Autonomy subscriptions are how things are going to go, I called this a long time ago. It makes too much sense in terms of continuous development and operations/support to not have a subscription -- and subscriptions will likely double as insurance at some point in the future (once the car is driving itself 100% of the time, and liability is always with the self driving stack anyway).
Of course, people won't like this, I'm not exactly enthused either, but the alternative would be a corporation constantly providing -- for free -- updates and even support if your car gets into an accident or stuck. That doesn't really make sense from a business perspective.
Agreed, it seems inevitable that autonomy and insurance are going to be bundled.
1. Courts are finding Tesla partially liable for collisions, so they've already got some of the downsides of insurance (aka the payout) without the upside (the premium).
2. Waymo data shows a significant injury reduction rate. If it's true and not manipulated data, it's natural for the car companies to want to capture some of this upside.
3. It just seems like a much easier sell. I wouldn't pay $100/month for self-driving, but $150 a month for self-driving + insurance? That's more than I currently pay for insurance, but not a lot more. And I've got relatively cheap insurance: charging $250/month for insurance + self-driving will be cheaper than what some people pay for just insurance alone.
I don't think we need to hit 100% self-driving for the bundled insurance to be viable. 90% self-driving should still have a substantially lower accident rate if the Waymo data is accurate and extends.
1. High-severity accidents might drop, but the industry bleeds money on high-frequency, low-speed incidents (parking lots, neighborhood scrapes). Autonomy has diminishing returns here; it doesn't magically prevent the chaos of mixed-use environments.
2. Insurance is a capital management game. We’ll likely see a tech company try this, fail to cover a catastrophic liability due to lack of reserves, and trigger a massive backlash.
It reminds me of early internet optimism: we thought connectivity would make truth impossible to hide. Instead, we got the opposite. Tech rarely solves complex markets linearly.
> Insurance is a capital management game. We’ll likely see a tech company try this, fail to cover a catastrophic liability due to lack of reserves, and trigger a massive backlash.
Google, AFAIK the only company with cars that are actually autonomous, has US$98 Billion in cash.
It'd have to be a hell of an accident to put a dent in that.
All unlimited liability insurance companies (e.g. motor insurers in the UK) have reinsurance to take the hit on claims over a certain level - e.g. 100k, 1m etc.
For extreme black swan risks, this is how you prevent the insurance company just going bankrupt.
Reinsurers themselves then also have their own reinsurance, and so on. The interesting thing is that you then have to keep track of the chain of reinsurers to make sure they don't turn out to be insuring themselves in a big loop. A "retrocession spiral" could take out many of the companies involved at the same time, e.g. the LMX spiral.
If it's cheaper for them to pay lawyers a few tens or hundreds of millions to bury any such case in court, in settlements, or putting the agitator through any of the myriad forms of living hell they can legally get away with, then they'll go that route.
You'd need an immensely rich or influential opponent to decide they wanted to march through hell in order to hold Google's feet to the fire. It'd have to be something deeply personal and they probably have things structured to limit any potential liability to a couple hundred million. They'll never be held to account for anything that goes seriously wrong.
> Auto insurers don't face a "catastrophic liability" bankrupting scenario like home insurers might in the case of a natural disaster or fire.
This changes with self-driving. Push a buggy update and potentially all the same model cars could crash on the same day.
This is not a threat model regular car insurers need to deal with since it'll never happen that all of their customers decide to drive drunk the same day, but that's effectively what a buggy software update would be like.
Far be it from me to tell automakers how to roll out software but I would expect them to have relatively slow and gradual rollouts, segmented by region and environment (e.g., Phoenix might be first while downtown London might be last).
I doubt autonomous car makers will offer this themselves. They'll either partner with existing insurers or try to build a separate insurance provider of their own which does this.
My guess, if this actually plays out, is that existing insurers will create a special autonomy product that will modify rates to reflect differences in risk from standard driving, and autonomy subscriptions will offer those in a bundle.
Bundling a real product with a financial institution is a time tested strategy.
Airlines with their credit cards are basically banks that happen to fly planes. Starbucks' mobile app is a bank that happens to sell coffee. Auto companies have long had financing arms; if anything, providing insurance on top of a lease is the natural extension of that.
> High-severity accidents might drop, but the industry bleeds money on high-frequency, low-speed incidents (parking lots, neighborhood scrapes). Autonomy has diminishing returns here; it doesn't magically prevent the chaos of mixed-use environments.
This seems like it can be solved with a deductible.
I think parent might be implying that a 10 mph collision can total a car just as effectively as a 100 mph collision. There might be more left of the occupants, but the car itself might be still a total loss from a cost-to-repair perspective
> Autonomy has diminishing returns here; it doesn't magically prevent the chaos of mixed-use environments.
It doesn't prevent chaos, but it does provide ubiquitous cameras. That will be used against people.
I'm ambivalent about that and mostly in a negative direction. On the one hand, I'd very much love to see people who cause accidents have their insurance go through the roof.
On the other hand, the insurance companies will force self-driving on everybody through massive insurance rate increases for manual driving. Given that we do not have protections against companies that can make you a Digital Non-Person with a click of a mouse, I have significant problems with that.
> I'd very much love to see people who cause accidents have their insurance go through the roof.
Life is hard and people make mistakes. Let the actuaries do their job, but causing an accident is not a moral failure, except in cases like drunk driving, where we have actual criminal liability already.
> the insurance companies will force self-driving on everybody through massive insurance rate increases for manual driving.
Why would manual driving be more expensive to insure in the future? The same risks exist today, at today's rates, but with the benefit that over time the other cars will get harder to hit, reducing the rate of accidents even for humans (kinda like herd immunity).
> Given that we do not have protections against companies that can make you a Digital Non-Person with a click of a mouse, I have significant problems with that.
I absolutely think this is going to be one of the greater social issues of the next generation.
>Why would manual driving be more expensive to insure in the future? The same risks exist today, at today's rates, but with the benefit that over time the other cars will get harder to hit, reducing the rate of accidents even for humans (kinda like herd immunity).
I think it will get cheaper because people who want to do risky things that detract from driving will self select to drive autonomous vehicles.
Interesting theory, I would have assumed the exact opposite. People who want to drive fast and take risks will select manual driving because they'll find the autonomous cars too boring.
It's a numbers game. Those people basically don't exist compared to cheapskates who want to drive old cars and people who crash cars driving distracted. It's gonna come down to how many people who want to text and drive or do other sketchy stuff want to make the jump to autonomous cars. Classic car insurance is already stupid cheap just because it implicitly excluded a bunch of risky demographics.
Yes, imagine you bought a Google self-driving car for $70,000, and one day their algorithm gets mad at you due to a glitch, and your Google account is locked, your car can no longer be unlocked, can't be sold, and your appeals are instantly rejected and you have no recourse. Just a typical day in Google's world.
Autonomy + insurance is an interesting way to arrive at what the insurers are already trying to push with their tracker dongles, where they encourage you to drive like a mouse by putting bits of carrot in front of you.
