Is there any market research that indicates serious DEMAND for self driving cars?!

[scr4]

@iamthewalrus_3

You’re also discounting the times that it is not convenient to own a car. When your car doesn’t start in the morning and you have to deal with a tow truck and a mechanic instead of just having the next car in the queue pick you up. When you want to make a one-way trip somewhere and then have to figure out how to get the car back where it needs to go. When you have to choose a single model car to handle all your occasional needs instead of using the mini van when family is in town, and the jeep when you go camping, and the hatchback when you’re headed to the grocery store. When you have to spend an extra $100 in rent for the extra parking space…

There are lots of costs (monetary and otherwise) that come with owning a car, but people mostly ignore them because we’re good at ignoring things that are normal and focusing on things that are new and different.

That’s just the start. Think about the cost to you, and to society, of privately owned cars.

Where do you live? What percentage of your property (or apartment/condo complex) is dedicated to driveways and parking space? That percentage of your mortgage/rent is part of your cost of owning a car.

Think about every store & business you go to. How much of their rent is used for the parking lot? How much of that cost is passed down to the customer (you)?

How much parking space does your workplace have? How much more would they be able to pay you if they didn’t have to pay for a parking lot?

How many more teachers could your school district hire if they didn’t have to build parking lots for high schools?

How much closer would your workplace be to your home, or places you’d want to go during lunchtime, if there were no parking lots in between? How much time & money would you save?

How much of your taxes go towards traffic law enforcement?

All these are costs that would go away if we do away with privately owned, privately driven cars.

[Shodan]

@scr4

Yes, but at some point there will be enough cars that a car is always available within a few minutes wait.

If I own a car, I have already reached that point.

That’s the wait time you are competing with - thirty seconds to walk out to my garage and stick the key in the ignition.

And that point will be reached well before you get up to 1 car per person. Uber/Lyft is already there in major cities, and that’s with fewer than 1% of the city’s population working part-time as drivers.

It’s certainly possible that a driverless car will not suffer from the unwillingness of a human to work 24/7 nights, weekends, and holidays. But the limiting factor is still the number of cars, not the number of drivers. OK, I don’t have to pay the Uber driver. I do have to pay for the computer, and the sensors, and the software, and the insurance, and the maintenance (one way or another). Will that be less than a human? Maybe - maybe not.

I still don’t see why. Even if you live in the middle of nowhere, there is probably a nearby village or town where it would make sense for self-driving car operators to have a few cars standing by. If it’s 10 minutes away, you probably do need to call for a car 10 minutes before you leave home.

The difficulty being that they need enough cars to meet peak demand, as well as keeping enough cars within 10 minutes drive of everybody’s house (or workplace, or store, or whatever) to meet non-peak demand. And that’s a whole bunch of cars. One apiece? Maybe not, but close.

Or, increased wait times and inconvenience, both of which are non-zero costs.

Even in this situation, you are benefiting by sharing the cost of ownership of the car with other people.

Yes. Also the drawbacks.

Will the costs be worth it? That is not a question that is automatically answered Yes or No.

@iamthewalrus(:3=

You’re also discounting the times that it is not convenient to own a car. When your car doesn’t start in the morning and you have to deal with a tow truck and a mechanic instead of just having the next car in the queue pick you up. When you want to make a one-way trip somewhere and then have to figure out how to get the car back where it needs to go. When you have to choose a single model car to handle all your occasional needs instead of using the mini van when family is in town, and the jeep when you go camping, and the hatchback when you’re headed to the grocery store. When you have to spend an extra $100 in rent for the extra parking space…

I’m not discounting them, and they are certainly real advantages. I am saying I will include those in my cost-benefit analysis, On average, maybe I will save time, overall, because I never have to worry about my car breaking down, or because I can summon a mini van, or whatever. But maybe not, or maybe it is worth the extra money to me because I can get into my car and go on two minutes notice, even if I have to find a parking spot.

I’ve used Uber, I’ve used taxis, and I would dearly love to get into the car, punch in the destination, and then read a book or surf the 'Net or nap while I am taken to where I want to go. But what will it cost me?

@scr4

All these are costs that would go away if we do away with privately owned, privately driven cars.

Well - those costs might go away. But they will be replaced with other costs, like paying for parking lots for self-driving cars when nobody is using them (or paying for them to continuously cruise the streets waiting to be called). Maybe, overall, it would cost less. Maybe.

