On the Google car.

[ocschwar]

I've been wondering for a while about the societal implications of switching to the Johnny Cab (from the original Total Recall movie), which is to say the autonomous car developed by Google.

A car is more than just a means from getting from A to B.

A car is a mighty expensive purchase. It's usually the priciest thing you own that can get stolen from you. It's also a huge liability, since it's a 2 ton machine that can go very fast. And it's also something that says a lot about you, which is why Detroit and Madison Avenue are in bed so much of the time. But even though our culture makes it a very expensive national costume, the truth is a car does tell you something about its owner. If a guy drives a 10 year old car that's in good condition, from a make and model that lasts a good while and gets good mileage, you can conclude a few things about his character, as opposed to someone who just bought a flashy Cadillac Compensator. A car becomes an extension of who you are.

That is why you can have a friend who is so close to you that you can share toothbrushes, and still say to him "dude, you are NOT driving my car." Perfectly acceptable, right?

But what if the car is autonomous? That friend of yours might be completely smashed, and a ne'er-do-well when sober, and it might still be a dick move not to lend him your car if he needs it. Especially if he's completely smashed. "Just don't puke in the interior, and don't use my car for a getaway after killing someone."

If the car is fully autonomous, it's not an extension of its owner the way the non-autonomous car is. In fact, if the car is fully autonomous, all you really get from owning it is first dibs on using it. Its condition doesn't say anything about your driving ability. You have far less reason not to share its usage. And so shared ownership makes far more sense than un-shared, given how cars spend 98% of the time parked.

At this point you might object, and say that the autonomous car will always need a human driver to slam the brakes if the autonomous system messes up. I have enough confidence in engineering to say that autonomous cars will never be perfectly safe, but that current technology will soon make them safer than conventional cars. And besides, people are terrible at knowing when they should take over the operation of an automatic process, and so if such a need is there, we will simply not have autonomous cars, period.

Now, if a car can be autonomous, it can be not just driverless but passenger-less. At worst, empty cars might be relegated to designated traffic lanes and subjected to a 10MPH speed limit. So when you travel in one, it should be able to drop you off and then find parking for itself. And when it goes to do that, it should be able to grab dibs on a parking spot over a wireless protocol instead of seeking a spot. And coordinate the parking with the nearby vehicles. And so, an autonomous car fleet should be able to park itself far more tightly than conventional cars. And then it can come back to pick you up afterwards. Which in turn, really means there is no good reason for autonomous cars to be owned by individuals. They make far more sense as cheaper forms of a taxicab, with longer operating ranges.

Now, Google employs very smart people. I'm willing to bet the Google Car team had these thoughts in mind when their project was just starting out. What they are doing will completely kill the business model of conventional car companies.

Comments

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

1. Great idea.
2. I can neither confirm nor deny that they were thinking of it (because I don't know, but if I did know, etc.)
3. I hope they were thinking of it.
4. Please don't mention this idea where the car companies, who will have to be convinced to ship this stuff in their cars, can see it.

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

Are you familiar with the Morgantown PRT? It was my mental model of what public transit ought to be from when I first read about it in sixth grade til about the time of the DARPA grand challenge. Then I was like Ok, scratch the need for track infrastructure or stations. Just deploy them as robocabs and use cell phones. (Well, maybe there should be "stations" in the form of call buttons on lamp-posts, for people who for whatever reason don't have access to a phone at the moment.)

[pwaa.livejournal.com]

For families traveling with small children who need car seats, it would be a PITA to have to re-install the car seat every friggin' time we got in a car. Furthermore, many car seats do not fit well in smaller cars. We've already discovered that we cannot have a rear-facing car seat in back of anyone but me (because I have short legs and don't mind the seat being scrunched all the way up to the front of the car). And these days kids are supposed to be rear-facing until at least the age of two. At the same time, parents with kids in the back are some of the most distracted drivers, so an autonomous car would work very well for them. They could attend to the kids while the car drove itself. However, because of the car seat issue (plus stocking the car with all sorts of kiddie goodies from diapers to toys), it wouldn't work well to "borrow" one every time the kids need to go somewhere - families would need to own their own autonomous cars.

[ocschwar.livejournal.com]

Click a few extra checkboxes on the iPhone app and the car that shows up to pick you up already has car seats installed.

[kelkyag]

A sub-problem here may be that a fair share of people use their cars as extended handbags, stocked with things they may want in transit but don't want to carry on their person -- umbrellas, shopping bags, water, snacks, spare clothes and toys for the kids, emergency first aid supplies, all kinds of things. Shared autonomous cars can't easily provide the pre-stocked portable storage space, and while they could be stocked with some generic things, anything not attached to the car would tend to wander off, or at least pin the car to the user while the portables were checked out of the car. Even a pre-stocked "car bag" is something to remember to bring with you, and you can't leave it in the car to fetch things from as needed if the car is going to wander off.

Shared autonomous cars also become more logistically problematic the further one goes out from dense urban centers into sprawling suburban and rural areas.

[ocschwar.livejournal.com]

That is an issue, but is it an issue worth putting down $20K over?

[kelkyag]

To me, no, but I already don't own a car -- and do carry a rather large shoulder bag with me ~all the time. Even so I wind up looking at logistics issues that secure portable storage would be handy for from time to time.

For someone with a small kid, or several, or equipment requirements, or likely any number of other things that presently escape me, that might seem worthwhile, or at least awfully helpful.

I don't think it's any more of a blocking problem than the emotional investment in cars -- likely rather less -- but it's a logistical problem that'd need to be solved.

(And while I'm poking at cars as personal space, will there be smoking and non-smoking autonomous cars to summon, or will smoking in them be banned? How about transporting pets or other allergen sources?)

[brass-rat.livejournal.com]

It seems like an open market should allow for a bunch of possibilities. Everything from shared cars with specific features (car-seat, smoking permitted, bike-rack), to personally owned cars for the extended handbag feature (or for people who live too far from an urban center or take too many trips for the shared car to make financial sense.) We own a car in part, because we take enough trips that it's close, if not cheaper than zipcar, and it's sometimes really convenient to just have it. I could see the shared autonomous cars solving the second problem, especially if they get over some of the issues with cabs (especially how soon will it get here if I call.) While more shared cars and fewer personal ones will hurt car companies, I think the group this really hurts is cab drivers, oh, hey, and let's extrapolate to automated busses while we're here. It seems like it would make sense to make more trains driverless first though (certainly some airport trams and the like have already done this) since they have fewer degrees of freedom than cars.

[pwaa.livejournal.com]

Ha! And guarantee that the car seat is clean and one that the kid is willing to sit in?

[zenala.livejournal.com]

So, since you're now a hubway member, does this mean we can sell your personal bike? (I'm personally not in favor of giving up a private car, and I have veto power over your personal property decisions.)

[zenala.livejournal.com]

Also, as it is, you need to carry along your own carseat if you're taking a cab, so I don't see quite how it would differ with an autonomous car...