I had been worried that non-tracked insurance would become increasingly expensive once we reached a tipping point where more and more drivers accepted the devil's bargain, but likely the trackers will be obsoleted by autonomy.
I would pay so much for my own SUV to self-drive as well as Waymo.
Keyword: my own SUV. Not a rental. With the possibility for me to take over and drive it myself if service fails or if I want to do so.
The significant unlock is that I get to haul gear, packages, family. I don't need to keep it clean. The muddy dogs, the hiking trip, the week-long road trip.
If my car could drive me, I'd do way more road trips and skip flying. It's almost as romantic as a California Zephyr or Coast Starlight trip. And I can camp out of it.
No cramped airlines. No catching colds by being packed in a sardine can with a stressed out immune system.
No sharing space with people on public transit. I can work and watch movies and listen to music and hang out with my wife, my friends. People won't stare at me, and I can eat in peace or just be myself in my own space.
I might even work in a nomadic lifestyle if I don't have to drive all the time. Our country is so big and there's so much to see.
One day you might even be able to attach a trailer. Bikes, jet skis, ATVs. People might simply live on the road, traveling all the time.
Big cars seem preferable. Lots of space for internal creature comforts. Laying back, lounging. Watching, reading, eating. Changing clothes, camping, even cooking.
Some people might even buy autonomous RVs. I'm sure that'll be a big thing in its own right.
It's bidirectional too! People can come to you as you go to them. Meet in the middle. Same thing with packages, food, etc.
This would be the biggest thing in travel, transport, logistics, perhaps ever. It's a huge unlock. It feels downright revolutionary. Like a total change in how we might live our lives.
This might turn big suburbs from food/culture deserts into the default places people want to live as they have more space for cheaper - because the commute falls apart.
This honestly sounds better than a house, but if you can also own an affordable large home in the suburbs as your home base - that's incredible. You don't need a tiny expensive place in the city. You could fall asleep in your car and wake up for breakfast in the city. Spend some time at home, then make a trek to the mountains. All without wasting any time. No more driving, no more traffic. Commuting becomes leisure. It becomes you time.
This is also kind of a super power that big countries (in terms of area) with lots of roads and highways will enjoy the most. It doesn't do much in a dense city, but once you add mountains and forests and streams and deserts and oceans - that's magic.
Maybe our vast interstate highway infrastructure will suddenly grow ten times in value.
Roads might become more important than ever. We might even start building more.
If the insurance and autonomy come bundled as a subscription after you purchase or lease your vehicle, that's super easy for people to activate and spend money on.
This is such a romantic dream, and I'm so hyped for this.
I would pay an ungodly sum to unlock this. It can't come soon enough. Would subscribe in a heartbeat.
> This might turn big suburbs from food/culture deserts into the default places people want to live as they have more space for cheaper
This will certainly not happen. The reason these places are culture and food deserts is precisely because people drive everywhere and the driving infrastructure requires so much space that it is impossible to have density at the levels needed to support culture.
Even just paying for the roads for these cars to drive on is a challenge with the lack-of-density they require. So many suburbs with large lot sizes just learn to live with the potholes.
that is until autonomous pothole-fixers. Just the other way, looking at the Waymo driving by and with me doing small autonomy myself i was wondering what niche they leave for me, and looking at the road i thought that autonomous pothole-fixers is going to be multi-trillion business.
People writing in other comments about cost of roads, new and repair - it all will change with autonomous road paving hardware.
If you have cheap, abundant land it makes no sense to build densely.
Look at Houston with ~zero zoning laws and ~infinite sprawl.
"A neighborhood" in a high-sprawl suburb wouldn't be able to support local mixed use amenities because even singular "neighborhoods" are gigantic enough to warrant driving across them. Once you're in the car, why would you go to the place 2min down the road instead of the far superior place 8min down the road.
These allegedly cover only ~25% of residential lots in HTX (mostly the wealthy ones). So sure that's a similar tool and probably distorts things, but I would be very shocked to hear this is anywhere near as important as the infinite supply of ultra-cheap land on the outskirts of town plus public subsidized roads (which will eventually bankrupt the city).
Houston has these, parking requirements, etc. I would argue if anything that mandatory parking requirements have a larger impact than zoning. Parking lots themselves push things farther apart and make not driving unpleasant.
I agree with you but I don't believe the marketplace does. If you get rid of parking requirements in Houston I doubt you'd see a significantly different development pattern because ultimately people there actually do need to park their cars.
If you remove parking requirements then the marketplace can discover the right amount of parking. Parking minimums keep the amount of parking artificially high.
I realize "makes no sense" carries a double meaning here. I am speaking of the system-level decisions which end up actually producing infrastructure. You're right that sprawl is absolutely inhumane – we should absolutely nudge processes/incentives such that it's discouraged, but doing so is not as simple as just "get rid of zoning."
Average commute time in Houston is just under half an hour (depend on which source you read, varies from 26-29 in my quick search). Sure you can do commutes more than an hour long, but people generally don't - if they get a new job more than about half an hour away they will move.
> It only makes sense to sprawl like in Houston if you never mind spending 3-4 hours commuting to work and back.
Much easier to do with self driving cars though. Remember the promise? “Take a nap in your car and arrive at your destination” or “be productive on your commute”.
I live well out of Boston/Cambridge. These days, I rarely drive in. (Mostly for flights or the occasional theater). I would absolutely go in more if someone/something were driving me for a reasonable cost. I'm actually fairly convenient to commuter rail but doesn't really work except for commuting during the day which I very rarely do.
At this point it is more because they have always been that way and people don't think about it anymore. in 1920-1950 when they were first enacted they were for those reasons, but now people are more afraid of change.
I suspect I can get a larger variety of ethnic food of very decent quality in 1 hour in NYC than in 99% of suburbs.
Shopping for large items, or large quantities, definitely tends to use suburban land because it's cheaper, and a shopping center uses a lot of it. The cost for the customers is the time to drive there.
I can't speak to NYC - best case it would take me 4 hours to get there (.5 to the airport, 1 hour security, 2 hours on the plane, .5 from ny airport to the city). Meanwhile I can get to nearly anywhere in my entire MSA in less than an hour, both city and suburbs (and even a few farms). Within that the majority of ethnic food is in suburbs, though the largest concentration is still downtown.
I live in Baltimore, and if you ask after Chinese, Korean, Indian, or Vietnamese, without specifying city limits, you will be directed to a place in the suburbs with a parking lot (I think this is essentially true of DC as well).
Well, there are some rural staples like BBQ, and Mexican to a degree.
But, yes. The sort of ... enduring narrative is that rural areas and suburbs have chain restaurants, diners, and fast food, because immigrants go to cities and open restaurants from their native cuisine, and that suburbanites think black pepper is spicy and sushi is gross.
In actuality I think immigrants are increasingly (a) enamored of the American big-car / big-house lifestyle (makes sense, they choose to come here) and (b) bought-in to the notion that cities are dangerous, with bad schools. So immigrants rent a place in a strip mall near the suburban school district some other immigrant said was good online and start restaurants there. Google maps exists, suburbanites think nothing of a 25 minute drive, so they ask around online after the best examples of a particular ethnic cuisine, and they drive there.
