Carpocalypse

Evolution of the industry itself, makes sense for the cities and suburbs.

 

That article is from a globalists' perspective. It'll be decades before suburban/rural America no longer needs "cars". Speaking of, the article doesn't define "cars". In other words, are light trucks (i.e. pick-ups) considered as cars in other parts of the world like they are in the U.S.?

 

causation or correlation ?

a recent pullback from high is not proof of a collapse and a contained collapse of demand...

like the guys from lyft have no incentive to promote this viewpoint ahead of an ipo

i think you could overlay that viewpoint of the article with the blue spots that voted for HRC

as usual, these people think they are the center of the world

 

The article reports new car sales are down. But that doesn’t mean car ownership is down.

Cars last a long time and I believe that the masses are becoming more financially conservative, not wanting to buy a new car every 3 years, caused by increases in just about everything else you buy.

 

Agendas? No way.

 

When someone can provide a service as accessible as a car sitting in my driveway that can take me to and from with similar efficiency and at significantly lower overall costs, they will win in the cities and the dense suburbs.

I don't think they will ever win in the rural areas.

 

Ya new car sales are really dying, only 95 million or so were sold last year globally, the car is dying a realllllllllllly slow death

From article

"We estimate over 300,000 Lyft riders have given up their personal cars because of Lyft."

So in a nation of 350,000,000 people not counting illegals, 300,000 have given up their car and the end of car ownership is near?

LOL and the media wonders why #fakenews is such a growing thing these days.

 

5 years ago right here on Fchat I said that eventually, no one will buy a new car again. Instead you will rent them by the mile or second. It will make no sense to own a car in the future. And, with driverless technology and AI allowing cars to talk to one another, there will be no more accidents and no more drunk drivers. And no more traffic jams

Also no more driver's licenses, no more car registration fees, no more car insurance, no more car payments other that what you use.

Its perfectly logical.

You need a pick up truck to get stuff from Home Depot for a backyard project? No problem. Order one and when done, it goes to someone else. Then take your single seater to work the next morning. Want to take the kids on a trip to the ballpark? Order a 6 passenger SUV for the evening.

The car companies along with Google, IBM, and Apple understand this which is why they are investing so heavily in self driving cars.

And I said one more thing 5 years ago --- the car of today will become illegal to drive on city streets as it will be considered too dangerous or pollute too much. They will be allowed to driver "off road" or under special permit such as a parade or exhibition.

This also is logical because in a network of self driving cars, when some cars can communicate and others cannot it makes the system less effective and more expensive.

So, no more cars.

 

I’m going to enjoy my cars and driving myself.

My kids can figure it out.

Robb

 

Will never happen where Freedom is present. Not to mention the impossibility due to infinite technical failures that will occur, here are just a few recent examples impacting millions at the same time;

https://help.lyft.com/hc/en-us/articles/115013082448-Issues-with-the-app-or-website

https://www.facebook.com/lyft/posts/bad-news-lyft-o-verse-our-servers-are-down-due-to-an-amazon-outage-caused-by-a-c/197437453718234/

https://www.facebook.com/uber/posts/whoops-we-had-an-outage-for-about-15-minutes-tonight-fear-not-everythings-back-u/204569642916662/

https://heavy.com/news/2018/12/uber-down/

Not to mention in places people live but there is no coverage or is simply too small to matter?

Have you considered what you are actually trying to convey and the actual logistics?

Yeah, no thanks.

 

Wait... so we can do it for aircraft but we can't for cars? Are you really saying this?

 

Along those lines, my wife recently received an email from her Porsche dealer who is starting just such a program.

https://www.primeflip.com/how-it-works/

 

Howdy Mayor:

We can do what for aircraft, what exactly?

From your original post;

(...) I said that eventually, no one will buy a new car again. Instead you will rent them by the mile or second.

Last I checked you can still purchase a private aircraft. Of course you can rent them too, but that was not your point.

(...) It will make no sense to own a car in the future. And, with driverless technology and AI allowing cars to talk to one another, there will be no more accidents and no more drunk drivers. And no more traffic jams

Last I checked, airplanes do not talk to one another at all, at busy airports air traffic is handled by people (air traffic controllers), at less busy fields/flights the pilot is responsible.

(...) You need a pick up truck to get stuff from Home Depot for a backyard project? No problem. Order one and when done, it goes to someone else. Then take your single seater to work the next morning. Want to take the kids on a trip to the ballpark? Order a 6 passenger SUV for the evening.

