryig to suggest a shift to robo cars will make rural living harder and or more expensive? ???

I think the opposite is likely. It will make it more viable.

If it is viable now, which it must be as people are living there now, then it wilp be more viable woth robo cars which will see both cost of transport and time of travel decrease. It very much helps the rural.

the true cost of a private car now is per mile about

15p depreciation
10p fuel
5p insurance
5p maintenance
= 35p per mile

a private self drive robo car might be

10p depreciation (better software driver allowing more miles before the car is scraped)
8p fuel
1p insurance
3p maintenance (more efficient garages and diagnostics)
= 21p
Its your car it drives only you about and its there for you and only you. Just lile your car now. But the price has fallen from 35p a mile to 21p a mile or 40% off.

that is just an example dont dwell of the exact numbers but rather the direction of the numbers

cells

I haven't disputed it. In fact I went further and made the point its NOT how far priv from your neighbour but your centre of employment.

That you are not understanding it might well be my failure of communication, I'm happy to accept that, as I understand your arguments, just don't necessarily buy in to them as fully developed or feasible.

See my last post showing an example of a current private human car costing 35p a mile vs a private robo car costing 21p a mile

doesn't matter where you live. In central London or in navada desert the costs fall they don't go up with robo cars. This os where I am failing to understand what your point is at all. Im not even disagreeing im saying I don't know what ot is your saying (although I think you are saying robo cars will make rural living harder and or more costly...which I think is the complete opposite of what is likely)