In Maryland, where I live, it's certainly true that the highly-regarded Chinese and Korean dining is in suburbs. Latin Americans, specifically Guatemalans and Salvadorans, are the only immigrant group moving in to Baltimore (where I live) with any sort of enthusiasm.
While it’s true that there is food and shopping in suburbs, I think it’s also true that suburbs are still food and culture deserts, since the food and other amenities is typically far away from most houses.
Not really. Get in a car and you can be at all. For many in the city walking it is about as long to get to those things - the distance is less, but the time is similar and time is what counts.(which isn't very many!) the city is the food desert - there are bars and restaurants, but zero grocery stories. If you want to cook a meal you have to get to the suburbs to buy the supplies.
True. One other people you find in cities in the old world is people who are not in that weird place between college and kids where they can afford to eat out all the time and alcohol hasn't started catching up to their health
I very much hope that this doesn't happen. So much wasted energy for so little benefit. What's one to do in this world if they don't have the money to own a car that constantly drives them around? What's one to do if they like becoming familiar with a place, rather than watching place after place whiz by? What's one to do if they want to build relationships with the other humans in the world?
How? There would be a huge increase in demand on the roads. You said it yourself, you’d have to build more roads.
Unless you meant, no more [suffering] traffic, since you could just take a nap.
The only way I see self driving to be a true win if it is so efficient that you can remove all the roads and they become part of the mass transit system.
I would demand personal vehicles to pay a premium (cost plus) as they take up more space per person and add to infrastructure maintenance cost
There are a bunch of it depends. A large part of traffic is because someone messes up - accidents cause large delays, but even a small mistake in merging can slow down several others. Though human drivers regularly tailgate, if self driving cars maintain their proper 3 second following distance we could need a lot more space. (though perhaps self driving can safely maintain even a closer distance than humans do - I don't know)
This would be an absolute energy and efficiency nightmare. I hope to god this never ever happens.
> No sharing space with people on public transit.
If people really want their own private suites they should be paying thru the nose and ears for it. Cars are a worse version of this and the car-centric lifestyle is heavily subsidized by everything from taxes to people's lives (air pollution from ICEs yes, but tire pollution is actually worse in many ways and is made worse with heavier EVs).
This will not fix food deserts, it will make them worse. If your car isn't packed to capacity on every single trip, it is less efficient and worse than public transit.
Roads are awful. We should be trying to minimize them, not expand them.
Whatever ungodly sum you are prepared to pay, I'm certain the actual cost is yet higher.
cars are barely efficient in terms of time. In cost terms, cars are incredibly expensive once you add in infrastructure costs, insurance, fuel, the cost of land use, etc.
Public transit is efficient even outside areas of high density - see suburban Europe or India. Why are so many people here utterly car-brained?
Have you ever actually been to Europe? Public transit is pretty good in first-tier cities like Vienna / Stockholm / London where tourists spend most of their time. But out in the smaller cities and rural areas where regular people live there's very little public transit except for slow and inconvenient buses. So everyone drives. Or if they're too poor to afford a car then they just don't go anywhere.
This is my observation as well, it's also true in the USA. Places like Chicago and NYC have good public transit. You can easily live there without a car, in fact it's easier and certainly cheaper to not have to deal with owning a car. If you visted NYC and formed your impression of public transit in the USA based on that, it would be very wrong. Likewise you cannot assume that because Copenhagen has great public transit and bicycle infrastructure that all of Europe is like that. Get out to the smaller cities and towns and you'll find that many more people own cars and drive everywhere.
I get that most people just want short trips around a major city, but given we, I'm sure it's shocking, don't all live in places like that, or want to spend our time in places like that, it might behoove y'all to solve for other use cases if you want widespread adoption (or at least accept that it's ok to solve for those use cases).
Or, I guess, you can hope that everyone will suddenly decide that all they want is to live in modern Kowloon City because "roads are awful" or whatever memetic nonsense is trending on TikTok.
Public transit is a dream turned nightmare consistently for seventy-five years. Autonomy will be less efficient -- but not that much less efficient given closer car spacing, speed, and remote parking -- but it will be spectacularly more convenient and comfortable. I'm all for it. You'll survive the tire pollution.
That's one opinion. My opinion is public transport is phenomenal. It's relatively reliable (very in some places), generally clean and safe, low cost, encourages urban/high efficiency development, protects greenspace, and employees people.
I'm not sure where you live, but that doesn't match my experience at all. And I think most people agree given the overwhelming majority of people who choose to drive, notwithstanding traffic and parking. The declining public transit ridership in most metropolitan areas over time is well documented.[1] It's because in most places -- but evidently not where you live -- public transit sucks relative to private transportation and ride-hailing services. As discussed above, EV autonomy will only increase the difference.
Speak for yourself. I love my cars. For a relatively modest expense they allow me to go wherever, whenever I want and bring all my stuff with me. This is a miracle of modern civilization.
In most places it is not, which is a big drawback. Every week I hear on the news how the train shut down some stations or got massively delayed for random reasons. I couldn't possibly rely on that if I need to be at work at a specific time.
What are you talking about? In most cities public transport sucks, hardly goes anywhere, gets more expensive year after year, makes housing prices go up, and is slow and inflexible enough that people still end up needing cars to go around
The United States is freaking huge. By the time modern transportation arrived, people were already living all over the country in pockets every which where. We opted for cars and planes to cover the vast distances. And as it turns out, we have some of the best in the world of both of these - and in vast quantities.
We do have dense pockets. NYC, in particular, has a nice metro (it just needs to be cleaner and more modernized - but it's great otherwise).
Most countries are small. Their dense cities are well-served by public transit. America is just too spread out. Insanely spread out.
China is an exception in that, while a huge landmass, its large cities emerged as the country was wholesale industrializing. It was easy for them to allocate lots of points to infrastructure. And given their unmatched population size and density, it makes a lot of sense.
As much as I envy China's infrastructure (I've been on their metros - they're amazing!), it would be a supreme malinvestment here in the United States to try to follow in their footsteps. The situation we have here is optimal for our density and the preferences of our citizens. (As much as people love to complain about cars, even more people than those that complain really love their cars.)
Public transit in the US is probably going to wind down as autonomous driving picks up the slack. Our road infrastructure is the very best in the world - it's more expansive, comprehensive, and well-maintained than any nation on the planet. We'd be wise to double down. It can turn into a super power once the machines take over driving for us.
The fact that we have this extent of totally unmatched road infrastructure might actually turn out to be hugely advantageous over countries that opted for static, expensive heavy rail. Our system is flexible, last mile, to every address in the country. With multiple routes, re-routes, detours. Roads are America's central nervous system.
Our interstate system is flexible, and when cars turn into IP packets, we'll have the thickest and most flexible infrastructure in the world.