This one is a dual reply, first, you would still need a driver's license to rent a vehicle unless you are going to pay someone to chauffeur you.

Next, for aircraft, you could order plane (jet card anyone?) and you pay for a flight crew etc.

(...) The car companies along with Google, IBM, and Apple understand this which is why they are investing so heavily in self driving cars.

A solution in search of a problem. And two of these companies have loads of money so they are trying to find somewhere to invest, no surprise there.

===

Now, some additional feedback.

I believe you are referring to a universal ban on private motorized transportation and the "replacement" will be fully automatic with no human involvement, right?

Ok, so, here are several considerations:

Solar flare knocks out satellites used for GPS and communications, think it cannot happen, see here:

https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/sun_darkness.html

and that was before private cell phones and private GPS were in widescale use.

next,

So, if GPS goes out, what about magnetic North Pole:

https://nbaa.org/aircraft-operations/airports/how-changes-in-magnetic-north-are-impacting-airports/

Nope,

https://www.maritime-executive.com/editorials/magnetic-north-relocation-and-future-maritime-navigation

https://www.dogonews.com/2019/2/27/scientists-scramble-to-keep-up-with-fast-moving-north-magnetic-pole

so much for that.

Next, what if you want to take a trip, well, if all personal-sized vehicles are fully automatic, how does that work?

Say you and some friends or your family want to take a trip, let's say it is 500 miles, but you need to take a trailer to bring your surfboards or luggage or whatever. So you use a suburban-sized vehicle, but, first you have to pick up the trailer and get it loaded, so you get that a day ahead of time. And you need to leave it hooked up the suburban, and now you load it up it, pick up your friends and head out. As you drive there is 20mph headwind and this fully electric vehicle needs to be recharged every 150 miles due loading, pulling trailer and none of that is aerodynamic and the headwind takes a lot of energy to overcome. So, every 150 miles you have park it for 30 minutes or more if there are 50 other such travellers, etc.

So, how does that work? It doesn't.

And I am sure you can think of your own examples where a fully electric automated vehicle isn't going to be practical.

And, never mind any supposed breakthroughs in battery tech and never mind that a fully automated vehicle is completely impossible (that can process every conceivable situation and then some) that does not allow human driver override.

I could go on and on, suffice to say pipe-dream is my label for this idea.

 

However, the major is saying that would be using fully automated vehicles, human drivers being banned...so, not exactly apples-to-apples...

 

Oh, you're right, I read it again, it's not the same thing. Still, I thought it was an interesting concept, not for me but certainly for some.

 

Don't forget things like roads without lines, areas which are flooded, snow covered roads, a tree down, or a pallet or other object in the road.

Pedestrians crossing the road - remember that incident?

I could see automated cars on a very limited basis for urban areas, or on elevated roads designed for them.

Our roads were not built for a computer, camera or radar to read them.

Right now in Tahoe there is 30' of snow, I'd like to see a Tesla navigate that.

Interstate commerce would be a nightmare, and could you imagine the cost to enter the shipping market?

So many changes to the laws would be needed, and if they would be mandated by law - whose is liable in a crash?

The cost to retro-fit the roads alone would be staggering.

 

Bingo, essentially infinite complications, such a utopia is not that close at all, and in my estimate, never will be in a general sense.

Nevermind that there are currently 1.2+ Billion cars in the world:

https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1093560_1-2-billion-vehicles-on-worlds-roads-now-2-billion-by-2035-report

and, of those less than 2M were 'electric' of some variety:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/270603/worldwide-number-of-hybrid-and-electric-vehicles-since-2009/

of that, if you count only tesla's about 360,000 pure electric made in past 10 years:

https://electrek.co/2018/02/14/tesla-delivered-300000th-vehicle/

so, to replace 1.2B cars with pure electrics and let us say that 2MB pure electrics will be made starting 2021 (very high anticipation) that means in 600 years we will have replaced those 1.2B

so, the numbers simply do not add up at all to 'ban' all cars and all drivers worldwide

So, let us say 16M pure electrics are made per year (discounting the lack of available material to build that many batteries per year), it would still take 75 years to turn over the fleet a SINGLE time

again, this fairy tale as I am now postulating that it is, is never going to happen, not in our lifetime or anyone else in the next several generations or ever...