Regards,
Shodan

[Pantastic]

A lot of the ‘driverless cars lead to car sharing instead of ownership’ talk reminds me of the big push for dollar coins that people made back at the turn of the millennium. One dollar coins were HERE and going to be the future, and people are going to stop using dollar bills, and we should even stop printing the $1 bill because it’s obsolete. And yet… the only benefit anyone could articulate for dollar coins is that it would save the federal government some printing costs. All of the message board enthusiasm didn’t translate into them being wildly adopted, and while they are certainly in circulation, the $1 bill is not leaving circulation any time soon.

That’s the feeling that I get from this thread - there are organizations that will benefit from ‘car share’ services, and stand to make a lot of money from them. But I don’t see anyone articulating how they will benefit the average person who owns a car now (other than alleged cost savings that seems to be at an extreme time expense), and the enthusiasts keep glossing over really basic stuff like ‘what do I do if I’m in an area without a lot of drivers’ or 'how do I handle wanting to store a carload of stuff throughout the day.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the automotive landscape looks completely different 100 years from now (it certainly did back in the 1910s), and that could certainly be group-owned robot cars, but I don’t see the huge draw for the short-term.

[Tired_and_Cranky]

I’m buying a new car today. If I could get one with real self-driving features, I’d pay $15,000 more for the exact same car.

@Shodan

My point is that, when I own a car, there is always going to be a car in standby mode for me to use. A car service, whether driverless or Uber, does not have this feature. The closer you get to one car per person, so you don’t have to wait and where a car is available 24/7, the less you need a car service.It depends on the cost, including non-monetary costs like wait time.
My point is that there is not enough demand for people who live where I live, and work where I work, on my schedule, to justify a different mass transit option, like a bus.

You forget all the times your current car makes you wait, like when you have to drive around to find a parking space, get an oil change, get a car inspection, etc. Availability of cars at peak times will be a problem if we all share cars in the future but we are starting with such a huge surplus of cars that the fleet would have to shrink dramatically before that became a real problem. It is also eminently fixable by building enough self-driving cars for shared fleets, whatever “enough” is. The market will find the right mix of shareable cars, trucks, commuter pods, etc. just as today it finds the right number of all those non-shareable cars.

@Shodan

…I will have to wait while the car gets from wherever it is to point A, to pick me up - presumably including the time to drop off whoever is using the car before me.

Imagine that adding a privately-owned car to a self driving fleet through an app is even easier than adding your available bedroom to AirBnB. Look out your window and count how many cars are within a one minute drive of you. Why do you think it will take a long time for a self-driving car to show up if you order one? If you live in the middle of nowhere, perhaps it’s a few minutes. If you live in a city or suburb, it’s probably less than a minute.

@Shodan

Also, if the car service wants to be efficient, it will also pick up someone else in the general vicinity of point A who wants to get somewhere else in the general vicinity of point B, where I live. So I then have to wait while we go and pick up the someone else, and then wait while we drop off the someone else at his house and then drive to my house at point B. Or just have one car dedicated to me, and another to someone else. In which case, again, you don’t need a car service - just own a driverless car.

Or we build smaller, more efficient self-driving cars as part of the mix and they can efficiently transport just a single person.

@Shodan

Car services seem to me to be a more specialized market. Possibly valid for people who live where a lot of other people live, and who want to get where a lot of other people want to get. But that is not significantly different from any other form of mass transit. For efficiency, you want to concentrate on the most heavily traveled routes. Which is fine - except if you don’t use those routes. That’s why the buses don’t take me where I want to go, when I want to go - and also why it is likely a car service, driverless or not, will be able to do it either.

Driverless cars would allow individual transport at prices that are like public transport and convenience that is like, and in some ways exceeds, owning your own car. I don’t know why you would compare driverless car services to public transport.

@Shodan

A one-size-fits-all-commuters approach where you just hit an app on your smart phone and a robot whisks you home in a jiffy is probably not going to come about just by wishing.

Lyft and Uber allow this today, except the cars have drivers. Driverless cars just make Lyft and Uber cheaper and more convenient.

@Cheesesteak

During rush hours, a higher percentage of cars are in use, which would likely strain the capacity of car services, and introduce delays. With intelligent maximizing of resources, it’s possible that automated car pooling can be accomplished, reducing the number of cars required to get people where they’re going, at the expense of diverting to multiple origins/destinations.

Even if we assume that everyone wants to take an individual car to the office, shared self-driving cars would greatly reduce the number of cars needed. Where I am, rush hour is about three hours long. If I drove to work, I’d need my car for only about 30 minutes. My car could use the remaining 2.5 hours of rush hour to bring 2-3 other people to work on their schedule too. No need to car pool if you don’t want to. If you do want to car pool, at least everyone in the pool benefits from uniformly good driving.

