Quote:
Originally Posted by Outlaw M3
For certain industries, it's a game changer. It's my opinion self-driving cars are the real reason behind Uber's enormous valuation. Think about it, their greatest "cost" or in their case, their greatest outflow of revenue is the drivers. If they can eliminate the drivers, think of what their margins will be!
Another area is trucking (big game for Volvo and MB), eliminate truckers and the cost savings that trickles through the economy will be great. UPS, DHL, FedEx will see huge profit gains too. Just think how much of the cost of goods we purchase have transportation fees baked in... it has to trickle down no?
People won't feel comfortable with self-driving taxis and trucks unless it's baked into passenger cars as well. It's a mental thing -- oh, my car has it and I sometimes use it so it's not bad.
Personally, I love driving yet there is ONE scenario I wouldn't mind engaging auto-pilot for and that's rush hour traffic. In that instance, I wouldn't mind letting the car do the bumper-to-bumper stuff and I could relax.
Now one thing to consider -- what if autopilot eliminated the pesky, irrational behaviors of other drivers? You know, the left-lane hugging, change lanes without signaling, right-on-red w/out full stop moves that have us all banging our heads on steering wheels?
That list could go on and on... but you get the idea  |
Bold text is the area I see it happening first, today in the US it is hard to get people to drive trucks the average age of a truck driver in the US is 55, and there is a move to have mandatory retirement for truckers. Today people do not want to drive a truck since it is hard work and people are lazy today.
I personal do not see self driving cars until all cars are self driving. Why, the human driver is still the unpredictable part of driving today. A self driving car may not cause an accident but do you want to be in a self driving car when another human causes an accident. Until they can prove to me the car's prime directive to save the human in the car over everything else I am not going to allow a software engineer somewhere to make a decision to kill the deer or try and avoid it and kill me. The only right answers is to kill the deer.
I personally think the best proving ground for a self driving car, will be NASCAR. If a self driving car and avoid accidents on the track and win the race then maybe it know how to drive and keep it passenger alive.
The other issue with self driving cars all of them only drive on roads which are almost perfect. They have not spent any time on roads in the north east or in bad weather like snow and rain.