Here’s an estimate, from Driverless Cars: Optional by 2024, Mandatory by 2044
“When we modeled that for Ann Arbor, Mich., we found we’d need only 15 percent of the cars now owned there,” for a per-mile cost savings of 75 percent, says Larry Burns, director of the Program on Sustainable Mobility at the Earth Institute of Columbia University, in New York City. Burns is no ivory-tower academic: In his previous job he headed up research and development for General Motors. …
Robocars would be shared, and that would make them both convenient and cheap to use. Vehicles would be fewer in number but far more heavily used, picking up new passengers near where they left the last ones off. Such vehicle-sharing schemes are spreading, even though today’s dumb vehicles tend not to be there for you when you need them. One reason is that they accumulate at popular destinations. It’d be different for a car that could come when you called and leave when you were done with it. …
Professional drivers. Say good-bye to all of them—5 million people in the United States alone. In a world of autonomous cargo carriage, machines could hitch trucks to standardized containers of stuff. … “Could we enter into a world where things are brought to us in a Segway-size pod?” wonders Burns of Columbia. “And if so, what does that do to retail big-box stores?
Colour me skeptical. We live in a world where road capacity and vehicle numbers are governed by peak demand. Most of the robocars needed during the morning rush would sit idle most of the day waiting for public schools to discharge kids and businesses to close.
Ride sharing would certainly reduce the size of the rush hour fleet needed, but that faces social barriers that I don’t see ever coming down completely.
I’m kinda with you on this, but don’t forget that ride sharing would reduce costs. If you could save 75% of your transportation costs by using a ride-shared vehicle that would come to your door on demand then it would provide a pretty good incentive to use it.
On the other hand you wouldn’t get the consistent social experience of always riding with the same group of people that car poolers get today.
It will be interesting to see how this technology unfolds. I’m a little skeptical of how quickly this will spread because of liability issues, but I’m prepared to be surprised…
In the real world carpooling is rare. People don’t want a “consistent social experience of always riding with the same group of people”, they want a private cocoon and have proven through the decades that they’ll pay exorbitant premiums for that solo experience.
The random carpool is even less likely to be acceptable to more than a tiny minority. My wife doesn’t want to be trapped in a robo-car with a randomly selected stranger and would never allow our kids to travel if it was possible for them to be sharing the car with a stranger.
So there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that single occupancy vehicles will continue to be the norm, even after they’re fully automated.
Certainly there will be savings from having cars used throughout the day, but the number of vehicles needed to handle the morning rush far exceeds the number needed at 11:00am so we will still need to set aside space for thousands of cars to park during the day.
Well argued, but the parking can be more efficient away from the demand, say in E-Van or an industrial area or a grungy parkade whereas the diner, shopper or office worker uses the car to go downtown.
Parking could also be more packed as no one has to get in and out of a car so a normal parkade that today houses 500 cars could perhaps house 800 to 1000.
In respect of carpools and ride-sharing, how many people actually travel from home to work and back everyday without making any intermediate stops? (whether buying grocries, picking up the kids, going to sports practices, picking up drycleaning, grabbing a bite to eat, etc., let alone the variable hours of the work day)
I think the reason that carpooling isn’t popular is because people aren’t automatons who travel only from A to B every day back and forth. Their schedules change and if you’ve ever tried to organize a team activity, it can be like herding cats.
Freedom of movement is vital for humans. Many people will not share rides, as we see today as car pooling is not common. It will not happen with automated vehicles either unless the price of individual car use is prohibitive.
So yes while I believe that there will be some potential for these automated cars it will be gradual, over a few decades, like cell phones or internet that have been around for 25 years but really are just now common, likely slower pickup due to complexity, legal issues, unions, mixed use of auto-cars and human-driven cars.
“Vehicles would be fewer in number but far more heavily used, picking up new passengers near where they left the last ones off. Such vehicle-sharing schemes are spreading, even though today’s dumb vehicles tend not to be there for you when you need them. One reason is that they accumulate at popular destinations. It’d be different for a car that could come when you called and leave when you were done with it. …”
I think it’s important to recognize the difference between sharing a vehicle, and sharing a ride. Burns is talking about sharing vehicles, not car pooling. So I’m a bit unclear on what the social issues are. Keeping the car tidy, for example, has been dealt with very effectively by existing carshare providers.