[BwanaBob]

@Pantastic

A lot of the ‘driverless cars lead to car sharing instead of ownership’ talk reminds me of the big push for dollar coins that people made back at the turn of the millennium. One dollar coins were HERE and going to be the future, and people are going to stop using dollar bills, and we should even stop printing the $1 bill because it’s obsolete. And yet… the only benefit anyone could articulate for dollar coins is that it would save the federal government some printing costs. All of the message board enthusiasm didn’t translate into them being wildly adopted, and while they are certainly in circulation, the $1 bill is not leaving circulation any time soon.

That’s the feeling that I get from this thread - there are organizations that will benefit from ‘car share’ services, and stand to make a lot of money from them. But I don’t see anyone articulating how they will benefit the average person who owns a car now (other than alleged cost savings that seems to be at an extreme time expense), and the enthusiasts keep glossing over really basic stuff like ‘what do I do if I’m in an area without a lot of drivers’ or 'how do I handle wanting to store a carload of stuff throughout the day.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the automotive landscape looks completely different 100 years from now (it certainly did back in the 1910s), and that could certainly be group-owned robot cars, but I don’t see the huge draw for the short-term.

Your example of the $1bill/coin issue isn’t germane. Every place that did the bill to coin swap stopped making the bills. The US stubbornly refuses to go that route. The fact that it demonstrably saves the government money (ie your tax dollars) is all of a sudden a “bad” thing. Keeping both options equally accessible prevents uptake because basically people are craven beasts who hate change and quite often do not know what’s in their own interests. Not one of those countries that did the switch has any relevant percentage of people crying that they miss their low value paper bills, ( except strippers )

[iamthewalrus_3]

@Shodan

If I own a car, I have already reached that point.

That’s the wait time you are competing with - thirty seconds to walk out to my garage and stick the key in the ignition.

I mean, only sometimes. Specifically, only when you are 30 seconds away from your car.

What about when you drive somewhere but have to park three blocks away because there’s no nearby parking?

Or if you take a walk through the park, then when it starts to rain you have to walk back to where you parked your car. Instead of just grabbing a nearby one.

I think you’re thinking about this precisely backward. You’re thinking: having my own car is so convenient because it’s always with me. But in order for that to be convenient, you have to bring your car with you everywhere you go.

Societally that has huge costs. We’re all in worse health because we drive everywhere. Because our neighborhoods aren’t walkable, because everything is further spread out to make room for cars. And even when we could walk somewhere, well, then we’d be so far away from our cars for the next thing that we don’t.

Well - those costs might go away. But they will be replaced with other costs, like paying for parking lots for self-driving cars when nobody is using them (or paying for them to continuously cruise the streets waiting to be called). Maybe, overall, it would cost less. Maybe.

A world in which all cars are self-driving hardly needs parking lots at all. When all the cars are in use, they’re driving in the streets. And when they aren’t needed, they just pull over to the side of the road and park. There’s no point in having parking lots for more cars than can fit on the streets because those cars won’t get used.

The more that cars are self-driving, the fewer cars we’ll need, and the less space to put them. I don’t see how you get more costs out of that.

[steronz]

You’re presupposing that everyone will be living in dense urban environments without ample parking. That might be an ideal goal from an efficiency and/or health standpoint, but living in the suburbs, keeping a car 30 seconds away at all times isn’t a challenge. Yeah, there are costs to society for that, but fixing society isn’t an economic driver.

[enipla]

Ya know, this debate reminds me of threads from many years ago on the SDMB the “People don’t need SUV’s” debate. I do feel that those on each side don’t quite understand the ‘other’ side. Sure as shit always happened in the SUV debates.

I’m on a very, very extreme side of needing an SUV and not trusting the availability or ability of a self-driving auto-pilot car. Others in the city see cars parked everywhere not doing a damn thing but taking up room.

I’m not arguing that self driving cars would be great for many. Just don’t push me into one that most likely won’t work.

I go to the city twice a month, I need a car to do that. It’s never a problem, and I need the car when I’m in the city on a weekend. On the other hand, I wonder how often city folks get into the sticks or experience winters that produce 30 feet of snow a season. I’m open to new technology (I’m a GIS programmer), but allow me my skepticism when people say that the tech for self driving cars for what I need is anywhere close.

[scr4]

@enipla

Ya know, this debate reminds me of threads from many years ago on the SDMB the “People don’t need SUV’s” debate. I do feel that those on each side don’t quite understand the ‘other’ side.

I do understand the stand point of car owners - I am one. I live in a typical American small sprawling town/city with no public transport to speak of, and everyone here agrees they need a car - even the young new co-worker who moved here from Europe and didn’t have a drivers license.

