Driverless cars might not lead to a reduction in car use but they probably will lead to a reduction in the number of cars. Rather than people owning a car they'll request one via an app, it'll turn up and drive them where they want to be, and then it'll go off to the next customer. Car utilization will go up significantly. It'll be like all cars are taxis. That will probably mean more car journeys.
But...
The manufacturing of a car is responsible for a very significant amount of the emissions it produces over its life. If we can greatly reduce the number of cars then there'll be a huge reduction in emissions simply because we won't make as many of them. That's always going to be a massive win for the environment, even if each individual car is being used more.
I'm not optimistic that a significant number of people who need car transportation will give up personal vehicles. You would lose a lot of things:
- Spontaneity: You need to wait for the car to show up
- Independence: I would rather be able to do it myself than hire/rent out for the task.
- Personal crap storage: Everyone keeps their Very Precious Crap in their car. For certain trips, it's beneficial to have a car nearby to store things temporarily at a destination.
- Self expression: In America, a huge number of people express their character through their cars. And not just through bumper stickers. What you drive says who you are. People aren't driving absurdly big pickup trucks because they're all contractors and landscapers.
You can argue the practically of these points but that's just like, your opinion man.
I think the only way to reduce cars and car problems is by making cars totally unnecessary for daily life: Denser living with local work or WFH work. Diverse zoning so you're walking around the corner for your cup of coffee rather than a mile away.
Urban life should rightfully be the most efficient and economical approach. The suburbs are subsidized all to hell and the common sense approach is unrecognizable to most people now..
> Denser living with local work or WFH work. Diverse zoning so you're walking around the corner for your cup of coffee rather than a mile away.
None of which is going to happen in the US in the next 50+ years no matter what. We're not rebuilding the entire superstructure of the US anytime soon. We can't even agree to put together funds or routine taxes to properly maintain basic infrastructure.
Should it happen? It'd be great if the US had dozens of nice cities that were inviting to live in. It doesn't. It never will. It's not going to happen. People often don't want to live in cities in the US, because have you seen the state of most major US cities? Europeans think American cities are close to being of third world condition and it's not far off as an assessment. That's going to get worse, not better, as the US gradually decays toward being a richer version of Brazil. We're not going to have more money to spend on making things nice in the future (education, housing, infrastructure, social programs, etc), we're going to have a lot less - our skyrocketing debt and entitlement obligations guarantee that inevitable outcome, the US will rot. The political class isn't going to suddenly become amazing problem solvers, they're going to get worse too, as the culture continues to also rot (all of this is a direct product of a severe cultural decline in the US spanning many decades now).
The globally stretched superpower, pre-occupied with so many things that it shouldn't be, that now can't even maintain its bridges properly, isn't going to rationally reimagine and successfully rebuild its urban superstructures. It's obvious what the next 20-30 years will look like.
I would caution against painting with too broad a brush. There are many nice cities in the US and yes, many are quite livable without owning a car.
You are correct that the US has a major problem with a polarized and paralyzed political system though. But I think there's reason to be optimistic: smart solutions are also the cheapest. Effective transit, like bus lanes and signal priority, and safe biking infrastructure are phenomenally cheap compared to suburban highway and bridge construction, bordering on free. Housing affordability is, at its core, a zoning problem and we would make huge progress by simply letting people build houses and apartments.
> I think the only way to reduce cars and car problems is by making cars totally unnecessary for daily life: Denser living with local work or WFH work. Diverse zoning so you're walking around the corner for your cup of coffee rather than a mile away.
100%! Everything comes down to building right. This is medium-density, mixed-use urban development. That means single family homes, small apartments (no more than 3 stories), gyms, places of worship, restaurants, shops, and stores all mixed together. 15 minute walk to anything you would need day-to-day. Then you have your personal car parked on the street or behind your house in a small garage for anything you need to do that requires a large vehicle or spontaneity or any of the other benefits that owning a car brings. But we get to avoid almost all of the damage.
"How do I do this with kids etc. etc." the same way people all over the world do it.
That is a precise descriptor for my trunk. I believe you are correct with your assessment. Might depend if the "driver" would need a license. If so I believe people will still spend money on cars.
I don't think denser living is attractive either for that matter. As a student I would have loved it, otherwise nature is quite soothing. I am amazed that it is the "green" parties that want to solve housing crisis with more urbanisation. I don't get how suburbs are subsidized. High density housing will be subsidized and only affordable by giants. You will not own anything here.
I live in a high density house in a city. At some point I want out of here.
Examples of common and "hidden" car centric subsidies:
- Roads are basically free to use, transit users must pay a fare. Gas tax and other fees do not come close to the listed or actual cost (e.g. missing DOT salaries, equipment) of road maintenance.
- Number and magnitude of Federal and state grants for roads vs transit/bike capital projects
- Parking minimums in zoning code
- Public land allocated to highways and roads vs transit/bike/pedestrian
- Public land allocated to free or massively discounted parking vs bike racks, bus stops, etc
- In winter time, streets are plowed for free by the town but sidewalks must be cleared by private individuals. Bike lanes typically not cleared at all or are occupied with parked cars.
>Spontaneity: You need to wait for the car to show up
Imagine not having to walk to your parking spot or trying to find parking at your destination though. It will actually be _more convenient_ to carshare than to own private.
