Self-driving cars?

[Allegheny1600]

1 hour ago, Reorte said:

A cost that'll have to be borne however we travel. The car that gets used twice as much wears out twice as quickly; once you get past the big drop from driving the car off the forecourt how much of the depreciation is from time unused rather than mileage used? Particularly now that they don't turn into a heap of rust after the first passing shower.

This goes back to what I alluded to earlier - the vehicle manufacturers!

IF they were forced (somehow) to build cars that last, rather than having depreciation built in, these vehicles could be made to be almost everlasting.

 I know - it will never happen and again, this vision is a form of utopia but it is one possible future that electric vehicles could afford us.

However, a future where we don’t do “something” - isn’t a very positive future for human existence.

[Reorte]

7 minutes ago, Allegheny1600 said:

This goes back to what I alluded to earlier - the vehicle manufacturers!

IF they were forced (somehow) to build cars that last, rather than having depreciation built in, these vehicles could be made to be almost everlasting.

 I know - it will never happen and again, this vision is a form of utopia but it is one possible future that electric vehicles could afford us.

However, a future where we don’t do “something” - isn’t a very positive future for human existence.

Car manufacturers are going in that direction to be fair. Cars over ten years old that don't look like wrecks on wheels aren't that uncommon. When I was small anything of that age in even half decent condition would be because it was very carefully looked after. Bodywork deterioration used to be a major problem and isn't really any more. The engine going is likely to be what spells the end of most current cars, a complex mechanical device with many moving parts that isn't always looked after very well, and even they often seem to last longer than they once did (most should go well over 100 000 miles). And electrics should last even longer; battery degradation doesn't look like it is as much of an issue as initially feared.

 

If there's any depreciation built in it's most likely to be in the form of electronics and encouragement to scrap still functional vehicles. And an autonomous car that relies on communicating with others is at a bigger risk of obsolescence as standards change than one that's an entirely self-contained, independent vehicle.

 

Unfortunately the vision of the future where we do something doesn't look very positive either, and whilst logically we're sometimes faced with having to pick the lesser evil it's not all that great when the best you can hope for is it happening after you're gone.

[Nearholmer]

1 hour ago, Reorte said:

But since those vehicles would be getting used more

 

No, the total usage, and hence the fleet-wide wear and tear would stay the same; individual vehicles would have higher utilisation, but across the fleet things would stay exactly the same; the thing that would alter would be the standing-doing-nothing-age.

 

At the moment we incur costs, and consume raw materials, in order to decorate our environment with stationary metal boxes on wheels. I'm not sure what the minimum percentage of the fleet parked-up at the point of fleet-wide maximum utilisation is, but I'd be prepared to wager at least 20%**, and not only could we save on the cost of the vehicles, but on the space to stand them too.

 

As a quick reckoner, the average car in the UK does 7600 miles/year. Assuming its average speed to be 20mph while doing it, that mileage will take 380hrs, or 4.3% of the year, and for the other 95.7%* of the year it will be parked. Even with mega-peaky demand, pooling could make good inroads on that sort of utilisation factor. Think locomotives or EMUS: would any railway tolerate 4.3% utilisation?

 

*Multiple other ways of calculating get to pretty much the same answer.

 

** As a tiny anecdotal example, peak traffic where I live pre-Covid was c0815 on a weekday morning, yet at that very same time, two huge multi-storey car parks at the station were brim-full of cars, left there by people who had cleared-off to London before 0800, multiple workplace car parks were already half-full, and maybe 10% of cars were parked at the homes of pensioners, shift-workers, WFH-bods, etc.

Edited May 17, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Reorte]

22 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

No, the total usage, and hence the fleet-wide wear and tear would stay the same; individual vehicles would have higher utilisation, but across the fleet things would stay exactly the same; the thing that would alter would be the standing-doing-nothing-age.

The question is whether the standing-doing-nothing-age really matters; I'd argue that it doesn't carry much of a cost for a modern car with good rustproofing, and would guess that it's more for a train. It's only if a car sits doing nothing for weeks you start to get problems.

 

Quote

As a tiny anecdotal example, peak traffic where I live pre-Covid was c0815 on a weekday morning, yet at that very same time, two huge multi-storey car parks at the station were brim-full of cars, left there by people who had cleared-off to London before 0800, multiple workplace car parks were already half-full, and maybe 10% of cars were parked at the homes of pensioners, shift-workers, WFH-bods, etc.

That suggests that near 90% of the current number of cars will be required regardless then; enough cars are required to support the peak demand.

[Nearholmer]

1 minute ago, Reorte said:

The question is whether the standing-doing-nothing-age really matters; I'd argue that it doesn't carry much of a cost for a modern car with good rustproofing, and would guess that it's more for a train. It's only if a car sits doing nothing for weeks you start to get problems.

 

Very significant land-take; consumption of materials and labour to create purpose-made parking-places; increased obstruction of streets without purpose-designed parking, thereby increasing fuel consumption of vehicles that are moving; materials and labour locked-up in idle vehicles; and there are other things too.

 

The costs might not fall direct onto a vehicle owner, although some certainly do, in the form of parking charges, but they are costs nevertheless.