I love my car. But I also wish I didn’t have to own one.

[enipla]

@scr4

I do understand the stand point of car owners - I am one. I live in a typical American small sprawling town/city with no public transport to speak of, and everyone here agrees they need a car - even the young new co-worker who moved here from Europe and didn’t have a drivers license.

I love my car. But I also wish I didn’t have to own one.

So fight for public transport where you live. Living in a small sprawling town/city gives you zero creds for people that actually live in the sticks. The closest ‘town’ to me has 400 people. Do not assume to know what I need.

[scr4]

@enipla

So fight for public transport where you live…

What makes you think I don’t?

[pullin]

When (if) we get to the point of shared self-driving cars which can be summoned by anyone, they will be treated the same way a public restroom is treated today. They will quickly end up being vile cesspits that many adults wouldn’t enter, let alone bring their children or groceries aboard.

Uber/Lyft doesn’t have this problem because the owner is onboard. But without some sort of video monitoring and a way of up-charging litterers, the cars will be nasty.

As far as my personal demand for self-driving ability, I’d be content with a vehicle that could go park itself and retrieve me later from a store/work parking lot. That seems like a low hurdle that could be passed fairly soon and I’d love that feature.

[RTFirefly]

@pullin

When (if) we get to the point of shared self-driving cars which can be summoned by anyone, they will be treated the same way a public restroom is treated today. They will quickly end up being vile cesspits that many adults wouldn’t enter, let alone bring their children or groceries aboard.

Uber/Lyft doesn’t have this problem because the owner is onboard. But without some sort of video monitoring and a way of up-charging litterers, the cars will be nasty.

How about ZipCar? Do their cars become cesspits? Their cars can be used by anyone who lives near somewhere where a ZipCar is parked. ZipCar doesn’t provide a driver. Do they have video monitoring in their cars?

[Pantastic]

@BwanaBob

Your example of the $1bill/coin issue isn’t germane. Every place that did the bill to coin swap stopped making the bills. The US stubbornly refuses to go that route. The fact that it demonstrably saves the government money (ie your tax dollars) is all of a sudden a “bad” thing. Keeping both options equally accessible prevents uptake because basically people are craven beasts who hate change and quite often do not know what’s in their own interests. Not one of those countries that did the switch has any relevant percentage of people crying that they miss their low value paper bills, ( except strippers )

It very much is germane, because proponents are doing the exact same thing in both cases. Supposedly going to $1 coins was going to give people some kind of benefit. Both with coins and cars, people claim that it’s in other people’s interest, and make accusations like people 'do not know what’s in their own interests". Yet in both cases proponents utterly fail to make the case for these benefits. Taking on a large amount of inconvenience to save a tiny amount of Federal money is not actually in my interest, and it’s similar with the car issue. Making more profit for ride-share companies is certainly in THEIR interest, but it’s not in mine.

I think that the only way to force any kind of short term move to non-private cars is with legislation banning (or effectively banning) private cars, just like how moving from dollar bills to dollar coins requires legislation pulling the $1 bill from circulation. The fact that they both have the same ‘only way to make it actually happen’ is extremely relevant.

[Barbarian]

@iamthewalrus_3

But the real reason that the demand will be huge is that self-driving cars will be vastly cheaper than personal vehicle ownership in most places. Personal vehicles are an extremely inefficient allocation of capital: most of them sit idle most of the time. But it’s worth it for the convenience of being able to go where you want when you want.

People use this argument but I don’t believe it holds up for most people in most circumstances.

They use the same argument for car-sharing services, and that also doesn’t hold water.

For some people making short commutes, using a rental service to get around will save money in certain circumstances, and it may save hassle when it comes to parking. It’s not going to be the case for those making longer drives.

I use multiple modes of transportation: we have a family car, I own a motorcycle, I commute via public transit or bicycle, I am a member of two car-sharing services.

I flip back and forth between these because I live in a residential area close to the core of a metropolis, and I do it all based on convenience and cost.
But going out to see people who live 30 km out of the city is something I never do with car-sharing because the cost would be ludicrous. That’s not going to change with self-driving cars.

[scr4]

@Pantastic

It very much is germane, because proponents are doing the exact same thing in both cases. Supposedly going to $1 coins was going to give people some kind of benefit

The difference is, you don’t need to phase out manually-operated cars for self-driving cars to be useful. The benefits of $1 coins will only come when $1 bills are phased out.

Think of it more as smartphones. Their ubiquity has led to many changes in our society. In a way, they are useful because everyone else has them. But even before they became popular, there were plenty of reasons for the people to buy the 1st generation iPhones, or even its precursors (Blackberry, Palm Treo, etc).

