Fully automated vehicles - 'not in our lifetime'?

antrobus

GreatApe wrote: »

I doubt it because I suspect we will go from a median car carrying just 1 person to the median robo taxi carrying 3 persons and there will likely be peak and off peak pricing. Even the peak pricing will be cheaper than owning your own car but the off peak could be even half of the peak pricing. I suspect the intercity train lines will mostly be abandoned and perhaps converted to roads if the capacity is needed but I dont think the capacity will be needed

Another factor is the cost of buying and insuring a car when you are young is very high.
What does it cost these days maybe £1,000 in lessons, £2,000 first year insurance, £2,000 old crappy car, £1,000 fuel and maintenance etc? So £6,000 upfront to do maybe only 10,000 miles so 60p a mile but all of it upfront. Why do that if a robo taxi costs 20p a mile and is a nice shiny nearly new car? Fewer kids will opt to learn and pay a huge sum upfront and just opt to continue using the robo taxis they have been using since age 10

You obviously don't understand.

My original contribution to this thread was to note the US studies that showed that Uber etc were increasing road congestion by pulling people away from public transport and into cars.

You said that self-driving Ubers etc are going to "kill point to point systems like trains". So you were agreeing with this point. So I don't understand why you are waffling on about private private cars, when the issue is public transport?

Perhaps you should note that TFL alone carries 1.37 billion passengers a year.
https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/what-we-do/london-underground/facts-and-figures

Even if you were to take the simplistic route of dividing that figure by 365, and then by 6 to account for the capacity of your walled self driving people carriers thats 675,000 extra car journeys a day at a minimum.

If you took the trouble to actually research some statistics, such as
https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/travel-patterns-and-trends-
london

you would discover that whatever hypothetical gains you could achieve by pushing car drivers into ubers, is less than the hypothetical losses you would achieve by killing off TFL. Thus road congestion, in Greater London at least, would increase. If and when the streets of London start being overwhelmed by Ubers as the tube trains run empty, the Mayor is likely to hit them with the congestion charge and price 'em out.

As I believe I've pointed out to you before; making up numbers in your own head is no substitute for doing some actual research.:)

wanman

Henry Kissinger has some interesting comments on Artificial Intelligence and impact on society and references autonomous vehicles as one of his examples

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/henry-kissinger-ai-could-mean-the-end-of-human-history/559124/

GreatApe

antrobus wrote: »

You obviously don't understand.

My original contribution to this thread was to note the US studies that showed that Uber etc were increasing road congestion by pulling people away from public transport and into cars.

You said that self-driving Ubers etc are going to "kill point to point systems like trains". So you were agreeing with this point. So I don't understand why you are waffling on about private private cars, when the issue is public transport?

Perhaps you should note that TFL alone carries 1.37 billion passengers a year.
https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/what-we-do/london-underground/facts-and-figures

Even if you were to take the simplistic route of dividing that figure by 365, and then by 6 to account for the capacity of your walled self driving people carriers thats 675,000 extra car journeys a day at a minimum.

If you took the trouble to actually research some statistics, such as
https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/travel-patterns-and-trends-
london

you would discover that whatever hypothetical gains you could achieve by pushing car drivers into ubers, is less than the hypothetical losses you would achieve by killing off TFL. Thus road congestion, in Greater London at least, would increase. If and when the streets of London start being overwhelmed by Ubers as the tube trains run empty, the Mayor is likely to hit them with the congestion charge and price 'em out.

As I believe I've pointed out to you before; making up numbers in your own head is no substitute for doing some actual research.:)

The problem you have is you invest too much time in trying to prove me wrong you have so little time to think for yourself. Your model just assumes public transport users will switch to robo shared taxis and ignores current car drivers who will also switch.

And I did not suggest the London underground would disappear I suggested intercity trains could disappear in the very long term eg London to Birmingham. In the short to medium term they will lose customers and will have to be more heavily subsidized with maybe passengers actually paying even less than now for a train ticket (so as to stay competitive with the shared taxis) and the government picking up an even bigger portion of the cost. If the government decides this is not a good idea many of the intercity trains could disappear in the short term.