We've shit on cars for the last 15 years under the guise that "strong towns" are correct and that cars are bad. But as it may turn out, these sleeping pieces of infrastructure might actually be the best investment we've ever made.
Going to call this now: in 20 years' time, cars will make America OP.
Those things everything complains about - they'll be America's superpower.
The rest of the world with their heavy rail trains and public transit will be jealous. Our highways will turn into smart logistics corridors that get people and goods P2P at high speed and low cost to every inch of the country.
Roads are truly America's circulatory and nervous system.
I'm so stoked for this. I once fell for the "we need more trains meme" - that was a suboptima anachronism, and our peak will be 100x higher than expensive, inflexible heavy rail.
> The United States is freaking huge. By the time modern transportation arrived, people were already living all over the country in pockets every which where. We opted for cars and planes to cover the vast distances. And as it turns out, we have some of the best in the world of both of these - and in vast quantities.
You have this narrative precisely backwards.
At the risk of pointing out the obvious: the great sprawl that made us dependent on cars happened after cars got popularized.
Yes, the cities were already spread out relative to each other, but that distance can be covered with trains well enough. What made us need cars, and what cars encouraged, was a huge amount of spread within a city or metro area. If you sprawl out over a city such that population density is constantly low, then public transit and walking can't work effectively anymore, and everyone needs to own a car.
US cities that were already large and well populated before the advent of cars tend to be densely built. Their cores, at least, are walkable as a result. This is true even for non-major cities -- just google "streetcar suburbs" as an example.
Completely irrelevant. I'm not interested in public transport across vast areas from city to city, I can drive or fly for those (very rare) occasions.
Public transport is most useful for the hyper-local day-to-day movement. I'd just want good reliable public transport within my town and neighboring areas.
(Actually I'd prefer to just bike, which requires secure bike parking in all destinations. I can already bike anywhere in town, but my bike will get stolen if I stop anywhere to shop or eat, so I can't do that.)
Autonomous cars that move largely along the same route could form temporary "trains", or rather convoys, moving in a coordinated fashion. That would simplify navigation, reduce chances of accidents, reduce energy consumption, and definitely give the passengers more peace of mind during the commute.
Such convoys would split when needed, join together when needed, notify other convoys and drivers about their route and timing. This would alleviate traffic jams considerably even under heavy load.
At the same time, they would consist of cars and trucks that would be capable of moving completely separately outside highways.
This, of course, will require some kind of centralized control over entire convoys, and a way to coordinate them. Railways and airways definitely can offer examples of how to handle that.
> This, of course, will require some kind of centralized control over entire convoys, and a way to coordinate them. Railways and airways definitely can offer examples of how to handle that.
Not at all. A simple peer to peer protocol based on proximity and mixing in traffic data distributed like the national weather service will do just fine.
These convoys seem like a perfect example of swarm algorithms fitting well where you don’t need a central coordinator.
Within a convoy, yes. Between convoys, a dispatcher service could be beneficial, distributed and federated, again, like air traffic controllers and railway dispatchers. The same self-driving car companies that produce the software and require subscription could offer it.
> Roads are truly America's circulatory and nervous system.
Thanks to massive lobbying by car manufacturers that did their best to destroy all traces of public transit infrastructure that existed in the US before the country moved to car dependency.
It is true. The US has great car infrastructure. The US has a lot of airplanes. For longer distances both work very well.
We have terrible transit though, and there are many short trips where transit should work better than it doesn't work at all. However the subject here is vast distances and the US has those and does well.
Rubber ppm over some threshold safety level is a negative externality worth maybe a few billion in remediation, healthcare costs, etc. (As a society, we're still not convinced pulmonary health as impacted by particulate inhalation is important - which is a mistake. It absolutely is a big deal and negative externality driving a whole host of bad health outcomes.)
Malinvestment into public transit in a way that serves only a limited few of the population and that costs 10x the already high initial estimates is a negative drain on the balance sheet worth 500 billion or more. And this infra is woefully inflexible and static.
California HSR alone is already suboptimal vs. flights, and once we have long distance autonomous self-driving, that'll meet the same demand with 1/100,0000,000th the cost (if you average out the costs and benefits of self driving over all other routes).
I tend to expect better from HN commenters. I don't have an interest in having a discussion with such a callous and dismissive comment. I hope your day gets better.
Tire pollution is worse than tailpipe emissions and the full effects aren't known. You're dismissive of other people's and the environment's health and you're wrong.
Hell yeah man screw all of those people breathing the outside air from the car brakes. What losers. We'll just dump the pollution everywhere all the time instead of in specific areas where mitigation for everyone is easier and cheaper.
> Tire pollution is worse than tailpipe emissions and the full effects aren't known. You're dismissive of other people's and the environment's health and you're wrong.
Tire pollution is now as large or larger than tailpipe particulate pollution, but it’s not a complete apples-to-apples comparison.
Tail pipe pollution includes CO₂, NOx, SO₂, CO, and fine particulates (PM2.5 + PM10) and is strongly linked to asthma, heart disease, climate change.
Tire pollution on the other hand is microplastics, synthetic rubber particles, zinc, and volatile organic compounds. Toxic to aquatic life; long-term human health effects still being studied.
A typical ICE car will consume at least 500 gallons of petrol (gasoline) per 1 gallon of tire tread worn. The environmental impact per volume of tire is certainly greater, but it's not remotely five hundred times greater.
I'm not saying we should disregard the issue of tire pollution. But if it was as serious as you suggest, it would be making more headlines than it is.
Why wouldn’t it be 500 times greater? Gasoline is combusted for energy, converting most of it into mostly harmless byproducts; tire tread is just released as is.
The best evidence that tyre tread is significantly less consequential than gasoline consumption is that such criticisms overwhelmingly arise in discussions of electric cars.
I'm lost on why you fantasies this so much and don't just buy an RV or something?
Do you really hate driving that much?
I don't think this would change the world as you imagine it. I don't mind driving long i will just make sure i get entertainment for the purpose. Like an audio book. My wife doesn't say 'Lets go soemwere you can drive me around and i can finally do that many things in parallel'.
And plenty of family drive today with RVs while the parents are in the front and the kids are in the back. No one is showering while the parents drive. Do you know how slow Cars now would need to drive to make this suddenly that much more comftable than what we have today?
You would need to rebuild the car and streets to get to this point.
human drivers are inconvenient. They need sleep, and food, and probably won't be willing to take a 5 month trip south of the border for giggles. They poop. Inevitably they will try to do weird shit like have a conversation.
My car is my property. I own it. It does everything I want it to. It is an extension of me.
That question is like asking, "Why own a computer? Why not hire a mathematician to do all your computation for you?"
The problems a self-driving problem solves are 100x deeper than a human, and the second order effects to greater society are enormous. When everyone and everything is self-driving, the roads aren't roads any more - they're TCP/IP and logistics super highways. Anything can go anywhere for any reason at any time. This is a huge societal unlock.
