The future of driving
- Thread starter steveny
- Start date
If this self-driving/pod stuff does happen, I bet we're going to see an explosion of race tracks being built around the world.
People will have their old NSX/S2000/M3/Porsche in the garage and take it out to the race track on the weekends.
People will be jonesing just to drive at all.
People will have their old NSX/S2000/M3/Porsche in the garage and take it out to the race track on the weekends.
People will be jonesing just to drive at all.
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It's not if it's when and it's sooner than anyone thinks. Don't worry you'll still get to use the NSX, that system google is developing can be retrofit to existing cars.
I hate change too except for when it really makes sense then I support it fully. Self driving cars are a good thing and will change the entire world as we know it, for the better. Imagine a world where you KNOW you will not die in an automobile. That will soon be a reality.
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Someone emailed this to me. I love the last line and it's why I'm so excited about this car, seeing it with your own eyes, it's now, not some far off in the future car. Everyone I've told about the car who has not ridden in the car is unimpressed. Any of those people who take a ride at a later date are floored. Which is great because they are the ones who don't want to believe its true.
Hate to be the pessimist but lane assist is a lot different then self driving cars that can navigate a normal surface street with twists and turns, pedestrians, dogs, cross guards... Google has been testing self driving cars (even on some city streets) but they're not perfect. Ensuring all surface streets and roads are "clearly visible" to the cars at all times, in all weather conditions is going to take a long time, and would never be approved by the government until they were able to achieve NASA type safety levels. Google was at 700,000 miles driven earlier this year, which is amazing, but with people driving 12,000 miles per year (or so) that's equal to 58 peoples annual mileage. If this project was measured in a life cycle, it would be a fetus.
My guess is a combined system of sonar for spacing (and redundancy), and a buried line in streets that wirelessly connects to each vehicle so in-vehicle software can link up with a centralized server, which operates the system on a grand scale, is the only way such a shift could take place. The buried line ensures roads don't have to be "visable" as the car will follow the path of the line, and central servers guarantee optimal overall efficiency. Sonar can look-out for pedestrians, dogs, ect. Without the central line/control cars would have a difficult time with weather (snow, thick fog) and we could see OS issues as cars(or pods) age. We could have an IOS/android fragmentation issue, whilst also having to deal with the folks who want to jailbreak their pod.
All of this will result in big brother issues and some percent of the population claiming this to be an invasion of their civil rights and will digress into inevitable lawsuits...
My guess is in 20 years we are still "driving" our cars. They'll have numerous "safety features" such as lane assist, automatic braking, traffic adjustable cruise control, and a host of other features that will make driving almost autonomous, but the driver will ultimately still be in control of the vehicle (even if they don't actively have to steer like we do now). If the pod idea of travel does take off I guess it will be a separate infrastructure, much like subways today, where people who want to give up their commute/control for an alternate mode of travel can do so as an alternate to cars. Maybe it evolves into their own separate lanes/roads, but I believe they will be separate.
I agree that autonomous travel would be the ideal for a host of reasons, but I can't say I even remotely believe it will happen in the next 10-20 years.
My guess is a combined system of sonar for spacing (and redundancy), and a buried line in streets that wirelessly connects to each vehicle so in-vehicle software can link up with a centralized server, which operates the system on a grand scale, is the only way such a shift could take place. The buried line ensures roads don't have to be "visable" as the car will follow the path of the line, and central servers guarantee optimal overall efficiency. Sonar can look-out for pedestrians, dogs, ect. Without the central line/control cars would have a difficult time with weather (snow, thick fog) and we could see OS issues as cars(or pods) age. We could have an IOS/android fragmentation issue, whilst also having to deal with the folks who want to jailbreak their pod.
All of this will result in big brother issues and some percent of the population claiming this to be an invasion of their civil rights and will digress into inevitable lawsuits...