Nah, we'll just mandate that every business provide 4 parking spots per expected customer instead /s. If people _need_ to drive somewhere, they will want their own car and they will demand that others cater to their choice.
I still see making cars unnecessary and redundant as the key to healthier and economically resilient cities. If you can live a happy and full life without a car, it becomes a financial mistake to own one or to continue spending billions supporting their use.
Once you get past the acceptance of the premise, you'll find people objecting to adopting that lifestyle. For many Americans, the nearest city is not a desirable place to live so they don't know what they're missing. For the remainder that want to at least enable a car-free life, the best path forward is a matter of debate.
Sadly what I think goes unrecognized is that the suburbs have forced their car-dependent lifestyle on cities for so long that trying to reverse all the bad history urban highways and transit defunding is exceptionally tough.
Imagine you are a family with young children. You might live in a city right now - I live near Minneapolis where they've got a brand-new (like, less than 5 years old for most of it) lightrail system. It's shiny, it's fast, it's efficient, what's not to love?
Assaults. A 15-year-old girl was sexually assaulted 4 months ago. Less than a month ago someone got attacked with a knife. Less than a year ago, three teens were arrested for repeated racially-based attacks. In 2020 (because we don't have numbers for 2021 yet), there were 51 aggravated assaults and 239 "other assaults" despite 59% lower ridership from COVID. And it's not just assaults - drug use around (or sometimes even on) the lightrail is a significant problem (276 reported offenses 2020). Theft is yet another problem.
I'm not bringing my family (or even myself) anywhere near the lightrail. I'd prefer to drive just for their safety and mine. I know it's worse for the environment but their safety is my first concern.
And such is the problem with public transit. It's easy to think of it as reducing load on the environment while forgetting that lax law enforcement turns it into a somewhat scary place to be with family members.
> I'm not bringing my family (or even myself) anywhere near the lightrail. I'd prefer to drive just for their safety and mine. I know it's worse for the environment but their safety is my first concern.
It's not just worse for the environment but also much more dangerous to drive a car compared to the incidents you cited. You think you are in control because you're behind the wheel, but you're not. You have no more control over other drivers than you do someone attacking someone on this light rail. It's like if you ask someone today (2019) if America is more dangerous than before they'd say yes because that's what they hear on the news, but the statistics show otherwise. Similarly here but with car crashes actually causing quite a lot of death and destruction.
> I'm not bringing my family (or even myself) anywhere near the lightrail. I'd prefer to drive just for their safety and mine. I know it's worse for the environment but their safety is my first concern.
> And such is the problem with public transit. It's easy to think of it as reducing load on the environment while forgetting that lax law enforcement turns it into a somewhat scary place to be with family members.
It's mind-boggling how so many countries can do it but we can't in the US. How is it that China, Japan, Korea, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom can do this but we can't? Are Americans objectively worse people?
In some particular ways - yes. We also just don’t have all the support networks that those other countries have. I mean - we still don’t even offer universal healthcare and it looks like we won’t for at least another 10+ years. We don’t care for the common person at all. We cater to the rich.
Carjacking around here tends to take the fake-accident tactic. This is where the criminal bumps you enough to think an accident occurred, you pull over to exchange information for insurance, and then the criminal pulls out a gun.
I have a few notes.
1. Even though this is incredibly scary and stressful, the percentage of people actually shot in carjackings is almost unheard of. If I had a family, it would be a better trade to lose my car than to have one of them sexually assaulted on a lightrail, or have myself get a knife somewhere (both of which have happened within the past few months).
2. Carjackings can be (partially) avoided. The police have sent out warnings in the city that if someone bumps you and you suspect a carjacking, go to the nearest police station or at least drive to somewhere with a lot of cameras up close and witnesses (gas station?) before exchanging information. This means that carjacking still has some preemptive measures I personally can take, whereas riding the lightrail, stuff just mostly happens.
3. The map of carjackings in Minneapolis has far more people living in that area than people riding the lightrail. The lightrail, by number of people traveling on it and by size / concentration of people within a given area, is much more dangerous.
The local authorities in California keep telling people to drive less and bike more, but then they allowed the bike trails to be turned into homeless camps. I know several people who were harassed or assaulted while cycling through those areas, so now they've gone back to driving for safety.
These are significant and general problems with society right now but perhaps orthogonal to transportation. Being able to drive past the homeless encampment might be convenient(?) right now but we've graduated from ignoring our crumbling, unaffordable car infrastructure to ignoring the crumbling, unaffordable healthcare and housing.
I don't understand how that is related to my argument at all. I'm saying that the lightrail is objectively not as safe or predictable as driving with my family, and for that reason, the reason to use the lightrail because it's better for the environment is of less importance to me.
Some suburban people in wealthy neighborhoods would say it's too dangerous to ever visit a city. It's unpredictable due to crime.
You've drawn the line at visiting the city but using a car, and maybe you are right, but I don't think listing incidents without context really makes your case.
>Rather than people owning a car they'll request one via an app, it'll turn up and drive them where they want to be
Which will mean turning up to the suburbs at 8am to drive downtown by 9am. Without a drastic, permanent change in working hours & commuting (or permanent WFH) the minimum number of cars will barely change.
The key is to build cities and surroundings around people and not around cars. Of course people will use cars if it's the best mode of transportation. But, as shown by many cities around the globe, if you make public transit or biking the best modes of transportation, people will not use cars to commute.