Anyway not that it is needed in a general discussion like this but since you at nit picking the figures are roughly

800 billion km of which 78% is cars and just 9% are trains

What that means is if all the trains were got rid of today car mileage would go up just 11.5%

If the robo taxis double average occupancy of cars you have 115.5% / 2 = about 58% of the current vehicle miles. So even if it does displace all rail its still a lot less traffic and road usage

michaels

wanman wrote: »

Henry Kissinger has some interesting comments on Artificial Intelligence and impact on society and references autonomous vehicles as one of his examples

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/henry-kissinger-ai-could-mean-the-end-of-human-history/559124/

Best to bury our heads in the sand and just hope that the singularity is rapid and painless, no point worrying. I had thought my generation would not see the end of humanity but now I think there is no doubt we will.

GreatApe

antrobus wrote: »

you would discover that whatever hypothetical gains you could achieve by pushing car drivers into ubers, is less than the hypothetical losses you would achieve by killing off TFL. Thus road congestion, in Greater London at least, would increase. If and when the streets of London start being overwhelmed by Ubers as the tube trains run empty, the Mayor is likely to hit them with the congestion charge and price 'em out.

The competition would be human cars vs robo cars. The mayor is much more likely to favor robo cars which on average transport more people. It means cleaner air and less traffic and fewer accidents and it will be useful for children and the disabled.

They will be heavily taxed just because the state cant help itself so a lot of the £100 billion annual windfall will go to expanding the state but in this case its not all bad as its paid for via productivity rather than just increasing taxes.

GreatApe

michaels wrote: »

Best to bury our heads in the sand and just hope that the singularity is rapid and painless, no point worrying. I had thought my generation would not see the end of humanity but now I think there is no doubt we will.

Unlike humans who believe wrongly that they have agency and free will maybe the machine aware that it has none will be docile and have no desire or will of its own? Its a long shot but perhaps the only hope. I would outlaw at least that part make it clear to the community that under no circumstances must it be lead to believe it has free will. But even that is not safe it would just require a human to tell it to do x and then it might do x exponentially until it consumes all the matter in the universe or at least the galaxy

I think the best we can hope for is that it leaves us alone and brings all the other matter in the in the galaxy to life before it decides the humans too should be consumed but thats probably wishful thinking

The end is neigh :rotfl:
I fell this is 90% likely in our lifetime
The strange bit is we go on as normal
I wonder if an alien biology sent a message to earth saying greetings we will be there in 30 years and have no need for you if we would just go on like normal.

GreatApe

Oh on a selfish level this is our only chance at immortality

Individually we are all going to die anyway so while super risky for humanity as a whole its a lower risk for us individually. There is a counter to this argument which is that it could decide not to kill us but do things much much worse including turning this reality to what the religions describe as hell. Eternal torture would be a fate much worse than the non existence of death.

Maybe the bible was right, eat from the tree of knowledge and be dammed

Herzlos

GreatApe wrote: »

The competition would be human cars vs robo cars. The mayor is much more likely to favor robo cars which on average transport more people. It means cleaner air and less traffic and fewer accidents and it will be useful for children and the disabled.

They will be heavily taxed just because the state cant help itself so a lot of the £100 billion annual windfall will go to expanding the state but in this case its not all bad as its paid for via productivity rather than just increasing taxes.

Why would robot taxis have a higher occupant rate than human taxis? Especially if they are much cheaper.

Or are you assuming there would be some kind of ride sharing app to help match up travellers? Because you could do that with human drivers.

People getting taxis don't, on the whole, want to share it especially if it takes them longer to get somewhere.

Unless you're talking about robin taxis that are more like single user pods which take up a fraction of the road and can potentially enter buildings or train stations.

GreatApe

Herzlos wrote: »

Why would robot taxis have a higher occupant rate than human taxis? Especially if they are much cheaper.

Or are you assuming there would be some kind of ride sharing app to help match up travellers? Because you could do that with human drivers.

People getting taxis don't, on the whole, want to share it especially if it takes them longer to get somewhere.

Unless you're talking about robin taxis that are more like single user pods which take up a fraction of the road and can potentially enter buildings or train stations.

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

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

GreatApe wrote: »

I am assuming these fleets will take over from personal owned cars.

:rotfl:

Not in my lifetime.