My guess is in 20 years we are still "driving" our cars. They'll have numerous "safety features" such as lane assist, automatic braking, traffic adjustable cruise control, and a host of other features that will make driving almost autonomous, but the driver will ultimately still be in control of the vehicle (even if they don't actively have to steer like we do now). If the pod idea of travel does take off I guess it will be a separate infrastructure, much like subways today, where people who want to give up their commute/control for an alternate mode of travel can do so as an alternate to cars. Maybe it evolves into their own separate lanes/roads, but I believe they will be separate.
I agree that autonomous travel would be the ideal for a host of reasons, but I can't say I even remotely believe it will happen in the next 10-20 years.
Actually, I think it'll be a little sooner or maybe even history as autonomous driving happened this morning on my way to the store. Go to youtube and check out some videos. Honestly, even the videos don't give perspective until you're in the car and see it with your own eyes. I wouldn't believe it either if I'd only seen the videos. And there isn't anything buried in the roads as far as I know. Once there is no need for stop signs, traffic lights, any signage for that matter there will be pleanty of time and money to insure all roads are painted at all times. In the northeast they could set up a system on a plow truck that drops powder in place of the line until the snow melts. There have been many times since I've bought the car where I personally couldn't see the line that well but the car tracked the road perfectly. The technology has come a lot further than you may be aware of. Today's method of travel is certainly not even close to NASA safety standards.
Some type of sonar is already on my car, not only does it alert me with a ding that a pedestrian or animal is on the road, it also spots them on the dash board with other objects that are around the car, 360 degrees like a camera is ten feet above the car. As well if the object is in front of the vehicle the headlights will direct themselves to that object and spot light it for me.
I believe this post is starting to bring this thread out of fantasy land and more in line with reality
Having the car for a couple of weeks now and showing different people I know the car I've found two schools of camp on the issue. One school, excitement and acknowledgment of the technology and what's to come in the near future. The other camp, non believers that it'll never happen or that it won't happen in their lifetime. Now personally knowing these people and their personalities there is something the second group all have in common, they believe it's taking from their personal freedom, it's government intrusion into their lives, and they don't like change..damint. None of those points disqualify that the technology is actually here in the present. When pressed they have all become angry.
So steveny, how much driving are you actually doing when in the car currently? Are your feet on the pedals and hands on the wheel and the car is making the I inputs or are you trusting the system and being able to look around and stuff?
not sure I fall into your second category.....maybe you need a third. I think the tech is great and will do wonders for the driving world and I wasn't even thinking about the government's intrusion into my life.........but now that you mention it....hmmmm. It's just I don't see it happening in the next 10 to 20 years. You are driving a new S class Merc! Believe it or not only a small percentage of the population can afford that car and any other car that has this high tech. That tech has to filter down. How long will that take? Not everyone can afford a new car now.....next year......... in the next 10 years. I believe you are talking about all roads....all lanes of the highway.....that means all cars. I was talking about a special lane (specifically on the highways) for cars like yours. This seems more realistic to me in the near (10~20 years) future.
There is not enough real estate left to build separate roads just for self driving cars especially where they would be needed most, in metropolitan areas. Also, combining self driving lanes with regular lanes of traffic might be prohibitive, e.g. drivers just cutting off cars in self driving lanes because they know the technology will let them safely merge unless they incorporate a road rage mode for self drivers
. It sure wouldn't be safe to be behind a self driver since it might slam on the brakes for a rabbit or squirrel and you would rearend them. You can't keep both types separate as long as cars as merging and exiting on the highway. And then there are the hackers and sabotagers, but that's another story. It will never be 100% foolproof. So I tend to agree with Dhalsim and others that it will take several years to develop.
. It sure wouldn't be safe to be behind a self driver since it might slam on the brakes for a rabbit or squirrel and you would rearend them. You can't keep both types separate as long as cars as merging and exiting on the highway. And then there are the hackers and sabotagers, but that's another story. It will never be 100% foolproof. So I tend to agree with Dhalsim and others that it will take several years to develop.