I think this is something people who have never lived in such cities inherently don't understand. Public transport and bike will always be a better mode of transport for most use cases (not for all, of course) if implemented properly - self-driving cars or not. And no, the solution is also not a hyper loop. Just good old buses, trains, trams, subways and bikes.
> I think this is something people who have never lived in such cities inherently don't understand.
I agree public transit is a solution, but I think the issue is with supply rather than demand.
The fact that the market value of land within walking distance of good public transit options or bike facilities is significantly more expensive is evidence that most people clearly do appreciate how valuable it is.
Unless more cities and towns build better public transit and bike facilities then a growing population of people will keep bidding up the existing supply and turn it into a luxury good that few can afford.
Yes exactly. But it's also a bit of a catch-22, since more people would need to elect government officials that care about this stuff, but they don't get elected because people don't know that it would improve their lives etc.
It's hard to tell people "just take the bus" when the nearest suitable home to the bus stop starts at $1M. Alt transit is making slow but measurable progress but the housing situation is the real priority if you want people out of cars.
Unless you're a believer in urban living, suburban costs are hard to beat, even when factoring in car ownership costs.
That's why I'm saying in "cities and surroundings". You can absolutely build great public transportation infrastructure in rural areas.
For example, in Switzerland public transportation is mostly public, and you can go to every nook and corner of the country reliably. As a stark contrast, in Ireland, a lot of the "public" transport is privatized and there transport options suck in rural areas.
Now, I don't want to make this about private vs. public (even though I absolutely think public transport should be public), but just to show that it's just a matter of how you invest money and set incentives to build this infrastructure.
This very much depends on where you live. In SF or NYC, sure, housing is very expensive but that's not the entire country and even there it's exaggerating to say you can't live near transit for less than $1M. We definitely need more attention to urban housing availability and improving transit considerably (i.e. not treating it as a last resort for the poor / disabled) but there's also a lot of inertia and assumption driving those comparisons which leads people to think it's cheaper to live further out even when they end up spending the same amount or more (at least hopefully for a preferred lifestyle choice such as a large lawn).
True, but there are also backlashes, especially when something is forced.
And too many remote work enthusiast assume that the steady state for this is majority remote work. I don't buy it. I'd be surprised if we go over 25%, maaaaybe 40% best case scenario.
Nothing is more enticing than a shared car with other people who are incentivized to push the cleaning and maintenance onto somebody else, while maximizing their own use of the vehicle.
> The manufacturing of a car is responsible for a very significant amount of the emissions it produces over its life.
Nope.
The embedded energy in manufacturing a gasoline car is maybe 1/8th or 1/10th its total lifetime emissions. This is why EV's are so much better cradle-to-grave than gasoline cars -- yes, EV's require extra energy to manufacture the batteries relative to a gasoline car, but even so, that extra energy cost is more than offset within the first few months of electricity-powered driving, even if your local grid is primarily coal powered. By far most of a car's lifetime emissions are from operating it, not manufacturing it.
EV's are better than fossil cars, but they too have most of their emissions in operation rather than manufacturing.
So the significant question isn't "will driverless lead to fewer emissions because of fewer cars", the significant question is "will (electric) driverless lead to fewer emissions because of fewer miles driven?"
It's no question that electric is more efficient on emissions per mile, but if the number of trip-miles increases because driverless cars eg are constantly circling the downtown waiting for passengers, or they make more low-occupancy trips possible so they induce demand of low-occupancy miles, well it could be worse emissions wise!
This model works well if you're a single person traveling alone and have relatively few things you need to transport with you. In other words, the current "hail a taxi" model.
It becomes less workable when you need to travel as a family with kids, car seats, strollers, other equipment. Having a dedicated vehicle that belongs to you and is always at the place where you left it is immensely useful in these circumstances.
When everyone needs a car to get to work at the same time and you can't be sure thst you will get one when you request it - how can you plan your trip to work or anywhere, if getting a car is random?
Maybe we could come up with some sort of 'Metacar' system where people walk, bike, or take a short ride to a central pickup point and then all ride in a 'Metacar' with passengers headed in the same general direction.
I wonder if the economics work out so that it would be affordable to bore tunnels under cities for these 'Metacars'. That would make it much easier to have them be driverless, and they could proceed directly towards their destination at higher speed. Even if that isn't possible, we could designate some lanes on bigger roads as 'Metacar' lanes so that they can move efficiently even in rush hour.
In all seriousness: I just realized that I haven't had a job in 5 years that required me to commute in a car. COVID helped, but the other half of it was working in places that take density and non-car transit seriously. I know not everyone can do that.
Most people drive to work alone. If everyone is using a rideshare app lots of those people will be using the carpool feature. If every car has 4 people in it you only need a quarter of the cars.
Either there are as many cars available for prebooking as their are rush-hour commuters who want them or we have to ration the supply using shortages and/or surge pricing. In the former case we haven't appreciably decreased the number of cars. In the latter case I anticipate that anyone who can afford to do so will continue to own a private vehicle to ensure they can get to work on time, so we also haven't appreciably decreased the number of cars.
It solves the problem that you can plan your trip. The complaint was that you couldn’t plan your trip.
Not everyone go to work at the same time, so every car will be available for several trips. And what would be wrong with prices that varies with demand? Isn’t that how market economy is supposed to work? It will still be cheaper than owning your own car.