 

Anyhow..... all these cars and trucks sitting around on lots waiting to be hired for minutes at a time....... who supplies them, who invests in buying them to sit there? Cars won’t be dying out.... what will happen is that the manufacturers who want to survive will make sure to build a boring range of anti-style, no charisma Toyota/Nissan/Renault type crap just like today, with 3/5 and 7 seat options to be sold to the presumed conglomerates operating this massive hiring business. If you want a special sports car such as a ferrari, and many of us still would even if we settled for hiring a Nissan charisma-bypass during the week, will buy them and cherish them even more, because there cannot possibly be a business plan that allows the big hiring conglomerates to buy high end sports cars to sit on the lot until sunny weekend days, when their entire stock could get double booked, but during the week, cost them thousands, millions, per day in lost revenues

 

All this can be handled. Trust me. Short range radar and image recognition along with shared knowledge from one entity to another will do this job. In fact, its being done today already.

As to hazardous roads, the machine will know its hazardous and not attempt it, unlike the human who would guess. The machine would know it's not possible.

Pedestrians and animals and objects can be detected without a problem, even lying on the ground.

Its really too bad people don't understand the technology and assume something can't be done just because a human does it now.

The insurance issue is not an issue. No different than any other insurance or liability business situation. And with fewer accidents it will be a lot cheaper. You don't think taxis, trains, plains, and Uber have this problem? Is it stopping them?

Boeing has developed the software that allows a 737 to fly and land itself if ALL HYDRAULICS fail in the airplane. The computer adjusts the two engines to keep the plane flying and stable and land perfectly, then use whatever systems are available to stop the plane on landing. When trying this with a human in a flight simulator under the same conditions, no human has done it yet. Yet the computer does it every time and never chokes or makes an emotional mistake under stress.

Artificial and shared intelligence will do things humans can only dream of doing. And will do it precisely, including driving vehicles under all conditions.

This is short range image detection using laser technology which can see at night, day, fog, snow, etc.

 

CES this year: Qualcomm intersection navigation without line of sight

https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/cv2x-system-ces-2019/

Ford wants all it's cars to talk to each other by 2022

https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/ford-c-v2x-5g-communication-tech-ces-2019/

Thermal camera imaging for night vision

https://www.flir.com/oem/adas/

 

Sorry Mayor,

As for Boeing, brilliant, one problem in the can, now on to the next 100,000 potential critical problems/failures, should be handled in a jiffy, right?

Lidar is a dead end, you see, you can't even go over 60mph ever and 40mph is better pace for it to keep up:

https://blog.cometlabs.io/engineer-explains-lidar-748f9ba0c404

from link above:

Another challenge about lidar systems is the relatively slow refresh rate of the spinning lidar systems. The refresh rate of the system is limited by how fast the complicated optics can rotate. 10hz (10 times per second) is approximately the fastest that the lidar system can rotate, hence, this is the limiting refresh rate of the data stream. A car moving at 60 miles per hour travels 8.8 feet in the 1/10th of a second as the sensor is rotating, so the sensor is essentially blind to changes that happen as it travels those 8.8 feet. Perhaps more importantly, the range of lidar (in perfect conditions) is 100–120 meters (less than 400 ft), which equates to less than 4.5 seconds of travel time for a car moving at 60 mph.

So, something else is needed for automated driving at highway speeds, even on a "robot-only highway" you will have to contend with unexpected events...

 

I could see all of this happening, except for the lack of registrations, drivers' licenses, and insurance. The government has never (to my knowledge) given up any recurring source of revenue related to transportation, and the insurance lobby is too large to give up premiums. Perhaps it will be renamed 'passenger permit' and 'crash avoidance immunity', but the costs and processes will still be there to take our money and our time.


BT

 

They will give up nothing. They will transfer this money into the payment of the car you rent by the minute or mile. The advantage is if you use this rental vehicle less, you pay less.

Right now you have a car. You pay for the insurance and you pay for your registration. If you drive it one mile a year or 100,000 miles a year the cost for these things is the same. With the rental system it will be the opposite (something like gas taxes). The more you use the rental vehicle the more you will pay back the state.

 

Yes, and the internet is still using AOL dial up! And we still all have Nokia flip phones in our pockets!

The future is coming and faster than you can imagine. The race is on for autonomous cars and the reason is -- its one of the biggest markets in the world. Every major tech company wants a piece including Apple which just spent a fortune to steal away some of Googles best engineers working on it.