Driverless Vehicles

crunchman

Chalky said:

@crunchman I'd be careful in believing the hype. US road driving is very different to European road driving, most notably in size/space, predictable junction rules, and pedestrian behavour. And don't mention roundabouts.

Sure California will have some but I think even your 2030 prediction for the UK is way too early. Remember my last point was that the cost has to come down to a utility level - I really do not see the need for a driverless car converting all those people who drive secondhand cars. Even then, the rich have to buy new ones and they will need to age and be proven over 5-10 years before they get passed on in sufficient numbers in the secondhand market.

Has any estimate been done on what the demand for driverless cars will be?

I think the big initial demand will be in the taxi market.  Uber (or someone like them) will order tens of thousands of driverless cars as soon as they become available.  Due to not having to pay a driver they will be able to massively undercut existing taxis.  They will probably put the overwhelming majority of them out of business within 5 years or less.  If taxis get cheaper then a lot of people in cities won't bother owning their own cars.  It would make car club type things more practical as the car will come around to your house.  At the moment you might have a 10 minute walk to find a car club bay.

It will take time to filter through to the wider market, but I don't think it is necessarily an either/or situation.  Once this is legal a lot of cars will be sold with the ability to be driven manually or to be put into an automated mode.  I would expect the majority of new cars to have the capability within 10 years once it becomes legal.  It will depend on how much all the sensors etc. cost but a lot of cars already have sensors for the emergency braking stuff they do.

According to the link I posted earlier, Stefan Moser, Head of Product and Technology Communications at Audi has announced that the next generation of their A8 limousine will be able to drive itself with full autonomy.  Initially it probably won't be legal, but there may already be thousands of capable cars on the road when it is made legal.  If Audi are doing it, then BMW and Mercedes will do it as well.  Citroen will follow (even if it breaks every 10 minutes).

Sporky

Cirrus said:

And if cars could travel at the speed of light, there'd only be one or two cars on the entire UK road network at any given time. That'd be quite handy. >-)

Apart from turning the air into plasma. Which might have unpleasant consequences.

ICBM

Cirrus said:

And if cars could travel at the speed of light, there'd only be one or two cars on the entire UK road network at any given time. That'd be quite handy. >-)

Not quite. Since time is essentially static at the speed of light, all the cars would be on all the roads at the same time. However, if they behaved like photons they wouldn't interact with each other, so it wouldn't be a problem. But unfortunately you would always be late for wherever you're going, since during your journey the rest of the country would have aged thousands of years.

Phil_aka_Pip

ICBM said:

Not quite. Since time is essentially static at the speed of light, all the cars would be on all the roads at the same time. However, if they behaved like photons they wouldn't interact with each other, so it wouldn't be a problem. But unfortunately you would always be late for wherever you're going, since during your journey the rest of the country would have aged thousands of years.

It's OK. I'm usually late for things, and most people are used to that by now

slacker

Most of the problems on the motorway are caused by a combination of some people hogging lanes and others getting frustrated by it.I have driven up and down the M1 for years and it seems that most of the time there are restrictions around junction 11 and 25 where they are widening the road. When it's finished nobody uses the extra lane. 

If driverless cars use the inside lane count me in. 

Chalky

@crunchman - Thousands sold is not enough. To get the scale benefits needed for the costs to become reasonable you need a massive ramp up in production. Even that is going to take 5 years after the market for them has been proven to exist. Electric cars and hybrids are still on that curve after many years.

How will the car systems be checked and tested MOT wise? Who will take responsibilty for the vehicle - can't be the driver as they won't always be driving? How will the vehicle system be defended against hacking? Look at vehicle recalls and the costs of litigation and liability - how many years will that take to sort out?

My point is that the technology is the easy bit - implementation, rollout, getting them out there and proven, and solving all the unintended and non-technological problems have a long long lead time. Plus a spate of accidents and fatalities could easily add years to the process.