I'm all for the technology. It could be great. I'd love to see it happen and I'm far from a civil rights monger. I love my HOA because it keeps idiots from parking cars on their lawns and doing a host of other things I think are ugly/rude/ridiculous. It limits my freedom, but I'm ok with that.
If we're gonna jump to labeling people, I would say you have been exposed to an undeniably cool piece of tech and now have beer goggles on (or would it be beer Googles in this case?). For all of the great features in the S class, and it's ability to "drive" itself, it can't interpret anything on a higher level. Its a couple of relatively simple systems, combined with sophisticated software that follow some basic principals. Stay in the center of the lane, don't get with in x feet of the object front/left/rear/right, brake if velocity of car will cause it's path to immediately intersect with x object etc. All of the systems and coded logic result in a car that can handle most of our daily commutes without issue. Can it handle everything? No. Not even close. Can your S class differentiate between a kid who ran in front of your car while retrieving an errant baseball vs the crook who's pointing a gun at you, standing directly in front of the car that conveniently came to a complete safe stop right in front of him? It may be a dumb analogy, but it serves a purpose. Extrapolate all the what ifs, to the billions of miles driven annually and even a small percentage of errors results in 1000's of accidents and issues. Could it be as safe as the crapshoot traffic we have today? Maybe. Eventually.
There is a big, monumental, astronomically huge difference between giving a driver a host of "safety features" that assist him but ultimately leave him in control of the vehicle, vs self driving pods that the first page of this thread describes, where people get a mani/pedi on their way home. In 2020. 6 years from now. Shifting responsibility from the driver to the car won't happen until the car can match/exceed a human in higher level decision making. Driving a vehicle has not fundamentally changed in the last 100 years, at all really. A cars features, abilities, and options certainly have, but the reality is you could time-travel a driver from 1920 and he could drive a vehicle produced yesterday. Such a fundamental shift in expectation and infrastructure is not going to change in 6 years because Mercedes, Hyundai, Google and a host of others are working on autonomous vehicles. Since our existing infrastructure isn't geared for this type of travel, it will be it's own mini-miracle to convert what we have to a working system that either integrates standard vehicles with autonomous cars, or eliminates them entirely.
Does this honestly sound like a good idea to you? This is an exact scenario that would give many people a reason to pause. What happens when someone steals this powder (or buys some Chinese produced knock-off) and leaves a trail off the side of a cliff? Just because they can. Your self driving car isn't gonna know any different. There are plenty of hills across America that sonar sensors can't "see" over so the car isn't gonna know that drop-off isn't a hill, its a cliff.
I'm not saying my thoughts on the subject matter are great, or even necessarily well thought out, but a buried line that requires 2 way communication (think encryption) seems infinitely safer than this. If however, my 2020 commute to work consists of me cruising on a layer of pixie dust whilst Jesus takes the wheel, I'll gladly eat crow.
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Very simple answer, because I traded in a five year old s class for the new one and every single thing that was new, cool and unique on the five year old s class when I first got it is now on just about every car built today. That's true throughout history, if it holds true, five years from now...
Average car life span is around ten years and fleet turnover is less than 20. If subsidies came into play that 20 could drop substantially. I know many people, especially NSX owners, keep their cars a long time but think about it, the last NSX was built almost ten years ago and the first one almost 25 years ago. Sure it's still a good car today but it's also rare that a car is that good and holds up that long. I rarely see any 1991 anythings on the road. A large percentage of the population use cars to get from A to B and when they are worn out they are replaced. If every car was as good as the NSX I wouldn't be as convinced about autonomous vehicles being everywhere very soon.
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Take out Jesus and the pixies, I'll cook the crow for 2020 Christmas dinner.
Just want to chime in simply to say it's people like Steve that keep me here. Whether right or wrong, there are some people here that really think outside the box and make the rest of us think along with them and threads like this are what keep prime so great long after many of us no longer own an NSX. Thanks Steve for continuing to push the rest of us into an uncomfortable area.
