Nice info-graphic showing the growth of autonomous vehicles, that may one day run over a SAFE enabled Mesh Network.
Infographics are an enduring format suited to telling a story such as the Autonomous Safecoin Network Easily embedded, shareable, printableâŚa chance to the show the whole journey and explain basic concepts in an easily digestible manner.
One thing I disagree with in that infographic is the forecast dominance of level 1-3, with 4 and 5 lagging by such a large margin and for such a long time.
Most of these driver-assist functions are worse than useless. They will not be popular and they will not proliferate, they are gimmicks imo. The whole point of driverless is relaxed safety and getting your time back, not hovering your hands under the wheel and keeping your eyes on the road whilst not actually having any of the âfunâ of driving.
I think electric level 4 and 5 will quickly dominate the market and manufacturers will all be falling over themselves to try to satisfy demand for that kind of âliberationâ. The economic demand in terms of efficiency savings will be huge too imo. 30% of male employment on this planet is driver-based. Thereâs a broad economic incentive for a lot of businesses (big and small) to switch to driverless as quickly as they can. Itâs not good for technological unemployment/displacement, but it is certainly going to be a big incentive to defy those forecasts and move to level 4+ across the board by 2040.
I wouldnât be at all surprised to see âdrivingâ become illegal in some countries by 2035 tbh.
What an incredible time to be alive eh! So much will change over the next few decades⌠I hope!
Iâve heard people from Google say the same. Their philosophy was full autonomy is all that works because people donât pay close enough attention to be able to quickly take over from lower levels of autonomy.
I agree that relying on a human to intervene canât work and that few people will want it anyway. The partial autonomy that might work is where you drive but:
the AI intervenes (to optimise breaking, avoid imminent collision etc)
There are some driver assist features that will be useful, but they certainly donât have any of the same draw or appeal as higher levels. Once you sit in the back rather than the driverâs seat the whole game changes.
Self valet parking is an excellent use-case, but it also pushes us towards level 4 because it requires all the level 4 hardware to achieve it.
Agreed, although I suspect quite a few (particularly older) drivers will resist anything that feels like giving up control. Also the pleasure of driving (so commuters will favour / âpleasure driversâ less so) etc.
What I mean is that not everyone will see the higher levels as positive, some will prefer to keep control, hence favour partial AI such as I mention.
I think another factor will be overcoming motion sickness. If we can do that, more drivers will be willing to give up driving in exchange for something else to do, as opposed to watching the journey.
Iâm not sure people will get much âchoiceâ. Once the tech is sound every road death due to human error will create another family of autonomous vehicle evangelists. I can see a lot of campaigning to have âdriversâ taken off the road to save countless lives every year - Jabbaâs crystal ball . God knows how long it would take to get there, but it seems like a likely result of autonomous cars becoming common to me. Iâm not expecting my kids to get the option to learn to drive. I also suspect car âownershipâ will change and we wonât generally âownâ the vehicles we use to get from A to B.
Be interesting to see how it plays out. I really canât wait to be chauffeured around the place instead of always being the bloody chauffeur /bringiton
An analogy that Iâve heard before was that when the automatic elevator was introduced people were afraid to ride in it without the operator that they were used to being there. That seems pretty silly to us today. No one thinks twice about jumping in and pressing the button to get where you want to go. I think it will be the same case with the car.
Hey you reminded me of one building in the city I lived in as a little kid that had a man who controlled a lever in the elevator. He moved the lever to the right for up and to the left for down. And he even opened the door which didnât automatically open. First he pulled the inner door then the outer.
Mind you the other buildings had push button automatic elevators without the elevator operator, just this one building. And I was like 6 at the time.
But your right about the car, there will be a lot of resistance and governments will still require a âdriverâ in buses for a long time if not âseemingly foreverâ for school buses. I think it will be like seat belts and other safety features. It took like 4 decades before all cars had to have seatbelts. There were a number of exceptions allowed for so long. Initially it was just new cars had to have them, then âallâ cars had to have them in the front with some exceptions. The it was front & back still with some exceptions allowed. So similarly auto driving cars will still have exceptions for decades.
It will probably start by getting prohibitively expensive to own or drive a car. Autonomous vehicles will have to come insured (you canât be responsible for any accident), and since you wonât need to âownâ a car yourself I should imagine âmobility-as-a-serviceâ will become so cheap that driving will be an enormous luxury that very few can afford.
Also important to note that there is a key difference between seat-belt safety and autonomous safety. Seat-belts only protect the people in the vehicle, not people outside of the vehicle who get hurt. Autonomous vehicles protect innocent people who arenât making a safety choice by their use or lack of seat-belts etc. Itâs one thing for govts to tell you you have to do something for your own safety, itâs quite another to say you have to do it for the safety of everyone else. Just look at smoking. BigGovt is quite happy to just make it more expensive and âdiscourageâ smoking whilst raking in tax, but as soon as passive smoking evidence materialised it was banned from every public place where it could be endangering innocent by-standers.
I see forcing people out of the driving seat as more likely to happen aggressively like passive smoking protection because itâll be a very passionate and emotional appeal that comes from a sense of injustice, rather than seat-belts and common sense safety precautions. It wonât be utterly eradicated for a fair while of course, but it might well become very rare, difficult and expensive quite quickly.
There is a company in the Netherlands that uses EV batteries to deliver energy back to the grid, they should include that option. Autonomous cars & energy, ooh what a nice world Would be nice to see this all running on the SAFE Network, but that comes down to us all to make it happen.
I donât know if this has been linked before, but Iâve found another interesting read.
Itâs not really about autonomous cars, but interesting nonetheless.
Excerpt:
Unlike previous years, providers cannot launch their services without building a safe network, or âsafe house,â as the starting point towards secure and trusted communications. Why? Because we are becoming increasingly dependent on machines to make critical decisions on our behalf, and in order to run these machines with trust, we need to make sure a plan is in place to build infrastructure with security in mind.
Even if insurance doesnât price them out, the law of rent will. Savings from cheaper transport will move to increased housing costs, causing pressure on rentals and mortgages.
I do hope driving remains a luxury for those who are enthusiasts, but I suspect drivers will be seen as being a little eccentric in time!
This is an interesting idea, but here are some considerations. The only reason I would imagine driving to become prohibitively expensive would be the ever-growing scarcity of drivable vehicles. But then, that scarcity would have to grow at a rate in magnitude greater than the rate of diminishing demand for drivable vehicles - which I donât imagine will be the case. Insurance might go down - the risk pool is the same size, but overall risk is reduced by all the (presumably) safer & cheaper autonomous vehicles. The fact that other had-been drivers choose less risky transportation means that your premiums would be higher than theirs, but not higher than now. Furthermore, a falling price in one economic sector doesnât necessarily imply a corresponding and equal rise in price for other sectors, so I wouldnât say for certain that
I bet driving cars will end up like retro relics/antiques: some are cheap, fun, useless, and only owned by enthusiasts. Some are collectables and sell for a wide range of prices. Some still serve a niche market but arenât manufactured anymore so they stay expensive.
I would expect the opposite might happen, at least some places. In many cities, land is a very significant part of the cost of housing. Autonomous cars means you donât have to live so close to the city center, it will be much more convenient to live anywhere. If autonomous cars were available there are many places I could consider moving, where land is cheaper, where I would never consider moving now because transportation is inconvenient.
Having to rely on a car has many big disadvantages that disappears with autonomous cars. With a regular car I canât go out for a drink. Itâs difficult and time consuming to find parking. Where I live parking is quite expensive, one hour of parking costs the same as one trip by public transportation. Driving is a waste of time because I canât use my laptop to do useful stuff etc.