 

The "ide vehicle cost" for a vehicle in an isolated location isn't much, maybe nothing tangible at all, but c80% of people live in "urban areas", where idle vehicles impose considerable tangible costs, and huge intangible costs in terms of desecration of visual amenity (= parked cars look a mess).

[Reorte]

15 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

 

Very significant land-take; consumption of materials and labour to create purpose-made parking-places; increased obstruction of streets without purpose-designed parking, thereby increasing fuel consumption of vehicles that are moving; materials and labour locked-up in idle vehicles; and there are other things too.

That brings us back to the question of where do you put them all at 3 am when hardly anyone's travelling anyway.

 

I don't get the "labour and materials locked up in idle vehicles" point.

Edited May 17, 2021 by Reorte

[Nearholmer]

Where we put them now, but there would be fewer of 'em to put?

 

A "pooled" model for AV-EVs gets interesting when it comes to charging time, though. The obvious thing would be a big depot, as per milk floats of old, but not only would that get us straight back into land-take etc, but also incur lots of empty mileage. Better by far would be for them to charge-up near where they will be called for in the morning, but that then poses all sorts of questions about charging infrastructure yet again - maybe the way to "queue jump" getting one first thing in the morning is to invite it home to charge on your drive, if you are lucky enough to have a drive.

 

 

[Grovenor]

3 hours ago, giz said:

This video of a ride in a Waymo self driving taxi is interesting. It does well until caught out by some cones set out for construction work:

 

 

He also has a number of other videos of more successful journeys.

 

 

Certainly shows the current state of the art! managed the Mall carpark OK but then a few cones bamboozle it.

[billbedford]

35 minutes ago, boxbrownie said:

People will still be owners of vehicles in the foreseeable future, it’ll take a major shift in private vehicle ownership patterns, it could happen in the future but it’s going to be a long way in the future, just like HS2 and Jet Packs.....there....almost got back on thread 

 

 

Not as far off as you think. 

 

We already have many under 30s being priced out of car ownership in cities, with fewer of them learning to drive. 

We have Local Authorities all over the country unilaterally instigating LTNs*, making local driving more difficult. 

There is Net Carbon Zero rules coming up with a ban on the sale of new ICE cars by 2030 and all ICE powered cars by 2035. It will only then be a short time before the sale of petrol and diesel to the public will cease.

Given that electric car are inherently more expensive and that the life is limited by the batteries I can't see many people rushing out to buy them as private vehicles. 

If, sometime in the early 2030s, someone, lets say Tesco (because they have the land needed) were to offer a ubiquitous, local, driverless, automatic, dial-up electric powered family-sized system then I would expect that it would become the major urban transport system within about 10 years. This would mirror the ten years or so that the UK road transport changed from being 80% horse drawn to 80% petrol driven. 

 

*Low Traffic Neighbourhoods

 

 

[billbedford]

1 hour ago, Grovenor said:

Certainly shows the current state of the art! managed the Mall carpark OK but then a few cones bamboozle it.

 

D'you think we could confuse it even more by putting dolls heads on to of traffic cones?

[Ozexpatriate]

3 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Very significant land-take; consumption of materials and labour to create purpose-made parking-places;

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Where we put them now, but there would be fewer of 'em to put?

 

A "pooled" model for AV-EVs gets interesting when it comes to charging time, though. The obvious thing would be a big depot, as per milk floats of old, but not only would that get us straight back into land-take etc, but also incur lots of empty mileage.

I don't think the "land take" issue is nearly so big. Autonomous vehicles can be stored with much higher density if you don't need access for drivers/passengers and ramps. (Think of Volkswagen's Autostadt.) Existing car park infrastructure can be repurposed. Simply placing cars closer together would probably increase density dramatically.

 

The empty mileage concern is there, but this is already the case for taxis and other rideshare solution. It's not prohibitive.

 

The biggest issue with recharging points is that today, a human is required to plug the car into the recharger, but this is a minor detail in the big scheme of things. 

 

[Ozexpatriate]

4 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

As a tiny anecdotal example, peak traffic where I live pre-Covid was c0815 on a weekday morning, yet at that very same time, two huge multi-storey car parks at the station were brim-full of cars, left there by people who had cleared-off to London before 0800, multiple workplace car parks were already half-full, and maybe 10% of cars were parked at the homes of pensioners, shift-workers, WFH-bods, etc.

It will be interesting to see what the post-CoViD, 'work from home' rate looks like versus 'downtown commute'. We may see some sustained reduced peak demand. On the other hand with the pandemic-inspired flight to the suburbs in search of more home office space, it might balance out.

[Grovenor]

1 hour ago, billbedford said:

 

D'you think we could confuse it even more by putting dolls heads on to of traffic cones?

Sure, but wait till they have fixed the cone problem.

[Michael Hodgson]

Shouldn't be a problem ... isn't that what the cones hotline is for ?

[caradoc]

On 17/05/2021 at 13:11, billbedford said:

 

Yes, in cities it is already there, it's called Uber. 

 

Not necessarily; I live all of 10 miles from one of the biggest cities in the UK but Uber do not deign to serve my neighbourhood.