I'm trying to imagine a nontrivial number of people who currently own a private vehicle selling that vehicle to rely on prebooking both of their daily commuting trips with a flexibly-priced mode of transportation to save money.
As a datapoint, I know many people who regularly take car services like Uber, but I don't know of anyone who actually sold their car to rely exclusively on a car service to commute. Perhaps if driverless cars halve the price of car service it might start to happen?
I'm not saying it is not theoretically possible that driverless cars will reduce car ownership, I am saying that I am skeptical of the weak arguments and minimal evidence provided thus far for such a claim.
pre-booked cars allow an app to arrange a de-facto floating car pool. There will be a shared fee that will depend on the length of the trip optimized segments. Ride alone types will pay more.
You're going to have to expand your pithy take there. Rush hour still exists. Bumper to bumper traffic still exists. There's an awful lot of people who apparently need a lot of cars all at the same time.
All those people, or more accurately the companies that employ them, choose to have the same operating hours, the same inflexible time policies, and the same insistence on going to a physical location to do work. Some of them won't have a choice of course - you can't really stack shelves or manufacture bits of metal remotely.
For many of the rest travelling, commuting, and working in an office is a choice. It is not a need. The fact rush hour traffic exist shows that businesses are inflexible and unwilling to trust their workers; it doesn't show a daily commute is a requirement.
They don't need to and they don't all need to get there at the same time, but rush hour exists. Even if there would be cars available even during rush hour, people will expect rush hour to have less availability and will err on the side of not getting fired.
> Rather than people owning a car they'll request one via an app, it'll turn up and drive them where they want to be, and then it'll go off to the next customer. Car utilization will go up significantly. It'll be like all cars are taxis.
Traffic is quite bursty: there is a lot of generally unidirectional demand for trips during the morning rush hour, and then generally unidirectional demand in the opposite direction during the evening rush hour, and much less demand for anything in between.
You have to take into account peak usage and depreciation.
Cars are typically only discarded once they hit a certain distance. No matter if the car is a taxi or a personal car, it will be discarded after the same number of miles.
You also need to buy enough cars for the worst possible scenario, which is the peakiest of peaks.
Unlike a personal car, robotaxis will also be replaced as soon as it economically efficient to do so, whereas cars are typically eventually driven past the point at which they are economically viable by someone.
I do not believe there will be a significant decrease in car manifacture.
The only way it could be is if instead of robotaxis, we built robobuses that carry 5-6 people on average.
> No matter if the car is a taxi or a personal car, it will be discarded after the same number of miles.
Is this actually true? My personal anecdata would suggest that most passenger vehicles are not driven nearly the number of miles that a taxi or commercial vehicle are driven.
A quick google suggests passenger vehicles are typically salvaged at 100-150k miles whereas an average taxi might do 500k or more before retirement.
And the average yearly mileage in the US is around 13.5k, yielding an average mileage of 173k miles. It is incredibly unlikely that the average car is salvaged at 100-150k miles. 200k+ miles is more like it. This number will also increase as vehicles produced recently have much higher durability, while the 16 year old tail-end is dragging down personal cars.
It doesn't make sense commercially to operate a vehicle long after its warranty ends. You risk losing revenue when the car breaks down, and you can expect upwards of 1000$/year in repairs and increased insurance costs as an extra. It makes more sense to sell the car shortly after the warranty ends, recoup 50% of the costs, and buy a new one.
Rentals are somewhat of an odd model, at least pre covid. By buying less popular models/excess capacity they buy at slightly above build cost, and the manufacture or dealers buy the cars from the rental company at it's depreciated value.
That's actually a lot more than 15 years old. The vehicles that were being scrapped 15 years ago at 152k miles were themselves 15 year old, so we're really talking about the lifetime of a 30 year old car.
You're way off. Average passenger vehicles in the US are scrapped closer to 200K miles. Of course there's a lot of variation by state because vehicles driven in winter on salted roads rust out much faster.
That number has been increasing every year, so the OP may simply be remembering an earlier number. We didn't use to keep cars around for so long but they have gotten more reliable (and rust-proofing has made big advances). It will soon be 250K.
The latest comprehensive figure I could find was a 2006 NHTSA report which found the average passenger vehicle was scrapped at 152,137 miles. It may have gone up, but I haven't found a more recently number.
The decreased rate of accidents is true. A newly built car can be expected to be retired after 250-300k miles. Rental car companies seem to be trying to sell their cars after around 60k miles : https://www.wsj.com/articles/rental-cars-with-higher-mileage...
I hope you are right but I am skeptical that the reduction in the number of cars will offset the increase in miles driven over the next couple decades where it matters most.
Shared-use vehicles exist (the taxis you mention, as well as car shares and rental cars) and with the exception of cities that have extremely expensive car ownership costs most people still choose to own a personal vehicle for commuting. Would you rely on the availability of a shared vehicle during rush hour to meet your commuting needs?
I have a very hard time imagining many Americans who live in a suburb or car-dependent city giving up their private vehicle no matter how cheap or reliable shared vehicles become. Perhaps if car ownership became two or three times more expensive (e.g. carbon taxes on new vehicles, no parking minimums, paying market rates for parking spaces, etc) people might switch, but I am skeptical that any of those will come to pass as long as most voters drive cars.
Driverless cars de-incentivize carpooling and incentivize idling on public roads to avoid storage / parking costs (unless states implement fee structures for occupying roads).