+1 I always want to ask which other boards people like Steve are on so that I may keep in touch if they ever leave Prime. Not sure if its an appropriate question though.
No problem, it's what I do... Well I also do run on sentences too and we can talk about that on another thread, sometime.... later.
I appreciate and respect everyone's opinions even if I don't agree with them. Everyone's opinions, especially on prime, provide information and at the least comedy. The company mobile eye IPO ed this morning raising hundreds of millions of dollars. They build the cameras for the autonomous systems. Originally the shares sold for 25 each, now at 38 each.
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I'm a member of many other forums, f-chat, Mercedes, Toyota, mostly all car forums but I rarely post on any of them, I rarely post on prime anymore. I haven't posted on f-chat since I sold my Ferrari. However I do email and talk on the phone with a lot of people, some in groups, on tons of topics like the financial markets, RE, and just plain bullshitting and razing each other. All of it enjoyable and I'm lucky to be part of it. With kids and a new puppy my time has it's limits so I don't participate as much as I'd like to, but my six year old is reading and my three year old can write a bit... so my times being spent well. Also every few days I try and unplug from technology completely. It's nice to sometimes be disconnected. A couple of weeks ago I was walking through a parking lot and some random person asked me for the time. I don't wear a watch and it was a day I decided not to carry my phone, however because of business I hand it off to someone else, anyways I told the guy I didn't have my phone and said I don't always like to be connected. He said that was the exact reason he didn't have his phone. We talked for a bit and had a real face to face conversation. It was as enjoyable just like driving yourself will be for some in the future. Me, I'll take the pod.
I imagine there would also need to be a mechanism for police to be able to remotely stop the vehicle. Total big brother. Even if this is good from a logistics standpoint, the masses would never go for this sort of loss of privacy and control.
But you guys understand that crime exists now too right? Tires and brake lines are rubber "what if somebody stabs them with a knife, just because they can" Traffic lights are 3 colors, "what if somebody puts different color stickers on them..." Cars are painted metal, "what if somebody ran a key across it..."
you get my point, crime will always exist, it's easy to do lots of crap to cars currently, but they don't deter any of us from owning a car, there are millions of cars on the road, we are chatting on a car forum. Lots of us own cars because they are way more comfortable than bicycles. It will be the same with pods, there will still be news on TV about some wacko that drove his pod through a building in Kansas, etc, but we will still use them. I guarantee, you will choose a 2 hour hands-free pod ride over 6 hours of manual interstate commuting behind a wheel, every time (whenever that may be, but it's happening). The new ways of doing crime is not technology's fault, that's just the $hitty side of the human race. 10,000 years ago cavemen worried about their wooden huts being easy to burn down by a neighbor and their women taken and raped, just because they can.
I'm not saying the full hands-free travel pods will be around in 2020. It will take a while for people to realize we don't need to sit in front of a steering wheel anymore. But I'm perfectly comfortable with the possibility that by 2020 there will be reasonable amount of autonomous driving going on amongst us.
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Well I'm glad to see you're coming around, I'll cancel the crow
As for the crime, everyone will be assigned their own transportation security agent. Ok now we're talking crazy talk. Actually I'm surprised it took this many posts for someone to post about this fault with the car. I probably wasn't more than a few miles from the dealership when I turned to my wife and said, this is dangerous technology in the wrong hands. As for the car being keyed, the camera will record it and the offender will be caught.
As for problems mechanically with the vehicle there most likely will be systems monitored through computers that will report the condition of various parts and systems that are critical to safety. They won't allow the car to be used if those parts aren't functioning to capacity. Maybe an overide switch for emergencies, but if flipped puts all liability on the driver. Iow, drive with bald tires your getting ticketed at a minimum. Drive away from a dangerous situation to insure your safety, different story.
Steveny, hard five is the one with the eat crow comment not me, I've been on board since you posted about it, I want the technology today already so I can nap on the way to work and during errands.