Even thinking about how frictionful ordering an Uber is is exhausting when thinking about the idyllic future of simply jumping into my own car - my own space - and having it do exactly what I want.
You must be a lot more comfortable as a passenger than I am, because that honestly sounds like my personal hell. I don't mind driving, but I hate being in any vehicle for extended periods. Have you considered a chauffeur?
I would hope geohot is exploring options to partner with one of the automakers. Because it sure looks like the future is not bright for their device. Cars are steadily switching to encrypted canbus and don't work with Comma. It's a dead end unless they work a deal with someone to be allowed on the bus.
George Hotz has done some interesting work, but Comma is far too indie/hacker. It's not at a scale where it can be 100% autonomous.
I think a fully autonomous car has to be designed around LiDAR and autonomy from the ground up. That's a hugely capital intensive task that integrates a lot of domains and data. And so much money and talent.
This is more in the ballpark of Google Waymo, Amazon Zoox, Tesla/xAI, Rivian, Apple, etc.
And as the other folks have mentioned, this becomes a really good prospect if one company can manage the autonomy, insurance, maintenance, updates, etc. A fully vertically integrated subscription offering on top of specially purposed hardware you either lease or purchase.
I think there will actually be a couple interesting adjustments/market forces acting in the car companies' favor.
First, if the insurance applies to fully autonomous driving only, then I suspect they’ll reach a point where the cost of insurance+automation ends up being less than just insurance through third parties.
Second, cutting into the traditional insurance market share is likely to increase costs for those who remain on traditional insurance, assuming there’s a significant enough number of people jumping ship. Combined, this creates a huge incentive for more users to jump on the self-driving bandwagon.
I actually I'd be even willing to downgrade my car one level if I'm not driving and just sitting in the back seat. Will likely be cheaper for me to own even with the increased subscription.
Maybe, but it might just push many would-be car owners to just use a service and forego buying a car altogether. What's the point of paying the capital expense, and a subscription expense for a car vs just calling up a Waymo. The traditional car makers should really be wary as they've historically been terrible at service offerings.
In the next step, somebody will notice that many people drive to the same destination (like a large shopping mall or an airport) and try to offer to take them in the same self-driving car for a discount. Over time those vehicles might grow to seat as may as 30-100 people and stop at multiple destinations
If you rarely drive using a service might be worth it. However if you drive more often it will be worth having your own car because it is ready when you want to go. I have a second car that I rarely use - but if I got rid of it a uber is 15 minutes away when I want to go, and the local rental car place is always sold out if I didn't reserve a week in advance.
Even if I'm using a service, someone needs to make the cars the service uses - the car manufactures are not going anywhere, they just get a different customer.
Waymo does a lot of urban miles and they do so fairly timidly. The flip side of the that coin is Tesla FSD and you don't hear people simping for their safety record much around here.
What if the difference between human and computer is basically nil (for the next ten years or so) and turns out to cost as much as glass coverage?
Furthermore, it's not like you can slap this stuff on a 2000 Ford Tarus. You're inherently incurring the insurance burden of a fancy modern car with obscenely expensive everything to even get into the kind of vehicle that could/would be equipped with autonomy.
In NYC with clean 15+ year driving record my premium is $270 a month after discounts with USAA. Geico, Allstate, Progressive all quote me $400/mo minimum. Have driven everything from old beaters to brand new economy cars with little difference. Friends who also drive are paying around $350/mo on average.
> In NYC with clean 15+ year driving record my premium is $270 a month
This is terrible.
In Germany (major city) I pay 166 Eur a month for two cars, one normal (premium brand) family car and second being V8 coupe. I make about 25000km a year in total and have 6 years no claims. No accidents in my driving history (over 15 years).
Price is for full coverage with low excess.
Wow.That a bit high even for NYC. Are you male?
I have a join policy with my wife with Geico for $166 a month.
This includes upgraded $100,000 liability limit roadside assistance and windshield insurance.
I have a crossover/wagon 330 horsepower V6 engine.
I guess males wreck more. I pay double now for myself as a single man with a car than I did for both me and my spouse and our two cars. Went from $100/month to $200/month overnight.
> In NYC with clean 15+ year driving record my premium is $270 a month after discounts with USAA. Geico, Allstate, Progressive all quote me $400/mo minimum. Have driven everything from old beaters to brand new economy cars with little difference. Friends who also drive are paying around $350/mo on average.
Yes but when I tried to switch to liability only it was $20 cheaper. What I pay seems to be the floor, it’s definitely the lowest of anyone I know so far who isn’t claiming to live outside of NYC. Meanwhile my motorcycle insurance, liability only, for an older sport bike was only $400/year with Progressive.
Similar here. In Atlanta, have never had an at-fault accident in my life. I pay just under $400/mo for full coverage on my 2019 coupe and my wife's 2015 crossover.
Sounds like insurance in Canada is very cheap. Here in California we pay about $400/month. This is for a couple with no accidents in 30 years, in the sweet spot of old enough to have plenty of driving record with zero accidents but not too old to have any age-based penalties, so that's about as cheap as it gets.
Apparently when our child reaches driving age we should expect to be paying about $1000/month for insurace. We'll see when the time comes.
The average car insurance premium in the US is over $2000/year, and over $2500/year for full coverage. I imagine that has an outlier effect and the median is lower, but I'd be surprised if the median was under $100/month. I'm paying just under $1000/year (and yes, in Ontario).
It depends where you live and how much coverage you get. The real kicker these day is uninsured motorist coverage, because so many people are driving without insurance and they are much more likely to get into accidents.
You must own your vehicle in its entirety to be able to downgrade to liability-only. If you are still making payments on your car (which most people are), your lender requires that you maintain full coverage.
I always chuckle when discussions start comparing insurance premiums without defining the insurance itself.
Might as well compare the prices of apples and oranges and vacuums and space stations.
These comments could be quoting liability only insurance or comprehensive/collision for a kia or comprehensive/collision with bodily injury for a rivian R1S. The insured amount would differ by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
For reference, I have only ever paid for maximum liability only insurance including uninsured/underinsured coverage ($500k/$250k), but not bodily injury, and my premium for 10k miles per year is less than $50 per month. Used to be less than $40 per month before 2022.
Why would you forego bodily injury liability coverage? Most states require it, and it makes sense if you have even modest assets.
The medical portion of my insurance that covers me (unlimited PIP) is like $17 a month, I can't see driving much and not spending that, even with relatively limited expectations for how much easier it might make things.
Sorry, I meant I forego Personal Injury Protection, not Bodily Injury. I purchase the maximum amount of bodily injury (I forget if it’s $250k or $500k, but it’s up there).
>> Waymo data shows a significant injury reduction rate. If it's true and not manipulated data, it's natural for the car companies to want to capture some of this upside.
If you can insure the car for less, the car company can charge more for the car. I don't want to pay a subscription (rent) for a car I buy.
I think you're in the minority. I can't find the reference, but I believe more customers are willing to pay $100/month for Tesla FSD than are willing to pay $10K once.