A taxi model means you can compete for market share by being fastest to respond, which means you can fill the roads to the brim with your vehicles to push your competitors out of the market with sheer capital expenditure. You would be further incentivized to do this through economies of scale.
You only need to look at how taxi freelancer apps increased the number of vehicle miles on the roads in all major cities and how bike rental apps filled urban areas with bikes annoyingly scattered all over the place.
Any car based transport vision of the future means more cars on the road, and consequently more car-focused infrastructure.
To really be more efficient you need to focus on passenger miles / unit of energy, which very decidedly means mass transit.
Not to forget that if the cars don’t have to be parked next to their destination, towns and cities can be built much denser, so the distance travelled will be smaller. That might even lead to people start walking more since they don’t have to cross 400 meters of parking lots to get to Starbucks any more.
No thanks. It would be nice to have the car drive itself (although I doubt we'll achieve true SAE level 4+ capability on most roads in my lifetime). But I keep a lot of useful stuff in my car. I don't want to load and unload it every time. The car also serves as a reasonably secure storage locker at my destination.
But your model might work in shithole cities like San Francisco. No one can leave stuff in their cars because they have to park on the street and auto burglaries are rampant.
> The manufacturing of a car is responsible for a very significant amount of the emissions it produces over its life.
According to the Kurzgesagt video about climate change and how to stop it, what's even more significant is the carbon emmissions of road construction. Apparently a single meter of road is equivalent to one car. If we increase car use, we need more roads and those roads need more maintenance and all that has a big carbon budget.
We simply need to move our society away from private car infrastructure. My opinion is that a well-designed urban environment built for a mix of electric trains, buses, and e-bikes, with dense housing and mixed use zoning would work really well, as shown in places like Scandinavia, Holland, etc.
More likely you will see people go from 2 car households to 1. I know alot of people that have 2 cars simply because one of them sits at a person place of work all day, if they could have to car return home then it would allow them to only have 1
Presumably the dawn of driverless cars is coupled with driverless mass transport, which would offset the environmental impact to some degree? Drivers of these vehicles are often - if not always - the most expensive part of the system. They can only work for so long, often only during daylight hours without a significant pay rise in most first world countries, and it's not a desirable job so very few people train into it.
As such, most bus transport as an example is limited in both routes and hours run. The use of public transport is directly linked with how accessible and affordable it is. If I have to get 4 different routes to get to my destination in 3 times the time as it takes to drive, I'll drive any day of the week. I spend thousands on insurance, servicing, repair, etcetera. If there are hundreds of busses, running just as many routes, at all hours of the day, you bet I'd ditch my car in an instant; driverless or not.
Yeah, when public transport is done well, people _don't want to drive_. I live in London, I have a driver's license, and I haven't driven a car since I got it years and years ago. Why would I? Instead of having to focus on the incredibly menial tasks of staring at a road or being stuck in traffic, I can browse Hacker News and Reddit, read a book, or even play video games, while I ride a nice double-decker bus, or get from A to B in half the time it takes to drive, with the tube (underground trains). We have 24/7 buses all week long, and some trains run 24/7 during weekends. While London is pretty good, it isn't even the best example of trains, there are several Asian countries with better train systems than we have here, and we're like the only(?) Northern/Western European country that doesn't publicly fund our capital city's public transport organisation, TFL -- it could be both cheaper _and_ better if we followed their lead.
A city bus costs ~$250k[1] and should last ~10 years[1].
If the bus runs 12 hours a day, that is ~43000 hours of driving you have to pay for. So even if drivers earn minimum wage (I assume a CDL'd driver would earn significantly more), you end up paying more for the driver than the bus.
Make that an electric self driving bus and the wages tend towards zero, being some clean/tidy/check etc. Even that can be reduced since you know each passenger and his payment card ID and if he dropped a wrapper/cup = added fee on the card - this invigilation would coerce people to dispose in the self emptying bin at the depot.
Thus a great economy would ensue and would dramatically reduce the costs = lower fees = more users.
Bus routes tend to run on good main roads(there are exceptions) and are easier for self drive systems.
I thought that intuitively at first, but uneducated napkin math seems to disagree.
Say a Cab costs $50k upfront plus $.5 times 200,000 miles gives us $150,000 for the vehicle over it's lifetime.
If hiring, insuring, managing, and paying a driver costs 100k per year and it takes say 5 driver years for that car to reach EOL, you're at 500k for the driver.
Perhaps someone with a better knowledge of the numbers could chime in, but if I'm reasonably close, that driver is a big chunk of costs.
>it's not a desirable job so very few people train into it.
I object, although I know this is a side point. Trucking is one of the largest sectors of employment in America. If driving a large vehicle was so inherently undesirable that nobody would train into it, how do you explain... that?
I'll grant that being a bus driver isn't as romanticized as being a truck driver. But at least part of that is because the companies that hire truck drivers market the profession as a lifestyle and the cities that hire bus drivers generally do not.
The concept of whether something is "good for the environment" is fundamentally flawed because there really exist only degrees.
Literally anything we do modifies the environment. We generally tend to define "reversion to nature" as being a good thing, e.g. things that allow ecosystems to function independent of our fiddlings.
I think that the primary contribution to "ecosystem change" is not actually fossil fuel use (e.g. CO2 emission), but land use. There is no Amazon if you cut it down, the Swedish wilderness isn't wild if you criss cross it with roads, the lakes aren't the same if you dam them for hydro, etc.
