In cities at least I'm hoping that this also means that we no longer have half the width of every street taken up by parked cars. Instead they can all sit in (underground?) multi-storey car parks and be summoned at need.
There should be far fewer of them needed, too - at any given time what proportion of the cars in the UK are actually being used? And having them managed as fleets should unlock economies of scale as we all stop maintaining our own vehicles.
Driverless cars still need to be parked somewhere when they not in use. It would be hugely wasteful of fuel (or electricity) and result in congestion and extra wear and tear on the vehicle reducing its life span to just have them tooling around constantly when empty.
I’m as enthused as you are Ed, about the future of driverless, however a several points of clarification and observation on your piece:
1) Uber and Lyft each have logged billions of cumulative rides, whereas Waymo has about 20 million. Waymo has surpassed Lyft in annual rides in San Francisco but to date the ride sharing companies overall have market share that is many orders of magnitude greater than driverless.
2) Waymo operates still in a sort of ‘trial’ mode where thousands of live human operators are monitoring rides from remote operating centers. Remote operations represent a drag on operating margins and as long as they persist, Waymo will be unprofitable and therefore cannot scale beyond select pilot markets.
3) from the standpoint of the user, to a large degree uber & Lyft already offer a ‘self driving’ experience. Absent Waymo’s soothing music and the Jaguar upholstery (BTW Waymo must surely be keeping Jaguar alive?) I can do anything in the back seat of an uber that I can with Waymo. Well…
A major difference is the convenience of very long rides like you envision on your vacation to France but even then I predict algorithms will prevent you from taking a journey to a destination where the probability of find a return customer is low…
4) finally, it is worth mentioning that major differences exist between the technology approaches of Waymo and Tesla. If Tesla’s vast library of roadway video interpreted by AI proves a viable substitute for Waymo’s hardware intensive LIDAR system, driverless will take off (and Waymo will fail) If not, ubiquitous driverless is likely to remain a long way off..
Two other points - I have a residence in Atlanta which is a Waymo test market. They can't drive on the freeways, apparently because the algorithms don't work well in high speed, high traffic environments, so you can't take one to the airport. Also, as someone who has used map applications for 20 years, in many different situations and countries, they often don't work well and give bad directions or suggest travel that no local person would recommend. That's puzzling, because if AI is so great, why can't it master map functions after 20+ years of effort? Map directions is one of the most perfect AI test cases you could possibly design and yet Google Maps frequently wants to route me down a "goat path" instead of taking the freeway in order to save me 15 seconds of travel.
How much will congestion be reduced when we're all in driverless cars? Less lanes blocked by accidents, better use of the space on the roads. I imagine we'll all get around quicker.
Nothing says safeguarding like allowing your drunk daughter to pack herself into a taxi in 2025. On that basis, robotaxis cannot be rolled out quickly enough.
In terms of the "AI dystopias" that I grew up with in the 2000s, the world may be heading to something less along the lines of The Matrix or The Terminator series and more of Wall-E or Idiocracy. Machines in the future will do what their role has always been, making things faster and easier for lazy people!
Re: Very soon, you will see fleets of driverless cabs making their way across busy intersections, as is common in many American cities.
I have never yet seen a single driverless car let alone "fleets" of them. And I live in a pretty major metro area (Tampa Bay). Earlier this year I rode in a semi-autonomous car a friend has. It was unnerving to say the least. Thank you, but I vastly prefer being the one driving the car.
The 90% reduction is based on a new technology just being tested, the reduction should be much higher when it is a mature technology and they are dealing with fewer human drivers.
In the US, 50% of the traffic fatalities invovle "impaired" drivers. More than half of those recently are high on THC. So, projections of fatality reduction need to assume that you are going to get all the drunks and weed smokers into robo-taxis. I would like to suggest that is a poor bet.
Depends how we're defining accidents really. But I think I'd still rather my teenage daughter was picked up by grandad than by her young brother. But perhaps the driverless taxi better than both !
In cities at least I'm hoping that this also means that we no longer have half the width of every street taken up by parked cars. Instead they can all sit in (underground?) multi-storey car parks and be summoned at need.
There should be far fewer of them needed, too - at any given time what proportion of the cars in the UK are actually being used? And having them managed as fleets should unlock economies of scale as we all stop maintaining our own vehicles.
rows of parked cars also hugely decrease the aesthetic quality of streets
Driverless cars still need to be parked somewhere when they not in use. It would be hugely wasteful of fuel (or electricity) and result in congestion and extra wear and tear on the vehicle reducing its life span to just have them tooling around constantly when empty.
