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vtsnowedin wrote:Think ahead. There will certainly be a AV service that includes a back seat companion of your preference to keep you entertained for the duration of your drive around town

Pushing 60, sadly again, my first thought isn't for the kind of recreation you're implying, unlike 20-40 years ago.

When society gets rational enough to legalize prostitution in the first world generally, I'm sure you're right. Until then, hassling with the police (not to mention VD) isn't on my agenda (even when I was in my 20's).

Outcast_Searcher wrote:

vtsnowedin wrote:Think ahead. There will certainly be a AV service that includes a back seat companion of your preference to keep you entertained for the duration of your drive around town

Pushing 60, sadly again, my first thought isn't for the kind of recreation you're implying, unlike 20-40 years ago.

When society gets rational enough to legalize prostitution in the first world generally, I'm sure you're right. Until then, hassling with the police (not to mention VD) isn't on my agenda (even when I was in my 20's).

The average rider will be about thirty as we seasoned citizens will be slow to adapt until our driving skills fail us. The back seat companion might well be a droid so legalities and SSDs will not be a problem.
For us well seasoned ones the companion might well be a droid nurse.

vtsnowedin wrote:The average rider will be about thirty as we seasoned citizens will be slow to adapt until our driving skills fail us. The back seat companion might well be a droid so legalities and SSDs will not be a problem.
For us well seasoned ones the companion might well be a droid nurse.

The droid thing is a good point, which I didn't even consider. Here I am imagining fully robotic cars being routine, and not considering the liklihood of droid companions.

Hmmm. An attractive, reliable, female droid nurse. Able to do chores and play naughty nurse on occasion. And with an off switch, when wanted. Where do I sign up?

Outcast_Searcher wrote:

vtsnowedin wrote:The average rider will be about thirty as we seasoned citizens will be slow to adapt until our driving skills fail us. The back seat companion might well be a droid so legalities and SSDs will not be a problem.
For us well seasoned ones the companion might well be a droid nurse.

The droid thing is a good point, which I didn't even consider. Here I am imagining fully robotic cars being routine, and not considering the liklihood of droid companions.

Hmmm. An attractive, reliable, female droid nurse. Able to do chores and play naughty nurse on occasion. And with an off switch, when wanted. Where do I sign up?

You have to wait until you need it and your HMO or Medicare covers it. Might be a while so stay healthy as long as you can.

It remains to be seen if a fully electric autonomous car can best a hybrid in Northern or rural environments even if they both have the same software. Both would ask the driver for a destination and would know every curve, grade, and pothole to be negotiated and sense the weather conditions plus know what the forecast for the duration of the trip is. The ICE hybrid car would have the advantage of running the ICE engine when cabin heat was needed and before and over steep grades to reduce the batteries load at peak times. The hybrid car might make do with much smaller and cheaper battery packs which would more then offset the weight and fuel requirements of the very small (say 2500watt output) ICE.
Which one wins depends on what they can develop for both types so the answer is yet to be drawn on a clean page of the drawing board.

vtsnowedin wrote:

Newfie wrote:And that is not to mention shipping. Maybe someone could sell the technology to the Navy.

Oh sure have a Navy warship driven by a computer that can be hacked by the enemy and used to ram our other ships in formation.

Oh sure having a car driven by a computer that can be hacked by he enemy, or some dweeb, and can be used to create “accidents” on critical roads. Or say just STOP in the Lincoln Tunnel. How often does that have to occur until the damn things are banned.

How will these toys handle the occasional snowstorm? Will they slow down or just stop when they sense some unexpected wheel slippage?

How about this, because they are soooo reliable, they are highly predictable, that means some clever “gentleman” could easily figure out how to make the thing stop on a dark and lonely road at O dark thirty and relive you of some cash.

I can see the advantages.

Simply remember that the alternative is a manually driven car that has 10X the number of fatalities and accidents. It's not like driving vehicles is a safe thing today - for most people, it is the most hazardous thing they do.

Newfie wrote:

vtsnowedin wrote:

Newfie wrote:And that is not to mention shipping. Maybe someone could sell the technology to the Navy.

Oh sure have a Navy warship driven by a computer that can be hacked by the enemy and used to ram our other ships in formation.

Oh sure having a car driven by a computer that can be hacked by he enemy, or some dweeb, and can be used to create “accidents” on critical roads. Or say just STOP in the Lincoln Tunnel. How often does that have to occur until the damn things are banned.

How will these toys handle the occasional snowstorm? Will they slow down or just stop when they sense some unexpected wheel slippage?

How about this, because they are soooo reliable, they are highly predictable, that means some clever “gentleman” could easily figure out how to make the thing stop on a dark and lonely road at O dark thirty and relive you of some cash.

I can see the advantages.

I can see us oldtimers keeping the ability to take over whenever we want or need to. The millennial's that never learn how to drive will be at the mercy of the snowstorm or hacker. It would be nice to come out from a party and be able to tell the car to Drivvesh mee homee!

I saw the video, there's something wrong with car's lights. They are way way too low to see beyond 5 meters.
I suspect Uber dit edit the video before giving it to the public in order to let people think it was impossible to avoid the accident... Moreover, as the car is supposed to have a radar, it should have avoided easily the accident, even in absolute dark, which is obviously not the case.
There's something wrong, and by wrong, I mean VERY WRONG (Falsification or major hardware/software problem).

No, there is nothing wrong. The car's sensor is Lidar, not radar, it depends upon visible light and it can see better than a human in low light conditions. The thing you have to remember is that for every fatality in an autonomous vehicle there are hundreds in human-driven cars. I have seen these vehicles around Silicon Valley for a decade or more, and this is the first pedestrian fatality, and they did not try to hide anything. Show some reasoned judgement on this matter.