[bump]

@scr4

Where do you live? What percentage of your property (or apartment/condo complex) is dedicated to driveways and parking space? That percentage of your mortgage/rent is part of your cost of owning a car.

For an existing house (most of 'em) that’s baked in- you can’t avoid it, self-driving car or not. And lots of people just don’t use it for their cars anyway, so that’s a shaky argument at best.

@scr4

Think about every store & business you go to. How much of their rent is used for the parking lot? How much of that cost is passed down to the customer (you)?

Probably very little overall. And again, that’s already baked in, unless we’re talking about new construction. It’s not like if we switch to all self-driving robo-Uber type cars, landlords are going to start charging less rent on existing places with parking lots because there aren’t cars to park in them. More likely, they’ll try to tear up the parking lots and put in more stores… if that is even an economic possibility in that area.

Beyond that, there are plenty of places without parking lots already- their rent is probably higher than places with parking lots, considering that they’re typically in high-rent, high-density areas to begin with.

@scr4

How much parking space does your workplace have? How much more would they be able to pay you if they didn’t have to pay for a parking lot?

Probably exactly nothing- we own our own facilities, and the parking garage is probably long since paid off, considering that the building was built in 1979.

@scr4

How many more teachers could your school district hire if they didn’t have to build parking lots for high schools?

None. Parking lots are part of school construction bonds, while teacher pay is regular operating expenses (i.e. tax money).

@scr4

How much closer would your workplace be to your home, or places you’d want to go during lunchtime, if there were no parking lots in between? How much time & money would you save?

Nothing- my home and work are 12 miles apart. Not sure how eliminating parking lots would change that.

@scr4

How much of your taxes go towards traffic law enforcement?

No idea, but I’d almost guarantee that it’s offset by the ticket revenue. That’s an argument FOR person-driven cars in a way.

I get why self-driving cars are predicted to be great. I have no truck with that. Where I’m not convinced is this grandiose proclamation that by necessity, once self-driving cars become common, that Uber style taxi or ride-sharing will become the default, and car ownership will fade away.

For example, I calculate (rounding up a whole lot) that my average total cost per mile over the ~12 years I’ve had my pickup is $0.43. That’s counting the cost, gas, tires, repairs, insurance and maintenance) That makes a drive to work cost $6.60.

By way of comparison, Lyft quotes me $15-18 for the same trip right now - slightly outside of rush hour.

I’m struggling to understand how removing the driver is magically going to somehow drop their price below my cost. If they’re charging $15 now, I find it a bit hard to believe that they’re going to drop their price under $6.60 (my cost) at some future point.

Plus, you have all the non-financial advantages- I can go when and where I want, I can store stuff in my vehicle, I can install a kid seat and leave it there, and I was able to choose sound system, brand, performance, color, size, etc…

[Chronos]

The part that puzzles me is that car-sharing services are already possible, and in fact implemented, and most people still choose to own their own. How will robot drivers change that?

[scr4]

@bump

For an existing house (most of 'em) that’s baked in-
… And again, that’s already baked in, unless we’re talking about new construction…

The point of my post was, eventually, after self-driving cars become ubiquitous, all those baked-in costs will go away. I think we’ll start to see some changes like that in progressive cities in less than 10 years, but it’ll probably take many decades for the rest of the US to change appreciably.

[bump]

@Chronos

The part that puzzles me is that car-sharing services are already possible, and in fact implemented, and most people still choose to own their own. How will robot drivers change that?

Exactly. And the answers I’ve seen so far around here are basically some hand-waving and the claim that removing the driver will make things SO cheap, that anyone with any good sense will quit owning their own car, and move to car-sharing.

And yet, as I showed a few posts up, they’re going to have to drastically cut their prices to compete with the actual cost of an owned car, if they’re choosing to compete on price. (which is kind of bad business in the first place, in that you always end up making very thin margins just above your cost.)

My example is actually on the high side- AAA estimates the average cost per mile to be lower for car owners- around $0.61/mile. Any car-sharing service is going to have to beat that in order to make the cost of ownership argument valid.

Where I suspect they’ll compete is where they always have- convenience and specific situations like going to/from the airport, going to/coming home from a night out, events where parking is hard to find or very expensive, and random situations like being a public transit rider and the train system craps out when you HAVE to be where you’re going by a specific time. Those are all valid and reasonable situations for car-sharing services.

Even there, if you go above some arbitrary amount of driving, people tend to rent cars to drive themselves instead of constantly relying on car-sharing services/taxis.