Interesting that driverless cars could drop you at a popular destination, then move to another place where people are waiting to be picked up. The accumulation of bike share bikes at popular destinations has been a real challenge for that system. Share bikes have to be transported by the company back to where they are needed.
Running fleets of vehicles is not cheap. I’d expect the cost of using shared auto autos to be similar to that of CarToGo, around $.40 per minute. Add to that the cost of driving to pick people up.
Bottom line, if someone needs to drive an hour a day, they would be better off owning their own car.
Shared auto autos will give people who live in denser urban areas another transportation option enabling them to get by just fine without owning a car. They also will be great for accessing rapid transit and rail stations making these forms of transit better options.
The real game changer will be movements of goods. No more using a 2000 pound vehicle to pick up a couple of pounds of stuff. Now that will save lots of energy.
Indeed .. some profitable niches will appear .. of course trucking unions and cab driver unions, plus insurance companies will have an opinion here !
Given the low amount of car pooling today it will not be a sizable market. Car2Go use shows what is possible and if a pickup is not any cheaper it will be similar to Car2Go, i.e. a niche in dense cities or augmentation to the cab industry, t somewhat lower rates, say 25-30% lower than a cab ride today, so a market but not a game changer.
It is not carpooling, which really only makes sense for longer trips. Like CarToGo, they would be small lightweight vehicles holding one or two people. People would not be sharing them with strangers.
Even today, CarToGo is significantly less expensive than cabs especially for short trips. It is $3.35 just to step foot in a cab. One could expect a pick up fee given that it will take some time to drive for pickup but it will likely be much less.
Cabs are $1.86 per km. assuming average of 20kph in a city, CarToGo is $1.20 per km and no tip is needed.
So for 2-3km, auto autos will be much less expensive. For longer trips, the difference would be less.
The big difference, is that fleets could be much larger increasing availability. Off peak could be less expensive reflecting demand and that no one has to wait around waiting for the odd fare.
I tend to agree. There’s also a certain level of convenience going into a store to buy groceries and knowing that your car will stll be there when you come out (as opposed to CartoGo). If “your” car disappears mutliple times on a single set of errands, it becomes annoying.
Why go to the store when they can be delivered to your door cheaply and efficiently by a small automated vehicle. Automated vehicles will pretty much change everything.
Plus, if you do chose to go to the store, you could schedule one to pick you up at a specific time right in front of the store rather than walking through a large parking lot trying to remember where the car was parked.
Visiting physical stores will always be a part of the shopping experience, even for items that can be ordered online. Some people simply enjoy “going shopping”, a concept I struggle to understand, but for many items it’s essential to see them with your own eyes, check colour, check firmness and ripeness, look for damage, try things on for size, look and feel, etc.
The concept of scheduling a pickup is unrealistic for many shopping trips. People don’t know how long it’s going to take to find the “right” items or what unexpected delays might be encountered.
Even scheduling a pickup from work at the end of the day isn’t always straight forward. In the past year I missed my planned bus more often than not.
Agreed.
– whether you shop at the megamart or the local market.
And if you veer too much to the convenience side of the equation, soon you’ll be eating too many “convenience” foods.
Well, Amazon is experimenting with that right now, called drones, another form of automated vehicle ( just airborne ).
E-grocers by and large failed as the current shopper provides free labour shopping which has to be paid for by an e-grocer.
I can see automatic cars replacing shuttle buses on infrequently used routes as it is cheaper to transport 2-8 people an hour with these automated vehicles than a bus with a (unionized) driver.
So yes we will see some niches appear. I would certainly buy one as I do not like driving myself , especially in traffic. So if I can sit and read the newspaper or blog or check Facebook while the car drives me I would find that valuable.
Much like electric cars which we expected to crowd out gasoline operated vehicles – but that didn’t – we will see the same hype with automated cars and in the end only a small % of cars will be automated. Useful idea though that ought to be tested on a small, then large scale to test assumptions and fix glitches.