We can't exist as a species of seven billion individuals that each seek to exact some amount of change that sums to an enormous difference without changing the planet. Regardless of whether you think it's a good or a bad thing, it just is, we do things.
We could create a car that runs on water and has tyres made of biodegradable leaves and it still can't go anywhere without roads that cause wildlife corridors.
People have been talking about conservation and re-foresting, and preserving the Amazon for at least 80 years. Governments all over the world establish national parks and I know some are actively working on wildlife corridors to improve ecosystems.
If we existed as a species at only slightly higher density and energy efficiency there would be a lot more space for wilderness - the good news is that climate change mitigation is also consistent with that goal!
I suppose my main argument is that I'm unconvinced that the quantity of driving is really that relevant. We can fix that via clean energy.
What we can't really 'fix' in the car based model is the fact that you need roads from every point to every point and you're also allowing people to live basically anywhere they want as long as there's a road to it.
I agree, if I understand you correctly. We are on the path to making driving n-times more energy efficient, fussing over if that results is 30 or 40% more driving is missing the forest for the trees.
Rebuilding car culture from the ground up in a way that is more ecologically sound is a longer term project!
I know this is meant to be a short article, but there are several points that I think are more complicated in reality.
> The promise of a relaxed, comfortable commute to work could even make some people move farther away from their workplaces and accelerate suburban sprawl trends.
At least where I live (suburbs outside of NY), more self-driving cars will not likely lead to more people commuting from farther away. The road capacity is already maxed out. Everyone I know either takes mass transit. In most other cities where I have coworkers, the roads were not built for the number of commuters, and again whether it's comfortable or not, people would rather not be commuting an hour and a half by car each way. This is especially true now in a world where we've all gotten used to a commute of walking down the hallway.
> it’s unlikely to evolve that way on its own.
They don't really explain why. They mention the idea of having shared fleets of cars, which would greatly reduce the cost of ownership and which become more plausible when cars are driverless. It seems like most people would have sufficient financial incentives (saving hundreds of dollars per month) to move in that direction.
The article also doesn't explore the downstream impact from moving to shared fleets, and how great that would be for the environment. We dedicate a huge amount of resources, both real estate and financial, just to parking. If we have fewer total cars in existence, we would have less need for parking. There's also environmental impact of battery production [1], and as we move to electric vehicles having fewer total cars on the road will mean we need to produce fewer batteries, creating fewer mines for metals needed and using up less water which is needed by mining processes.
Not to derail the conversation but I really am genuinely confused about the high level of concern about cobalt and lithium mining I often see in comments on HN. I understand that it is a dirty and difficult process but the entire petroleum-based supply chain is dirty and difficult.
Is there some solid research out there that indicates that the footprint of this mining practice is much worse?
It really is the go-to gotcha for electric car opponents. I've found if you push back and point out the problems with ICE production and use they have no response.
I'm generally opposed to continuing to invest so much in car centric infrastructure, and that's pretty much my gripe with EVs. They're still cars, they will further entrench our dependence on roads, which encourage sprawl, a sedentary lifestyle, yada yada yada. I could go on and on.
I'm sure they're better than ICEs, at least for the nearby environmental impact they have. But they still require hugely expensive and inefficient transportation infrastructure.
I think opposing car-centric urban planning is orthogonal to ICE vs EV issue but I understand the perspective.
You're not going to tear up every city in North and South America and make them better planned on a timeline that is helpful to automotive emissions so the answer is EVs plus better zoning laws, move both in the right direction at the same time.
> The article also doesn't explore the downstream impact from moving to shared fleets, and how great that would be for the environment.
I really question whether that will happen. Floating car-sharing does not seem to have affected car ownership significantly, and it provides similar benefits. People obviously still want to own their specific car.
more people will definitely move farther away and commute in their personal self driving vehicles since they can get in the car at 4am and sleep through the 3 hour traffic jam. Especially because their car is electric, so like, zero emissions man.
Walking, bikes and public transport are far better modes of transport for the vast majority of the demand.
Cities that prioritize these modes of transport offer a higher quality of living with lower impact on the environment and reduce inequality by making necessary transportation accessible to more people.
They also won’t be good for the environment if they lead to fewer fatalities.
If you can prevent 30k/year car collision related deaths at 20 metric tons of CO2 per year per person that’s roughly 600,000 metric tons of CO2 per year compounding and just in the US.
But of course it’s silly to discuss the environmental impact of self-driving technology like discussing its impact on baking cakes or puppet shows.
The same technology can be used for driverless car share or driverless busses that run on renewables.
I think U-Haul is perfectly positioned for driverless truck beds and van bodies (with a remote control that pops out for precision parking), but depending on the cost I would buy one myself.
You could remove people from delivery trucks, have groceries delivered (just use curbside and have the people drop it in your vehicle), and all sorts of other pickup (Best Buy, target, Walmart).
You could send them ahead on road trips, have it tag along on camping trips, sag wagon yourself on hiking or biking trips, all while having a lot more efficient vehicle for normal travel.
They would also make for a good courier / last mile solution for b2b and shipments to downtown locations.
It also solves the trolly problem in that it could drive cautiously and sacrifice itself over anything else.
Would it increase traffic? Maybe. But it might also be shared between multiple families or friends.
