On Mon, 2013-12-16 at 07:39 +1100, Richard wrote: > I'm not an economist, but it seems to me that the driverless car is a > Detroit nightmare. > Instead of parking the car when you don't want it (as we do now), you > merely release it to transport someone else. > If the duty cycle of the vehicle is increased, fewer vehicles are required.
Seems to me that such a system would move away from private ownership and towards fleet ownership. That would mean either a demand for better quality, longer-lived devices, fast repair cycles and a more generic set of features, OR for easy-to-replace, generic vehicles, with a fleets being an RAIV (you read it here first) - "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Vehicles". Either would be a mixed bag for manufacturers - on the one hand a more reliable, less fickle market, willing to pay for real features and perhaps to pay for reliability and long life; on the other hand less ability to make money out of "styling". Although I can see styling becoming a fleet matter, with fleets adopting distinctive looks or feature sets as market differentiators. Repair could be partly automated too - any car still able to move safely could summon a replacement and take itself off to a repair station. Coupled with fleet ownership rather than private ownership, we would also see a huge change in the way repairs and maintenance are delivered. Both would become an almost exclusively big-corporate domain, and possibly even a manufacturer-bound domain, as it would be the best way to ensure best re-use of still-functional components and effective recycling of non-functional parts. Similarly arguments would apply to refuelling and daily maintenance (air, fluids, cleaning etc). Individual owners typically buy cars able to handle the most taxing tax rather than the most common task. They buy a massive vehicle because once a year they go to visit Granny, 100kn away, in spite of the fact that the car is used for 300 days of the year to transport one 30km person to work and back on weekdays, and a few times on weekends to take one or two kids 2km to sporting events or to go 1km shopping. Fleet owners, on the other hand, would have a very strong vested interest in buying just enough car to handle the requirements, so they'd have thousands of small runabouts for the thousands of permanently booked morning and afternoon commuters, and only a few larger vehicles for the holiday bookings. The larger vehicles would take the family off to Granny's with all their luggage, but would not be needed while there - local runabout vehicles would take over. With automatic vehicles, there would be less of a need to travel together, too - kids old enough to do so could travel alone or with siblings or friends (much as in civilised countries they can take the train). Raises interesting questions of authority, actually - can a parent booking a car for (say) a teenager going to a party demand that the vehicle deliver the passenger only to a particular address, effectively (if briefly) taking the teenager hostage? Is that a legitimate extension of their parental authority? Or is it more like a train voyage, where no-one would dream of considering the passengers hostages, even though once the journey starts they have no control over their destination. I'm sure others can dream up more interesting situations... What a fascinating set of consequences and questions automatic cars do raise! Regards, K. -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Karl Auer (ka...@biplane.com.au) http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer http://twitter.com/kauer389 GPG fingerprint: B862 FB15 FE96 4961 BC62 1A40 6239 1208 9865 5F9A Old fingerprint: AE1D 4868 6420 AD9A A698 5251 1699 7B78 4EEE 6017 _______________________________________________ Link mailing list Link@mailman.anu.edu.au http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