I’m as enthused as you are Ed, about the future of driverless, however a several points of clarification and observation on your piece:
1) Uber and Lyft each have logged billions of cumulative rides, whereas Waymo has about 20 million. Waymo has surpassed Lyft in annual rides in San Francisco but to date the ride sharing companies overall have market share that is many orders of magnitude greater than driverless.
2) Waymo operates still in a sort of ‘trial’ mode where thousands of live human operators are monitoring rides from remote operating centers. Remote operations represent a drag on operating margins and as long as they persist, Waymo will be unprofitable and therefore cannot scale beyond select pilot markets.
3) from the standpoint of the user, to a large degree uber & Lyft already offer a ‘self driving’ experience. Absent Waymo’s soothing music and the Jaguar upholstery (BTW Waymo must surely be keeping Jaguar alive?) I can do anything in the back seat of an uber that I can with Waymo. Well…
A major difference is the convenience of very long rides like you envision on your vacation to France but even then I predict algorithms will prevent you from taking a journey to a destination where the probability of find a return customer is low…
4) finally, it is worth mentioning that major differences exist between the technology approaches of Waymo and Tesla. If Tesla’s vast library of roadway video interpreted by AI proves a viable substitute for Waymo’s hardware intensive LIDAR system, driverless will take off (and Waymo will fail) If not, ubiquitous driverless is likely to remain a long way off..
Two other points - I have a residence in Atlanta which is a Waymo test market. They can't drive on the freeways, apparently because the algorithms don't work well in high speed, high traffic environments, so you can't take one to the airport. Also, as someone who has used map applications for 20 years, in many different situations and countries, they often don't work well and give bad directions or suggest travel that no local person would recommend. That's puzzling, because if AI is so great, why can't it master map functions after 20+ years of effort? Map directions is one of the most perfect AI test cases you could possibly design and yet Google Maps frequently wants to route me down a "goat path" instead of taking the freeway in order to save me 15 seconds of travel.
AI is artificial but not intelligent
Ha, ha - my line is "only one of the words in AI are true"
How much will congestion be reduced when we're all in driverless cars? Less lanes blocked by accidents, better use of the space on the roads. I imagine we'll all get around quicker.
yeah, the co-ordination problem is presumably fixed a bit.
There will still be traffic jams- that's just the physics of turbulence which applies to all flows no matter how directed.
Nothing says safeguarding like allowing your drunk daughter to pack herself into a taxi in 2025. On that basis, robotaxis cannot be rolled out quickly enough.
In terms of the "AI dystopias" that I grew up with in the 2000s, the world may be heading to something less along the lines of The Matrix or The Terminator series and more of Wall-E or Idiocracy. Machines in the future will do what their role has always been, making things faster and easier for lazy people!
Wall-E seems pretty accurate, although didn't anticipate Ozempic!
I always say, it's a great idea until someone trips over the cord. And if the power is cut off can the passenger unlock the door to get out?
Re: Very soon, you will see fleets of driverless cabs making their way across busy intersections, as is common in many American cities.
I have never yet seen a single driverless car let alone "fleets" of them. And I live in a pretty major metro area (Tampa Bay). Earlier this year I rode in a semi-autonomous car a friend has. It was unnerving to say the least. Thank you, but I vastly prefer being the one driving the car.
The 90% reduction is based on a new technology just being tested, the reduction should be much higher when it is a mature technology and they are dealing with fewer human drivers.
Pretty sure it's not the old people who have the most accidents..
I think that old people have more accidents but young people have the most fatal ones.
In the US, 50% of the traffic fatalities invovle "impaired" drivers. More than half of those recently are high on THC. So, projections of fatality reduction need to assume that you are going to get all the drunks and weed smokers into robo-taxis. I would like to suggest that is a poor bet.
Although it gets worse for older drivers, on a per mile basis, it's still the young who have the most collisions.
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reported-road-casualties-great-britain-older-and-younger-driver-factsheets-2023/reported-road-casualties-in-great-britain-older-driver-factsheet-2023
once you're over 85 or so that's the most dangerous, but men under 24 are very dangerous indeed.
Depends how we're defining accidents really. But I think I'd still rather my teenage daughter was picked up by grandad than by her young brother. But perhaps the driverless taxi better than both !