One thing I've been wondering is whether self driving cars could result in lower emissions by never exceeding the speed limit, and by driving more smoothly than a human operator. Additionally, I wonder if having even say 10% of cars on the road that never exceed the speed limit would result in most other cars nearby driving the speed limit as well, since they would effectively block non-self-driving cars from speeding in many areas. Speeding is dangerous for all other road users, so there should be safety benefits as well. Why not require all self driving cars to drive at legal speeds?
There's also something to be said for automated "road trains". There are enormous aerodynamic benefits if 20 or 30 (autonomous) vehicles can communicate and link up with each other to drive at exactly the same speed.
why not? Because some people would choose not to buy the car if they had to drive it at the speed limit across the empty expanses that make up their favorite road trip, or through areas where the limit is lower than it "ought" to be. I think speed limits are set based on safety concerns more than environmental ones, and in that sense self driving cars should probably be allowed more speed not less.
I claim without evidence that the greater contributor to inefficient fuel use is needlessly abrupt acceleration and deceleration, rather than top speed, and hopefully self driving cars do help with that.
> Automated vehicles hold tremendous promise. Cars that handle most or all of the driving tasks could be safer than human drivers, operate more efficiently and open up new opportunities for seniors, people with disabilities and others who can’t drive themselves. But while attention has understandably focused on safety, the potential environmental impacts of automated vehicles have largely taken a back seat.
It’s OK to keep making and driving cars, but if the elderly and disabed can now use them, this is where we draw the line on environmental impact?
Not sure how the environment would be affected by electric car use. Because all driverless cars are electric so far. They strangely talk around this in the article, without mentioning this fundamental issue.
Manufacturing an electric car is also worse for the environment than a gas powered one. Lithium and colbolt mining is not easy.
Similarly, electric cars in areas were power generation primarily comes from fossil fuels are worse for the environment currently. At some point in the future they might all be green energy, but most places around the world that is not the case yet.
There is a lot of nuance to these problems. Electric cars will be very important in the future for emissions saving, but currently are in the negative.
> Similarly, electric cars in areas were power generation primarily comes from fossil fuels are worse for the environment currently.
This is false. Internal combustion engines are far less efficient than centralized coal or natural gas plants and are far worse in terms of both CO2 and particulate emissions overall.
>Electric cars … emissions … currently are in the negative.
No. This is a common myth pushed by the legacy auto and oil industries. The emissions savings cross over after around two years. Read the Tesla impact report.
This is simply impossible. There is energy loss at every stage.
Burning fuel to create electricity is not 100%
Transfering that energy over power lines has loss
Converting that energy from high voltage to house hold voltage has loss.
Charging a battery has loss
Discharging a battery has loss
Converting electric energy into a motor has loss.
Running a combustion engine in a car has less loss than the above. If that energy comes from wind, solar, or even nuclear; then even with that loss you are releasing less CO2. However if you are burning oil in both places, then the compounding energy losses matter a lot.
> Read the Tesla impact report.
Reading an electric car companies statement and taking that as absolute truth is the same as reading about "clean oil".
Burning fuel hits the Carnot limit around 35%, though, so you have a hefty margin for that transmission loss, and don't forget the entire global shipping system which brings that fuel to you.
The other big factor to consider is the much greater complexity: internal combustion engines are complicated. All of those parts have a cost to build, assemble, and maintain — one of the biggest reasons why EVs end up cheaper to own is simply that you're not taking on all of that.
> don't forget the entire global shipping system which brings that fuel to you.
You have missed my point entirely. If your local electric generation is the same source as your car. You have not saved anything.
To reiterate again, if your local electric generation is green then things are going to be better for the environment. But if your local power plant is coal then an electric car is worse. Your car is indirectly burning coal to move. And the delivery and storage of that coal generated electric has lots of losses on the journey.
It's still not that simple. Internal-combustion engines are extremely inefficient (and pollute more since they're harder to monitor and not reliably professionally maintained) and there's a lot more waste involved at every point of that process. You also have factors like regenerative braking to further complicate the comparison.
The other big factor to think about is the relative emissions profile of the shipping system which brings that fuel to you specifically where you live. It's true electric power has transmissions loses but those very considerably as a function of distance and it doesn't require the same power to be shipped multiple times. Shipping oil in a tanker with high-pollution marine Diesel engines is going to be different than piping it to a refinery or having a modern freight train haul either coal or oil, refineries aren't exactly low-pollution, and gas also requires a considerable amount of pollution shipping it to thousands of fuel stations (with electric power, at least a lot of the environmental impact is focused in one location).
Automobiles require a lot of raw materials and energy to produce.
Roads require materials & energy to maintain. They also take up a LOT of space and slice up the natural world in a way that wrecks ecosystems.
Personal autos as the default method of transportation requires sprawly, inefficient land use. When every destination is build to accomodate the car, every errand comes to require the car. This is a bad thing, even if your car isn't directly burning gasoline.
waymo's driverless cars in Arizona are hybrid Chrysler Pacificas.
Electric cars still produce greenhouse gases since our grid is not 100% renewable yet. Brake dust and asphalt also contribute to local air pollution.
I have already noticed in my own household that an electric car has reduced bicycle usage because it's perceived as less polluting than an ICE car, so for certain borderline trips where we might have previously opted for bicycles we opt for the e car.
Interestingly, riding a bicycle has higher greenhouse impact than a car. Because, you see, the human body requires more high-quality food and that has the biggest footprint of any human activity.