"for every fatality in an autonomous vehicle there are hundreds in human-driven cars"
- For every autonomous vehicule, there are millions of human driven cars, much of them driving on road looking like that :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjrEQaG5jPM

"they did not try to hide anything"
- Volkswagen hided microparticles pollution with engineered corrupt software.

EVs is still experimental, and far from total autonomous.

For that reason car fatality rates are usually expressed in terms of100, millions of miles driven.(VMT.) The AVs are already winning on that level. 2016 human operated cars had a rate of 1.18 deaths per 100,000,000 miles.

Can you simply understand that EVs are used on EASY ways?
No snow, storm or ugly/off roads, no random people crossing the street, no policeman orders because of an accident or construction site, no dog moving randomly on high speed 2 lanes, no large roundabout where drivers "fight" to engage left or right, no drivers giving or taking priority with a gesture or eyesight contact at crossroads, beautiful yellow lines in the middle and sides, clean road, all of that recorded on GPS. Driving a car becomes a bit like driving a train.

It's not because you are able to move a rook or knight on a chessboard that you are a grandmaster.

KaiserJeep wrote:Simply remember that the alternative is a manually driven car that has 10X the number of fatalities and accidents. It's not like driving vehicles is a safe thing today - for most people, it is the most hazardous thing they do.

Agree. I think today may be even worse with the aging population. I've seen some that shouldn't be operating an electric wheelchair and are behind the wheel of Buick. My mom is pushing mid 70s now and while very healthy/mobile...i can see her days of driving are probably nearing...luckily she isn't on the road much--a tank of fuel probably lasts her 2 or 3 months.

I've always thought an alcoholic would love a car with self driving capabilities.

"Kit..i'm loaded...take me home"...

I'm puzzled by the willing from people to become useless fat bag of s*** stucked in an armchair waiting to be feeded by robots.

We have now a generation of people supposed to be unable to drive, cook, fix something, speak a foreign language, use a map, learn something... Everything is about AI and machines taking care of us. Our health, our sleep, our leisure... Anything!

And while we should delegate our former abilities to machines, we are supposed to do "interesting" things like say moving left and right selfies on a smartphone, aligning candies in candy crush, watching youporn and facebook.

I like driving a manual gear car, cooking pizza, learning neural network and programming minimax in C++ for a chess engine, using a paper map with a compas just for fun, read a real book, using garden to produce some natural food and taking care of chickens for eggs.
Those machines are taking away your freedom. The more we will become assisted, the more we will become weak and useless.

Newfie wrote:Oh sure having a car driven by a computer that can be hacked by he enemy, or some dweeb, and can be used to create “accidents” on critical roads. Or say just STOP in the Lincoln Tunnel. How often does that have to occur until the damn things are banned.

So technology, including, security can't be improved? I don't buy it, given the history of technological progress.

Now, OTOH, there's no need to be stupid. I'll be the LAST person to sign up for electronic locks on my house until they make me use them or I'm mighty sure they aren't easily hacked via other peoples' long experience, in the millions or billions.

If you're concerned, don't be an early or even middling adopter. But cars generally are becoming MUCH more computerized, so unless you want to drive a (relative) relic, and its attendant age, maintenance, old feature problems -- you're not going to avoid highly computerized cars.

By the way, people are aware and concerned about and working on this issue.

Sys1 wrote:Can you simply understand that EVs are used on EASY ways?
No snow, storm or ugly/off roads, no random people crossing the street, no policeman orders because of an accident or construction site, no dog moving randomly on high speed 2 lanes, no large roundabout where drivers "fight" to engage left or right, no drivers giving or taking priority with a gesture or eyesight contact at crossroads, beautiful yellow lines in the middle and sides, clean road, all of that recorded on GPS. Driving a car becomes a bit like driving a train.

It's not because you are able to move a rook or knight on a chessboard that you are a grandmaster.

Of course I understand that. But most vehicle miles are driven on those easy ways so as long as the car stops and turns it back to you when the road gets snow covered etc. it is not a problem. My present car has "lane assist" and when it can't see it beeps and tells me I'm on my own.
I also expect the technology to rapidly improve and in a few years your car will be able to drive safely through a raging sandstorm and know exactly where it is and where every other car or obstacle around you is to within inches.

I think the best analogy for the uptake of autonomous EVs is the touted manned mission to Mars. For decades they have been sending probes and rovers out there but the practicalities and expense of a manned mission will forever keep it on the drawing board. Same with the smart EV. It's just a marketers dream, all part of the religion of AI and fed by a constant stream of Hollywood movies.

theluckycountry wrote:I think the best analogy for the uptake of autonomous EVs is the touted manned mission to Mars. For decades they have been sending probes and rovers out there but the practicalities and expense of a manned mission will forever keep it on the drawing board. Same with the smart EV. It's just a marketers dream, all part of the religion of AI and fed by a constant stream of Hollywood movies.

I am more optimistic on that then you are. Over the fifty plus years of my driving life the technology for automobiles has made great advances and it appears to be accelerating. At one point they were considering pavement markers and deliniator posts that transmitted information to a receiver in a autonomous driven car. That plan has been superseded by the present camera tech that lets the car see the lane lines with just the conventional reflective glass beads that have been standard for decades. I'd give it less then ten years to have fully capable self driving cars that could drive your eight year old to school by itself and pick them back up after school.
Understand that the first car I owned had a manual choke and a windshield washer pump you operated with a foot pedal right beside the dimmer switch on the floor for your left foot.