Fully automated vehicles - 'not in our lifetime'?

Herzlos

But no-one is going to want to share, like they don't share ubers.

kinger101

GreatApe wrote: »

Uber is already valued at $50 billion

Robot taxi fleets are just uber on steroids. Much quicker arriving much less dead mileage and cheaper if you share the trip much much cheaper.

Even if the old like you choose not to use it the kids will love it. Get driven in a nice nearly new Robot taxi for 20p a mile with no parking worries or costs or hand over £6k in costs for a ten year old banger and insurance etc.

Uber only exists in large cities. While the robot taxis could be deployed to small towns and villages, the lack of opportunity to profit in these means they won't.

Herzlos

kinger101 wrote: »

I could see how it may potentially work. The robo-taxis are more likely to communicate with each other, and fill voids by moving to areas where there is greater demand.

They can do more that that. Once all the meat drivers are off the roads, the robots can work to much finer tolerances - much narrower lanes, no need for traffic lights or roundabouts etc, much higher top speeds and almost to the second journey planning for connections and so on.

Ironically, self driving cars although humans is so much easier than the interim period where they need to share.

Herzlos

GreatApe wrote: »

You're assuming its like today, I am assuming these fleets will take over from personal owned cars. If that happens the number of taxis on the road increase towards 10 million in the UK and the number of miles done on these taxis towards a few hundred billion miles annually. They would be literally everywhere all the time you'd probably never be more than 20 meters away from one in a city like London

What that means is unlike uber pool today the additional customers pickup points will be very close and take very little time.

I don't think people will mind sharing and the vehicles could be designed for that so each of the 4 seats can be sectioned off from the others if necessary.

The alternative to sharing is that the self drive taxis mostly become single seated vehicles (half the size of a smart car) and some two seated vehicles (smart car size) and much lessor 4/6/8 person vehicles. So the fleet looks and matches average usage rather than cars today which match leak usages

Replacing personal cars (which isn't going to happen for at least some percentage) will increase the number of journeys since the car won't be where it was left. It's going to decrease the passenger density because half will be empty.

It would eradicate the need for maybe 90% of car parks, which we can turn into housing

kabayiri

It's funny that we worry about machines making mistakes whilst driving cars, but seem relaxed about drugged up / alkies / speeders / bullies on our roads.

AnotherJoe

GreatApe wrote: »

These fleets will be massive probably in the region of 10 million robot taxis in the UK. What that means is you will literally never be more than a few meters from one.

The distance from dropping off one customer to picking up the next will be meters and seconds not like uber today which might have to travel a mile and ten minutes between customers.

Uber only works after a critical mass. If uber didn't exist and you tried to set one up you have a network problem so few drivers that its worthless for customers. But as the network grows so does the usefulness of uber. Uber today is very usable we've given up the second car and just use uber for the times we need two cars at once. These robot fleets will be 100x or more in scale and will thus be much better than uber is today. Much less waiting much less dead mileage and much cheaper too.

Nice theory. Wake me up when it happens. Until then the fact is displaces public trasnport.

As for people not opting to share that's fine too it just means traffic remains roughly where it is.

So 50 people get off a bus and hail an individual Uber and traffic stays "where it is" ? Not even a nice theory. BTW this is happening now in places like San Francisco on the bleeding edge of the takeup curve.

If half choose not to share but half do share traffic goes down. Places like London could also regulate it also only shared trips are offered. In which case traffic should go down lots.

Lots of theory. In the meantime the facts show you are wrong.

GreatApe

Herzlos wrote: »

But no-one is going to want to share, like they don't share ubers.

I share ubers sometimes the problem is the uber network is still too small to make it viable. With a fleet of 10 million taxis sharing a taxi will be super efficient. As I keep saying it won't be like now where the nearest uber is a mile away and you need to wait ten minutes. There will be so many that you will almost never be more than 10 meters away from one.

I also envisage that most of these taxis will be stationery most of the time. They may only average 40,000 miles a year. So roughly moving for 5 hours a day and stationary for 19h a day. At the beginning that won't be the case they will be working nearly 24h a day but as the fleet grows the average milage and usage oer day will fall. It will still be 2-4x that of a normal human car

GreatApe

AnotherJoe wrote: »

Lots of theory. In the meantime the facts show you are wrong.

What facts where does a large fleet of millions of self drive taxis exist for you to be drawing facts from?

GreatApe

Uber has about 40,000 drivers in London not all of them available at any one time.

Perhaps a peak of 20,000 drivers at any one time?

While a robot taxi fleet would be closer to 1 million vehicles just for London and available almost all the time.

Sharing became possible and usage becomes much better and much more useful. As I keep saying with a million robot taxis in London you'd likely never be more than ten meters from one. The wait times would be in seconds.

kinger101

Herzlos wrote: »

They can do more that that. Once all the meat drivers are off the roads, the robots can work to much finer tolerances - much narrower lanes, no need for traffic lights or roundabouts etc, much higher top speeds and almost to the second journey planning for connections and so on.

In theory, yes. Currently however, I don't even use Google Maps for navigation whilst driving. There are a number of instances it's told me about junctions far too late.