It's complicated. There's always more nuance than we want to admit. All those insisting its somehow simple because they've figured out one factor (see other comments in this thread) are always being naieve.
Gonna need a citation on that one. My sources say driving (ice) is 13x as bad as cycling. Electric cars are much better but still worse than cycling and create far greater impact that's not captured by ghg metrics.
Your opinion isn't in agreement with the research.
And before you come tell us that electric cars are quieter (they are, for the occupants), the great majority of automobile noise is from friction between the tires and the road.
Brake usage and tire wear are linked. People that start hard also tend to stop hard - 'twas ever thus. That said, high G regenerative brakes can approach this. The older eddy current brake forces approach zero as speed approaches zero - I am not sure if Tesla style regenerative brakes have any braking left as you get to zero or if they default to friction as needed, as I expect.
The premise is that the self driving, not them being electric, leads to them being used more.
But you singled out electric cars as disproportionately taking up more space than other point to point transportation solutions, for some reason.
Oh and time and money… on the money point, if you look at the total cost of ownership, a $25,000 Camry costs more than a $35,000 Tesla, so I'd say that money point is open for debate.
As for time, also open for debate. I presume you're referring to the time it takes to charge, which is getting faster all the time and usually takes place whole the owner is sleeping.
If the vast majority of auto trips are in self driving cars, the charging time will not figure in as a factor in the experience of using a car.
It hardly factors in now even. On long road trips, just stop for a quick bathroom break. I spoke to a Model Y owner who says he drives from the Bay Area to LA with one stop for charging, 9 minutes. Hardly a big deal. My own experience is similar, although my last trip there was before we had faster V3 charging stations available.
I'd suggest learning more about EVs before hardening your opinions.
At slow speeds gas cars are very quiet. Most noise from a car is wind and tire noise. Of course as cars age parts wear out and start making more noise. Some of those noises are common with electric, some are not.
There is no reason driver-less cars have to be electric just because current ones are. In fact I'd go so far as to suggest that if/when they come out it they will be most popular in non-electric cars. That is trucks (of all sizes) that need to operate all day, and thus the range of electric is an issue. Take a driver-less truck and it doesn't need to worry about the DOT time limit of drivers and so it can cover a lot of road in 24 hours. Stop only for fuel- full service fueling is easy for a truck stop to offer, and only takes about 10-20 minutes per day vs several hours over the course of a day for electric.
For getting cars around a city electric makes sense. For longer highway trips it is questionable for cars (I know people do it, but they spend a lot more time recharging).
OTOH, if electric is enough cheaper maybe trucking companies will be willing to have their loads take longer. I'm guessing a mix, cargo that needs to be there fast will run diesel fuel, less time sensitive cargo will run electric (but trains still compete well on cost for this)
I always thought that self driving cars would make commutes longer and there is probably a temptation to let the car circle around cities while you do something if there is no parking.
it seems more likely the car will park a mile away where space is more abundant, rather than using the roads as a mobile parking space. In some cases it will make sense to build a self-driving specific parking structure that doesn't need to accommodate human traffic, a la the car vending machines you see in NY and Tokyo etc.
And of course there are the romantics who think we'll be able to convince people to give up individual car ownership and therefore do away with parking.
The specific concern is that your car will drive you to work, turn around, then drive home again to park in your driveway. Doubling the trips will result in twice the congestion.
maybe, but is this worse than the alternative of needing to allocate precious space in dense urban areas to car storage? It seems like getting rid of on street parking and thus opening up ~2 more lanes per road would be a win even with increased commuter miles.
It depends; it utilizes car automation transportation to help travel hope from one place to another without any worry. It will reduce the traffic and amount of cars in use.
> Research has previously suggested that automated vehicles could cause people to drive more than they currently do,
Even without full self driving, having lane keeping assist and adaptive cruise control greatly increases my enjoyment on long trips. Often I will put on a podcast or audiobook and drive. Before, traffic jams used to be a pain because you were constantly having to shift your foot from brake to accelerator, but with adaptive cruise control, the car handles all that allowing to relax and enjoy the ride.
The promise of a relaxed, comfortable commute to work could even make some people move farther away from their workplaces and accelerate suburban sprawl trends.
Clearly "relax and enjoy" is problematic. Maybe there should be regulations for comfort offsets in vehicles with automation capability. Maybe seats that are unadjustable and too upright, reduced sound damping or reduced audio offerings.
Uncomfortable chairs would become known in the restaurant industry as “15-minute chairs.” Charles Eames’ fiberglass scoop chair (shown above) might be an example, offering little possibility of posture realignment.
This sounds a lot like abstinence only sex education. “If we make sex less dangerous by reducing the risk of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, then more people will engage in sex.”
Deliberately trying to make things uncomfortable or dangerous because you don’t like people’s choices is a very authoritarian mindset.
Empty driverless vehicles in endless circulation is a form of in motion idling. I expect anti-idling laws will expand to cover this as the machine has zero rights and a robot police car can ask it and it will confess and pay the fine. They could be made to refuse 'idling' behaviour.
But...
The manufacturing of a car is responsible for a very significant amount of the emissions it produces over its life. If we can greatly reduce the number of cars then there'll be a huge reduction in emissions simply because we won't make as many of them. That's always going to be a massive win for the environment, even if each individual car is being used more.