That's not surprising, the nominal break-even time (e.g. not accounting for the time value of money) is over eight years if you blow 10K on FSD as a one-time purchase. And when Tesla isn't feeling desperate to convince people to upgrade, the 10K license you bought stays with the car. The average new car owner would spend less with the monthly option.
And of course there's the fact that you can turn monthly FSD off if you feel the value isn't there. The commitment is much lower, so it's easier to convince people to give it a trial run.
I don't pay for it, though. I still haven't been that impressed with it (we've gotten a couple free months to play around with it). I think in some areas it works pretty well, but in my neighborhood it makes regular attempts to scratch the car.
While that is true, that’s only a small percentage of drivers. Most Tesla drivers do not pay for FSD at all. About 12% of Tesla owners pay for FSD in one form or another [0].
So even though paying monthly is more amenable, the vast majority don’t want to pay anything.
And today only fools pay the 10K one time cost. Tesla even priced the monthly amount to encourage you to go monthly. There's lots of reasons, including that they're not going to be able to upgrade people who got cars with the previous hardware, so endless lawsuits trying to get a promised but never provided upgrade from 3 to 4.
> the alternative would be a corporation constantly providing -- for free -- updates and even support if your car gets into an accident or stuck.
That's one alternative.
Another alternative would be that you get what you get at purchase time, and you have to buy a new car to get the newest update.
"Continuous development" isn't always a selling point when it's something with your life in its hands. A great example is Tesla. There are plenty of people who are thrilled with the continuous updates and changes to everything, and there are plenty of people that mock Tesla for it. Both groups are large markets that will have companies cater to them.
> Both groups are large markets that will have companies cater to them.
More likely, one group is a large market that companies will cater to and the other group is a small market that will be very loud about their displeasure on the internet.
Like with Bethesda and paid-for game mods, the issue wasn't the functionality or the feature, but when it was introduced. Next time they do it, probably it'll blow over fast enough for them to just continue, rather than go back.
> Another alternative would be that you get what you get at purchase time, and you have to buy a new car to get the newest update.
Doubt that is a politically tenable model.
"You're telling me my son Bobby died in a crash that could have been prevented with finished software but they only roll it out to people who have the money for a new car despite no technical limitation?" -- yeah, good luck
Think about how many hoopties are already on the road with broken lights, bad alignment, bald tires, no ABS/ESP/TC, dangerous suspension geometry like semi trailing arms, no oil changes, etc. Why don’t we start handwringing about poor vehicle maintenance?
If it is a self-driving software update that the manufacturer could push but chooses not to (or could trivially port), I think it becomes much more difficult liability-wise and legally for them. I'm not saying that is the correct way, but I think it is how it would work in practice.
We do in some places. Where I live (Iowa) we don't - but most people take better care of their car than that so it is pointless. As a kid I remember parts of MN requiring inspection and a few years latter dropping it when they realized nearly every car was passing so there was no point (this was emissions only not safety). In Texas there are regular inspections - but if you go to border towns you see a lot of those poorly maintained cars on the road (despite the inspection) and so people see more need for them and they keep them.
Relying on crappy lane keeping and crappy self driving are equally dangerous. If poor software drives you off the road, why does it matter what the feature was named?
Anything before L4 is "driver assist", which means at the end of the day, the buck stops at the driver. Anything beyond L4, the car itself drives without requiring supervision, which makes a big difference. It's your responsibility to use lane assist in a reasonable way, it's not your responsibility to control how an L4 drives anymore. That's the point of self-driving, the "self" is responsible.
> Another alternative would be that you get what you get at purchase time, and you have to buy a new car to get the newest update.
We can always choose. The subscriptions aren't mandatory? And there's an alternative to the subscription where they offer it to you for a one time cost.
If the choice is offered. But with the way the markets are today, I wouldn't be surprised if we both paid at time of purchase, and then had to pay a subscription fee still.
After all, heated seats are still installed and baked in to the MSRP, even if you're not subscribing to make them work.
The consumers who mock Tesla (and other auto manufacturers) that deliver continuous updates are rapidly dying off or moving into assisted living facilities. They're not going to be buying many new cars in coming years. Pursuing that market segment seems like literally a "dead" end.
That's definitely the attitude I hear from the Tesla-can-do-no-wrong crowd, but in reality most of the people I meet in the Tesla-mocking crowd are under 40- younger on average than the other group.
The non-Tesla manufacturers have noticed this and positioned products accordingly. Tesla does Musk-driven-development so only caters to the one group.
Funny, I have another 30-40 years before I'm "dying off or moving to assisted living". Yet, because I work in software engineering and cybersecurity, you'll have to rip my human-driven cars out of my dead hands before I ever use or own a self-driving vehicle.
Don't get me wrong, as another commenter brought up, I hate traffic too, and the annual fatalities from vehicles are obviously a tragedy. Neither of them motivate me to sign away my rights and autonomy to auto manufacturers.
What happens when these companies decide they suddenly don't like you, cancel your subscription, and suddenly you're not allowed to drive, or I suppose rather use, the vehicle you "own"? It will become the same "subscription to life" dystopian nightmare everything else is becoming.
Or how about how these subscriptions will never be what the consumer actually wants? You'll be forced to pay for useless extra features, ever increasing prices, and planned obsolescence until they've squeezed maximum value out of every single person. I mean imagine trying to work with Comcast to get your "car subscription" sorted.
You know else reduces traffic and fatalities? Allowing workers to actually work from home. Driving during COVID was a dream come true. Let's let the commercial real estate market fail as it was primed to.
Have you ever looked at how humans drive? Not the drunks, but the average person - they are terrible. You are not better. Self driving doesn't have to be very good to be better than humans.
The _average_ person drives just fine. It's specifically the idiots who either should never have been allowed to pass a driver's test in the first place (i.e. lack the motor skills and/ or mental capacity) and the idiots who are so addicted to their phones they can't go 2 minutes without looking at it. I have a very hard time believing those are the majority or even average based on all my time driving.
Which, these issues can be reduced if we stop giving people small slaps on the wrist for driving in ways that greatly endanger others. Hefty fines, temporary/ permanent driving bans, etc. Make people actually pause to consider their actions for once in their lives.
Wow, an improvement we can start doing _today_, that doesn't involve forking over billions of dollars to tech companies to pump out half-baked "self-driving" capabilities. These companies' mission isn't to save lives, in case that's not obvious, it's to _make money_. They are not and have never been interested in potentially simpler/ better solutions if they don't lead to sucking the consumer dry of their money.
I know a lot of people who work on medical device software and think Teslas approach to updates is insane. A safety critical system simply should not have routine updates that affect UX or major performance characteristics.
Which should not be that surprising. Teslas were priced as premium vehicles initially, and then dropped as competitors appeared and to take advantage of tax credits. Teslas also benefit dramatically from owning a garage and adding a charger to it, which mostly homeowners can do.
A homeowner buying an expensive car is very likely older and richer.
Teslas aren't cool anymore, they are what your parents and your Uber driver has.
