Cars Of The Future Are Shared, Autonomous, Or Electric

[CrimsonEclipse]

Calm down, this is not mandatory auto socialism.... YEESH!!

Right now there's Zip car. It's like the Level 1 of car sharing and it only works in an urban area.
You locate a car with a smart phone app, you are given access to said car remotely, drive it for a few hours/days, and pay by mile or hour.
return it to the general area. Repeat.
This is convenient for urbanites, students who don't need a car except a few times a month.

Add autonomous features, now the car comes to you. Now the same car replaces taxis, buses, and most public transportation and now will be convenient for people who don't have/want a license, elderly, drunk, etc.

Like the Elio, it would remove an entire population of cars from the road (generally clunkers and mopeds/bicycles)

There would likely be a luxury class to these self driving shared cars.

 

[Gas-Powered Awesome]

Calm down, this is not mandatory auto socialism.... YEESH!!

It will be. Not socialism, but authoritarianism. The Nanny State.

Eventually, "for your own good", you will not be allowed to drive your own transportation. This is inevitable since driving is the single most-dangerous thing most people will ever do in their lives, and most people suck at it. It's the second-leading accidental cause of death after poisoning (which includes overdoses). No self-serving government can allow that to continue. They already prohibit many activities "for your own good" that don't have direct negative impact (no pun intended) on other people (*cough* - again no pun intended - cannabis - and no I don't partake). No way are the people who seek to control other people going to allow 30,000+ a year to continue to be killed in car accidents.

I predict that by 2030 there will be some roads that only allow autonomous cars. Probably start with and re-purpose the HOV and "express toll" lanes. Probably 40-50 years before all super highways require autonomy. Some time after that all public secondary and tertiary surface streets will require autonomous cars. There may be areas with exceptions for longer than that, but 60 years from now almost all cars won't have steering wheels to use those areas, and non-autonomous cars can't be driven on the autonomous-only roads to get there. Sure, you can own your Elio, but where are you going to drive it? Dystopia!

Even so, I'm kinda on their side. As an advanced, high-performance driving instructor, I know that basically everybody is a terrible driver. I'm for reducing that involuntary death count. The difficulty is government people have a tendency to take these things too far, too fast, without considering unintended consequences, and without the consent of the people they rule govern. "But but but, Democracy!" Yeah, in a moderately-corrupt, one-party-masquerading-as-a-two-party republic like the USA, the voters can't effectively stop them.

I won't even get into the consequences of every movement you make being 100% traceable by people in authority who may not like you. That's tangent and been well-covered in the press.

 

[WilliamH]

Damn!
I sure hope the people who do things like Google Maps have better map bases by then.
Some dweeb recently tried tried to intimidate me by posting what he believed was an aerial view of my home.
With the usual veiled threat ... "I know where you live."
Strangely enough, I happened to recognize the house in the picture.
It's over 10 miles from where I live.
A previous owner of that house had died because it took the ambulance over an hour to find the house.
I think we have a long way to go before we can start to trust autonomous vehicles of any type.

 

[Jeff Miller]

It will be. Not socialism, but authoritarianism. The Nanny State.

Eventually, "for your own good", you will not be allowed to drive your own transportation. This is inevitable since driving is the single most-dangerous thing most people will ever do in their lives, and most people suck at it. It's the second-leading accidental cause of death after poisoning (which includes overdoses). No self-serving government can allow that to continue. They already prohibit many activities "for your own good" that don't have direct negative impact (no pun intended) on other people (*cough* - again no pun intended - cannabis - and no I don't partake). No way are the people who seek to control other people going to allow 30,000+ a year to continue to be killed in car accidents.

I predict that by 2030 there will be some roads that only allow autonomous cars. Probably start with and re-purpose the HOV and "express toll" lanes. Probably 40-50 years before all super highways require autonomy. Some time after that all public secondary and tertiary surface streets will require autonomous cars. There may be areas with exceptions for longer than that, but 60 years from now almost all cars won't have steering wheels to use those areas, and non-autonomous cars can't be driven on the autonomous-only roads to get there. Sure, you can own your Elio, but where are you going to drive it? Dystopia!

Even so, I'm kinda on their side. As an advanced, high-performance driving instructor, I know that basically everybody is a terrible driver. I'm for reducing that involuntary death count. The difficulty is government people have a tendency to take these things too far, too fast, without considering unintended consequences, and without the consent of the people they rule govern. "But but but, Democracy!" Yeah, in a moderately-corrupt, one-party-masquerading-as-a-two-party republic like the USA, the voters can't effectively stop them.

