On-demand cars on smart roads also means every person’s trip history will be stored, for as much as sharing platforms require identification.
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A big turning point will be once self-driving cars are cheaper than mass rail transport (tram, metro, train). The average per mile cost in the UK is £0.31 for cars vs £0.16 for trains now, so we need a 50% drop.
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In the Netherlands, 10% of commuters take public transport and 50% go by car. In the United Kingdom, 15% go by train/bus and 70% by car. Roads will have to support 20% more cars if everyone would switch.pic.twitter.com/L5bi0iiRQG
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The transport of choice for commuting changes dramatically if you look at cities instead of countries. In New York City, 60% go by public transport and 30% by car. In London, 50% take public transport and 30% go by car.pic.twitter.com/nq9BdZhnDo
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Sharing platforms will likely get 30% of people to pool during peak hours through price incentives. Self-driving cars will also be able to drive much closer, more consistently, and faster. Which probably increases road throughput with another 50%.
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The 30% carpooling and 50% road throughput increase should more than offset the 20% inter-city car usage increase. And cities will need a bit more work. Long live the roads we already have!pic.twitter.com/DSeBAEGwu2
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The majority of public transport needs will be covered by car sharing platforms. Though there will still be a role for governments to incentivize coverage in low utilization/high-cost areas (i.e., rural).
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Car sharing platforms can cover off-peak hours with regular capacity, and peak hours through carpooling and supply positioning. Demand super peaks, like natural disaster evacuations, are a challenge though. Will that be solved through capacity redistribution between areas?
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Besides people switching from other modes of transport to cars, we will have new use cases for car transport. No more shuttling teenagers to football games. Elderly can see their grandchildren more often.
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It’s also a question what people will do during these autonomous trips. Current rail transport (tram, metro, train) is likely a good comparison — especially for carpool trips. Expect lots of smartphone usage.pic.twitter.com/gi9tnbaV0R
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As cars get smarter and accident rates go down, we will be able to get rid of airbags and seatbelts. This would completely open up in-car design and likely trend towards minimal and utilitarian furniture, as leasing companies optimize for cost.
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Current public transport is likely the closest comparison for future self-driving car interiors. Low-cost, easy to maintain, and space efficient. All the things fleet operators love.pic.twitter.com/YQl4bLckTJ
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Something else that will change: Self-driving cars don’t need parking spaces in urban areas. The cars will either be driving on the road or at the edge of the city for charging/cleanup.
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It’s clear human driven cars will disappear from the roads over time. They will likely go the way of horses: Rich people toys with limited access to public roads and expensive to insure.
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We are far in enough to do another recap: (1) 50% of the road will be digital. (2) Each car will make decisions on its own, as an integrated system will be too slow (to build). (3) Regulation will be slow and then rapid, as countries compete. […]
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[…] (4) Highway trucks will be the first autonomous vehicles. (5) Cars will outcompete rail transport on existing road capacity. (6) Carpooling will increase and car interiors will look like public transport. (7) Pricing will drive parking spaces to outside the city.
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I’m excited about what the future brings. Cheap, safe, and clean transport is a win for us all and self-driving electric cars seem the closest we will get to that. This will be the biggest change in transport since trains (1810), safety bikes (1885), and manual cars (1910).
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There are obviously (potential) flaws in this scenario. For one, the shared fleets need to be 99.9999% reliable for people to actually give up their cars.
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Another potential flaw is that battery technology improvements won’t keep pace with what we need. Or computers might not get to the point where they can truly react safely to all forms of traffic.
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It’s also possible that electric bikes will ride the wave of technology improvements and become the commuting modality of choice, before electric cars get to do it.
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Nice to see that this transport thread reached more people than I expected. 70k saw it, 5500 started reading, 4000 made it till Twitter’s thread loader (70%), and 1500 read the whole thing (25%).pic.twitter.com/exdVIsWAGr
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Someone tipped me the
@EconTalker podcast with@BenedictEvans http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2017/08/benedict_evans.html … which builds on his article https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2017/3/20/cars-and-second-order-consequences … and covers many of the same self-driving vehicle issuesShow this thread -
Bonus: How United States road maps were kept up to date in the 1940shttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHc6J1zKivk …
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We are getting closer to a future of self-driving cars optimized for public sharing, as I laid out in the thread abovehttps://twitter.com/cruise/status/1219789539373268992 …
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End of conversation
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