I'm 31 and I'm very excited by the '86 Chevy truck I just got. You know why? It's _not_ "smart". The smartest thing on it is the old-school AM/FM radio. There's no software updates, there's nothing (built-in) tracking my every move. It's just a simple, repairable truck, for, you know, _driving_.
People have this strange obsession with over-complicating everything they possibly can.
Have you ever stopped to think _why_ cars specifically are so expensive? The manufacturers need to put on a fake show to the market and consumers and pretend they are innovating with new "features" every year. But in reality they stuff so many expensive, fragile, and difficult/ impossible to replace electronics and gadgets into cars because 1) every single piece in that car is marked up from the price they paid. The more (ideally expensive) components, the more they get to mark up as the middleman, the more they get to gouge the customer. 2) The more challenging it is to repair the car, the more likely you _must_ come back to the manufacturer (i.e. dealer) and pay them exorbitant fees to fix problems only they know how and have the parts to fix.
I thought it was safety and environmental regulations, primarily. You have to have airbags, and now antilock brakes, and now rearview cameras, etc. If you were allowed to buy a new car built to the standard of the 1970s, it would be cheap.
I am also very suspect of the origins of some of these regulations as well. Modern airbags are wonderful, don't get me wrong, but it's not unreasonable to question, in the US at least, whether auto manufacturers and their lobbyists have been causing new rules to be invented that coincidentally both require fancy, expensive technology AND increase the difficulty/ cost of meeting the standards as a mean to prevent new competitors from starting up in auto manufacturing. Rear-view cameras, eye tracking, and drunk-driving detection all come to mind.
Emissions regulations should come to mind first. Eye tracking is a lot cheaper than getting an ICE to pass modern emissions (a multi-billion dollar project).
Of course any of the above if they work are a good thing. We are debating cost/benefit here though.
I've been keeping an eye on Slate lately. They _supposedly_ will be selling their trucks for sub $30k late 2026. Presumably they will meet every modern safety standard.
3) The "smarter"/ more unnecessarily complex the vehicle, the easier it becomes to enact planned obsolescence, forcing you to forever buy a new vehicle every 5-7 years, if not more frequent.
4) The "smarter" the vehicle, the more they get to track you and sell your data. You'd think "oh in that case I'm sure it'll be like google where I'd pay a reduced price that's offset by the ad money". No, they will obviously happily rip you off on the vehicle itself AND by selling your data. edit: Because guess what? It's working! People are more than happy to fall for this stuff apparently. I mean hell, it's worked for the phone market too, as one other example.
I'd be ecstatic to see the entire industry wiped out by a newcomer on the scene.
> The "smarter"/ more unnecessarily complex the vehicle, the easier it becomes to enact planned obsolescence forcing you to forever buy a new vehicle every 5-7 years, if not more frequent.
This makes it harder not easier!. Cars can only see for $50-100k because they last for many years. When the person who wouldn't caught dead in a car more than 3 years old trades in for a new one it gets sold. If the car only lasted 5-7 years that used car buyer would factor that in and be unwilling to pay nearly as much - they would have no choice because banks won't give you a 6 year loan on a car that only has 2-4 years left.
Planned obsolesce exists, but they are thinking of 12-20 year old cars need to go. Any car that makes it to 25 though is a collectors item and they want you to show it off at car shows (preferably not a daily driver though) so people think you can make cars that go that long.
The bank loans are a fair point; insurance likely wouldn't insure them either. The CyberTruck, as a notable example.
I will say it _can_ be difficult to keep up though, you don't necessarily find out a particular model is a lemon until it's too late, so it can take some years for everyone to learn and adjust. I mean a buddy of mine only found out in 2024 that his 2016 Explorer had a common/ known engine flaw (the water pump frequently goes bad and requires an engine rebuild). And so how do you reconcile that against for example some of Ford's other accomplishments? I mean, there's loads of F150s that have lasted forever (or at least used to).
In theory banks/ insurers would have enough data today to be able to map the general trend; so I don't think you're wrong, but at the same time I will counter that we may not yet be fully experiencing the effects of any obsolescence being implemented today.
I guess my larger/ real point is that I just foresee this industry heading the same way as phones, and many computers.
I'm not sure what the threshold is for a house to be smart. But I just had to get some fairly extensive work done and all my light switches and so forth are just traditional toggles. I'm not sure what's absurd about that.
Let's be real. A staggering amount of drivers are incapable to switch on Automatic Cruise Control or trigger automatic parking. They know how to start the car, how to switch lights and wipers on/off and that's about it.
Paying subscription for something what they are never going to use is going to be a hard sell.
And to be even more real, a staggering amount of drivers won't be able to afford an autonomous driving subscription even if they wanted to. Or a car new enough or in good enough condition to have functional self driving.
For all of the Musky wank chat about the future, with FSD, robots, and popping over to Australia on a Starship ... a vanishingly small amount of people will actually be able to afford it once they "get the pricing right".
We're talking about some impressive technology ... doused in snake oil from the top.
I have auto parking and never use it, it came with the advanced parking sensors that I do use heavily. I forget how to use auto cruise because I drive outside of the city so rarely, it takes me awhile to “trust it” again when I do some highway driving.
Probably a big chunk of these tried ACC a few times, found that ACC sucks unless you're on perfectly clean empty highway, and said "screw it I'll drive it myself".
I've played with it a little bit. Seems useful in principle. But a lot of roads I tend to be on--even highways--have a fair bit of traffic and speed limits that change on a pretty regular basis. Hasn't been as useful as I expected it to be.
I agree with you. Subscription revenue has explicitly been part of Tesla's strategy for years. I'm not sure when this statement first appeared in their SEC findings, but this is from their 2021 10-K:
"As our vehicles are capable of being updated remotely over-the-air, our customers may purchase additional paid options and features through the Tesla app or through the in-vehicle user interface. We expect that this functionality will also allow us to offer certain options and features on a subscription basis in the future."
> Autonomy subscriptions are how things are going to go
In America, maybe. Chinese manufacturers are already treating self driving as table stakes. If I have a choice between a subscription car and one that just works, I’m buying the latter.
> continuous development and operations/support
ICE vehicles require continuous servicing and manufacturer support.
Agreed, autonomy is a service and not a feature of the car. It has to be. There is inherent cost as you use it and associated liabilities, legal requirements for auditing, technical need for maintenance and dealing with updates in a timely fashion.
You could make the point that owning the car is a lot less important if you don't drive it yourself. If Uber didn't have to pay drivers, they could expand their area of operation to basically everywhere. Drivers need to be paid so having them drive long distance is relatively expensive. That constrains the area of operation. But otherwise, cost per mile is very low. So, orchestrating pickups in the country side becomes possible.
It's going to enable night time travel as well. Nap/sleep while traveling. Wake up at your destination. That's going to revolutionize commutes as well and enable people to live much further away from work. A four hour commute is much less of a problem if you can spend the time working or napping.
That in turn is going to do wonders for real estate prices. Because there are a lot of nice places to live that are currently far away from cities and therefore still relatively affordable. We got a preview of that during the lock downs when people figured out that remote working is a thing.