Even today, any psycho could just drive their car into a group of elderly women, and nothing can stop him, there is no technology to prevent it, but it's not like it happens so much that people fear going outside. An autonomous car can't be driven into a school, only if you have the criminal mind, intent and desire to do so, and that's a very small amount of the population. Right now anybody holding the steering wheel can drive into you and kill you, or park their car full of bombs in a underground garage, but statistically they don't, and that's a much bigger danger right now because anybody can do it. There will be crime committed to and with the pods, but it's no different than how life is right now. People rob banks and have getaway cars, there's drive by shootings, they kill their cheating spouses with them, so should we not allow people to drive at all and ban cars and go back to riding horses because of it? We always move forward, there's no fighting this, I see the pod as vastly safer, the random acts of violence with pods will be considerably less than all the drunk driving deaths, texting and driving deaths, falling asleep at the wheel, street racing, distracted fender benders, parking lot imbecility, etc. Computers don't get distracted like we do, no emotions, anger, fear, lack of time, etc, they can do a safer job more consistently than we will ever be capable of.
Even today, any psycho could just drive their car into a group of elderly women, and nothing can stop him, there is no technology to prevent it, but it's not like it happens so much that people fear going outside. An autonomous car can't be driven into a school, only if you have the criminal mind, intent and desire to do so, and that's a very small amount of the population. Right now anybody holding the steering wheel can drive into you and kill you, or park their car full of bombs in a underground garage, but statistically they don't, and that's a much bigger danger right now because anybody can do it. There will be crime committed to and with the pods, but it's no different than how life is right now. People rob banks and have getaway cars, there's drive by shootings, they kill their cheating spouses with them, so should we not allow people to drive at all and ban cars and go back to riding horses because of it? We always move forward, there's no fighting this, I see the pod as vastly safer, the random acts of violence with pods will be considerably less than all the drunk driving deaths, texting and driving deaths, falling asleep at the wheel, street racing, distracted fender benders, parking lot imbecility, etc. Computers don't get distracted like we do, no emotions, anger, fear, lack of time, etc, they can do a safer job more consistently than we will ever be capable of.
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Wow this is making me fantasize about being more productive during the work commute and when spending 3 hours unproductively slogging thru the Ohio turnpike when visiting Detroit. Or - rather than lose 2 hours driving to my sister's to drop something off that can't wait: I just put the item in the pod, send it on its way, and go off and go off and do something productive and important like post on prime while missing another chance to see my sister and her family...while waiting for my pizza delivery pod to show up, ha ha.
Well, even with email and faxes and scanners and fax/scan apps and cheap e-storage options, I still buy stamps monthly and constantly kill trees at work. If anything I generate more paper now than 20 years ago since there are so many refined ways to generate paper copies of things. I think the main reason any of us might drive our nsx less in the future than now with or without pods is if you sell it or buy a car you prefer driving more!
Well, even with email and faxes and scanners and fax/scan apps and cheap e-storage options, I still buy stamps monthly and constantly kill trees at work. If anything I generate more paper now than 20 years ago since there are so many refined ways to generate paper copies of things. I think the main reason any of us might drive our nsx less in the future than now with or without pods is if you sell it or buy a car you prefer driving more!
Yeah and they don't forget who's who either. Sorry bout that.
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No doubt! I expect there would be a huge spike in premiums before there is a discount bringing us back to net zero.
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It'll pull right up along side you on the interstate and deliver the pizza right too you, and you can pay with a coupon that was buzzed to your pod when it passed the pizza joint miles back on the highway.
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Steve, program that thing to drive over my way 
. Was just reading an article about how you can buy an older SL65 now for $30k. mb should extend the warranties on these Uber cars to help control catastrophic depreciation.
. Was just reading an article about how you can buy an older SL65 now for $30k. mb should extend the warranties on these Uber cars to help control catastrophic depreciation.