I won't even get into the consequences of every movement you make being 100% traceable by people in authority who may not like you. That's tangent and been well-covered in the press.

Well you might be right but given your time frames I'll be dead by then so it won't matter as much to me

Even though the nanny state folks may want to do this, I think there would be considerable push back from the "I can't afford a new car" contingent. There are millions of vehicles on the road today that I consider unsafe yet they provide the only affordable way for many people to get around. Adding more and more technology to cars only makes them cost more so I can't see those folks being able to afford autonomous vehicles. As much as the nanny state folks may want to push people to their utopia, the reality of providing a solution that works for everyone will at the very least slow their efforts and at the worst stymie their efforts indefinitely.

The concept of creating roads that only select individuals can drive on seems somewhat analogous to the experiments with HOV lanes. Other parts of the country may see this differently but here in Minneapolis the HOV lanes illicit serious complaints about them being for the privileged few that can afford to use them. There is constant uprising about taxing everybody to build them while other infrastructure that can be used by everyone is left to crumble. As the roadways become gridlocked there is constant demand to open the HOVs to everyone so that more vehicles can make it through the system. Scoff law folks continue to overtake the lanes and that has resulted in additional patrols being assigned to enforce usage of the HOV lanes but of course, if enforcement pulls somebody over that only creates worse traffic issues. I don't believe that a nanny state would get away with restricting or building new roadways for select individuals that can afford an autonomous vehicle.

Additionally, if we continue to focus on moving people with individual vehicles in our high density cities it won't matter if autonomous vehicles help to improve traffic flow; there will still be too many individual people going to different places and that will continue to contribute to gridlock and inefficiency. It has been said numerous times over at least two decades that we need to build an infrastructure that supports transportation in the form of mass transit; mass transit being vehicles like trains, buses, etc. that can move large numbers of people at the same time. The reality is that for this to work you need sufficient density to make it cost effective. You also need to get rid of nimby politics so that massive tracts of land can be acquired and used despite the impact on the people these new corridors would go through. The twin cities have had numerous battles along these lines and to date the mass transit folks win very few battles. I believe a lot of the losses are not only related to the cost of building and nimby issues but that in reality many of the mass transit things put in place have been colossal failures. They aren't used or often become an ongoing loss to operate. Even within the last 6 months many new "lines" that were put in have been closed because they weren't used.

So will this change in the future? Perhaps, but like I said, I expect I'll be long dead by then and that will suit me just fine.

 

[skychief]

My read is that the first major shift will be to shared/autonomous personal vehicles (non-commercial vehicles).

I wonder who is responsible for cleaning and performing routine maintenance on shared vehicles.

 

[CrimsonEclipse]

I wonder who is responsible for cleaning and performing routine maintenance on shared vehicles.

Usually, with shared vehicles, there is a management entity, who charges a nominal fee included in the total price of a ride.

A present day example would be Corporate Aviation Shares like Netjets or Plane Sense where you buy a share of an airplane (1/8th or 1/4 share) for a set fee and an annual management fee and an hourly fee.
Customers don't have to worry about the cost and liability to aircraft maintenance, repairs, pilots, insurance, training etc. *

Although I think the business model will likely be a combination of Zip Car and Uber and charged by the mile with premium fees for luxury vehicles, premium times, and rural or dangerous neighborhoods.

Zip car has a monthly fee while Uber does not.

 

[aknaten]

Any projections as to the cost of this 3 passenger electric 4-wheel vehicle?

https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/nissans-bladeglider-is-a-zero-emissions-high-performance-thing/

 

[Ty]

Of course, another way to solve the traffic problem is to make it worthwhile to people to live closer to where they work. I know THIS isn't possible, but what if Elio bought land around the factory, put up really nice houses and had their employees all working within a mile of the plant? Big cities could have business on the lower floors and apartments above. Etc... If you get rid of the "daily" requirement to drive, you get rid of a lot of traffic. Busses and Subways are not self sufficient nor will they be. They will always be subsidized.

 

[Rob Croson]

A reinvention of the "Company Town"?

 

[Rickb]

A solution to traffic gridlock, eliminating the need to expand the nations highway network, and reclaiming acres of asphalt parking lots........narrow cars (half the width) like the Tango Commuter Car or the narrow three wheeler like the Toyota I-Road.