I love it because I have exactly zero interest in using this and wouldn’t want to pay for it anyways- and I’d rather more of the drivers around me were actually driving as well.
Maybe if the tech gets better, but right now these systems do not handle unusual or unexpected events well and are basically just a glorified cruise control, yet are marketed as autonomy and encourage people to stop paying attention.
Having driven in SF very recently, the current state of Waymo is an obstacle to the smooth flow of traffic. They drive like a hesitant confused person that is worried they just passed their destination but isn't quite sure.
However, that is during 100% normal expected conditions on specific stretches of road they're heavily pre-trained on. My concern was more about their ability to adapt to the unexpectedly dangerous and unanticipated situation.
The other possible future is you rent the car for exactly when you need it and don’t pay a monthly bill— or your monthly bill pays for a certain number of rides/minutes/miles per month. In which case the subscription costs are managed by the provider, who might be the manufacturer and might not.
At least in cities, a fully-functioning, on-demand autonomous fleet would probably be superior to car ownership in just about every way except as a status symbol.
The monopolist providing this service would be de-incentivized from ever equipping for all the demand, and the last 10% of capacity being bid on by the last 20% of demand would make this a constant stress and struggle.
Meanwhile it's an excuse for another century of more car lanes and less mass transit infrastructure.
There used to be a service like this, called Car2Go. Not autonomous, but more like how scooter/bike rentals work. It was fantastic, and in no way profitable.
If that’s the way things go, subscription, there aught to be insurance coverage built into that. It’s required anyway and the extent to which a driver relies on SD, and has to pay a sub, then it’s the SD responsible for accidents, not in full but part, and insurance can reflect that as well. But if the two are inextricable as a requirement anyway, there should be baked in standardized procedures for “things have gone wrong, which was a known inevitability, and this is the framework for handling it.”
Counter counter point. Apple's most expensive offering is something like $1000-$1500 and they basically rely on people upgrading every year or two. Almost like a ........subscription.
Rather than a car which a person may keep for 20 years at a one time huge purchase. Its not really reasonable to expect a company to support something longer than even lifer employees will be there to work on it.
I do really really hate the idea of automotive subscription services though.
Because if you own your car you leave your golf clubs in there just in case you get invited for a round.
If you are the type who is willing to be seen in a used car you can save a lot of money since the rental car needs to be newer cars just in case someone who wouldn't be seen in a used car wants one - and this adds a lot of cost.
Having your stuff in it already, it's always available immediately (for you), not needing to worry as much about getting it dirty at the beach or with a dog, going to remote places where calling a Waymo may be infeasible or would take a really long time. Probably also cheaper if you drive really frequently.
I don't know you or your situation, but many people (including the idealized version of Rivian's target market) like going places that Waymo currently doesn't. There's also tradeoffs with cost, wait time, # of passengers, cargo, etc. Some people may also want to automate "boring" driving while still having the option to do "fun" driving
My cars are more than just transportation. They're mobile storage lockers where I can keep my stuff reasonably secure. They're a place to sit warm and dry while I wait for something else. They're (semi) private changing rooms where I can put on my cycling kit. Regardless of who does the driving I'll never give up owning (or at least leasing) my own private cars.
> pay for insurance, gas, tires, oil changes, parking, washing etc.
If you use a car you are paying for those costs. There is no getting around it. If you uber it is indirect, but part of your costs per ride is going to those things. Renting a car gets someone else to do them - but you are paying them to do that somehow. (self driving make trade parking for gas where parking is expensive, so in the densits areas this can make sense, but only because the car is driving empty out to the suburbs in the morning and empty back into the city in the evening - so it increases traffic)
If you own your car you can choose to not keep it clean. The rental will not allow that choice and so you pay for it.
It won't be much if any difference. Rush hour is when most people are trying to get around. Worse, they are all trying to get to the same place, so if you are thinking two trips downtown - that means there is an unoccupied trip back out to the suburbs every morning (and again in the evening) - perhaps more if we are also parking in the suburbs where parking is cheap (though this is probably offset by the cost of parking downtown)
This is better solved by leveraging more traditional forms of transportation. Making biking, walking, and various forms of transit easier, safer, and more effective. Cars, whether self-driving or not, are in direct opposition to this.
I'm sure they could be useful to folks that have the specific use-case for it, but the vast vast majority of trips in a person's day-to-day are better solved by robust multi-modal options and public transit. The benefit there is that less drivers means that traffic is actually better for everyone.
I actually see this as a benefit! Cars take up a lot of space and so now there exists massive right of ways that can be used and modified for other transit modes. Take a lane away from personal cars and dedicate it to buses so they can run faster and avoid traffic. Remove some street parking spots and create a protected bike lane or a street market or something else. The extra space can be a huge boon. It’s pavement, basically a blank canvas imo.
Unrealistic for 99% of the world, billions live where they earn such sum for more than a week. Not all of those have cars, but many do. This is just some little SV + maybe NY bubble thinking. Also EU would show a big fat finger to such predatory pricing.
Subscriptions are how things are going to go in general. This is just one example of the larger trend. Companies find it very annoying that they have to keep coming up with ways to provide new value in order to keep getting money from people.
Some car companies are already trying out subscriptions for stuff that requires zero ongoing support, like seat heaters. Outside of cars, so much software is switching to subscriptions, whether or not it makes sense. The software for my security cameras has become completely infested by ads, but you can pay for a subscription to make them go away. I own the cameras outright, but not really, since the software needed to use them is basically rented, either with cash or with my eyeballs. Most paid apps I come across these days want a monthly fee to keep using it, they're not content to just sell me a copy.
There is nothing fun about sitting in traffic on your commute to/from work, and neither there is much fun in doing long-distance driving in a straight line on highway for hours on end (regardless of the horsepower). That's what autonomous driving is for imo.
There is a lot of fun in driving a high-hp car on track or offroad or in some not-much-populated area or in plenty of other scenarios. That's where using autonomous driving mode would feel preposterous to me.
> There is nothing fun about sitting in traffic on your commute to/from work, and neither there is much fun in doing long-distance driving in a straight line on highway for hours on end
And I wish this would be more broadly recognized. Every time there's a story about someone important freaking out about something related to autonomous driving, I'm at least somewhat afraid they'll use it as justification to deny me access to it for those specific use cases.
And honestly, those are the only use cases I really care about or feel comfortable with right now. Of course my car is also too old to support much more than that.
How much fun is it actually to drive around doing daily errands or commuting?
Personally, I look at the 40,000 people killed each year in traffic crashes in the US, and I think, the sooner we all stop driving (on public roads) the better.
What evidence is there that we can train people to be better drivers? We've got a century of effort and it seems the bulk of road death prevention has come from improved, and more expensive, design.
Of course, people won't like this, I'm not exactly enthused either, but the alternative would be a corporation constantly providing -- for free -- updates and even support if your car gets into an accident or stuck. That doesn't really make sense from a business perspective.