Battery based electric vehicles of today and tomorrow.

[Buggs67]

Robo taxis will be great for rural areas because no human is required the per mile rate will be reasonable.

I am 15 to 25 miles from about five different towns. EVs make sense for all local driving within 60 miles since my range is 150.

Most new EVs have 300+ miles of range negating the need for ICE vehicles for most car owners.

We don't even have much in the way of Uber type service here. Because nobody uses it. So a high tech robo taxi is going to collect dust.

 

[Gale Hawkins]

Robo Taxis will navigate using GPS, most likely.
I don't know if you've ever used GPS in a rural and unfamiliar area, but frequently, the signal is lost...and quite often (in my experience), the GPS will guide you up a goat trail.
Frankly, I want to be in control of my own destiny...not some tinker toy

Roy Tesla is the only self-driving solution that I know that is like universal and they use vision like humans do.

 

[Jstpssng]

Most of us grew up with vehicles and are used to being independent and able to go where and when we please. I believe that's going to change over the course of the next two generations. Younger people have different viewpoints and are going to do things differently than we do.

 

[airbiscuit]

Those robo taxis might add to our independence once we age past our driving abilities.

 

[Jstpssng]

Those robo taxis might add to our independence once we age past our driving abilities.

That’s what the OP has been saying about self driving cars in general, since he started the thread.
I’ve often thought how nice it would be to have “Kit”,of Knight-Rider fame, at the end of a long day. Rather than walk 2 miles back to the truck it can come pick me up where I came out on the road.

 

[Fixastuff]

That’s what the OP has been saying about self driving cars in general, since he started the thread.
I’ve often thought how nice it would be to have “Kit”,of Knight-Rider fame, at the end of a long day. Rather than walk 2 miles back to the truck it can come pick me up where I came out on the road.

Could also help with the 10000+ drunk driving deaths per year...

 

[RoyJackson]

Roy Tesla is the only self-driving solution that I know that is like universal and they use vision like humans do.

Even a driver (me, for example) in an unfamiliar area and depending on the GPS can get lost (I recall such a situation about 80 miles south of Buffalo NYS).
The difference is, I can stop and ask direction...a robo taxi (or a Tesla) cannot...
Robo taxis will probably have their place, in certain situations and location. I don't see them becoming universal though...same with EV's

 

[Jstpssng]

Even a driver (me, for example) in an unfamiliar area and depending on the GPS can get lost (I recall such a situation about 80 miles south of Buffalo NYS).
The difference is, I can stop and ask direction...a robo taxi (or a Tesla) cannot...
Robo taxis will probably have their place, in certain situations and location. I don't see them becoming universal though...same with EV's

We were trying to get to a place to meet with a client and the foreman was guiding us with the GPS on his phone. I thought we were taking the long way around, and when he said “turn right” I knew that wd were. The GPS was sending us down an old RR bed which I had walked with my grandfather way back in 1968... if we couldn’t drive it then the trail certainly wasn’t passable 50+ years later.

 

[Larry Caldwell]

And maybe it's been mentioned or discussed here before (I'm not going back and reading 573 pages) but if we go all electric for vehicles where is all that increase in electricity coming from? and how is it getting to my house?

And don't say wind/solar power. Both are not cutting it.

Our entire electrical grid has to be replaced anyway. Most rural service was built in the '30s, and is already 80 years old. We haven't built much generating capacity since we went on the energy conservation kick last century. We've pretty much run out of future to dump the problem on.

 

[ericm979]

Guests could not use GPS to find our place 10 years ago. The maps either did not show us or were wrong. Now it works for the most part. The stuff keeps getting better.

While I'm not a fan of self driving cars as I write software for a living and know how bad it is, I know of one demographic that can use them: people who can't drive. For example I have a young friend who is eplileptic. He can ride a bike as he has a few seconds warning before a seizure happens and can stop and get off. But he'll never drive. Being a young man who can't drive in California where the car is king has a huge impact on his life.

 

[Gale Hawkins]

Sandy's views on EVs.

 

[California]

80+ percent of the US population is urban. And I expect some percentage of 'rural' would also use Uber etc when too young, tired, poor or old to drive. So over 4 out of 5 Americans are the potential market for ride-hailing soon, and eventually for autonomous transport. What's needed is to show everyone the large cost savings when a family doesn't need more than at most, one car.

When wife and i worked downtown we rented then bought, near city bus lines. While we mostly drove, the bus was backup that made unnecessary an expensive ultra-reliable new car for each of us. I figure we saved $thousands starting out that way and beginning to grow the savings we enjoy today. It wasn't until our first baby that we bought a new car. And paid cash. Never have had car payments.

 

[cqaigy2]

GPS works well out where we live, it's just that people think they've driven too far and turn around. I've gotten to telling people that haven't been here, if they think they've gone too far, that they are half way here.

 

[California]

Google maps Directions works ok here until the final quarter mile. But Google looked at the easement in from the county road and named it for the name of some other road. So there are three names: county tax records, Google's name in as far as my mailbox, and then a third name beyond me to the house at the end of the easement. The lane is un-named, at the address post out at the county road.

A while back I got a pizza delivery intended for the new neighbors across the lane. I met them for the first time in near pitch black darkness when they followed the Domino driver into my driveway.

 

[PuffyC]

The problem with all the “gps don’t work here“ and “we got no grid” and “people want to drive because freedom” arguments is that you’re trying to view the future through the lens of today. That’s not how the future works.

GPS and mapping in particular grow at an exponential rate, and with always-on satellite Internet and other tech advancements it will continue to do so.

We’re stuck in the mindset of a centralized grid because that’s how it’s always been, but distributed generation as well as advancements in grid storage is where we’re going and it’s hard to reconcile that with our past.

People assume human piloted cars are a must for many of the same reasons. It’s all we’ve known and it’s hard to imagine anything else, but one day the thought of allowing accident prone humans to pilot automobiles will be seen as not only oddly quaint but also incredibly dangerous and irresponsible. You drive today because you have to, tomorrow you won’t.

No, we’re not there yet, we’re at the very earliest stage in what will fundamentally change how humans live their lives, and everyone from richest to poorest will be better off for it. It’s good to ask the important questions now, but you also have to be careful in saying it’s impossible and we shouldn’t try because of todays limitations. If we did that we’d never progress at all, although I’m sure that would suit a lot of folks just fine.

 

[California]

The problem with all the “gps don’t work here“ and “we got no grid” and “people want to drive because freedom” arguments is that you’re trying to view the future through the lens of today. That’s not how the future works.

Exactly. it wasn't that long ago that IBM expected a dozen or so huge data centers worldwide could serve the computing needs of the whole world. No need for an individual, local business, or even a state government to own its own computer. The IBM megacenter could do it all for you. In their marketing planning. ... Today, they no longer are the only player in town.

Then along came the PC. Bill Gates - who wrote the software that made the PC universally owned - made a huge error. He didn't expect the Internet would be of interest to PC owners. Remember MS Encarta, the worldwide encyclopedia on a single CD? What else could you need?

These stories may be relevant to EV and autonomous vehicle uptake ....

 

[airbiscuit]

 

[airbiscuit]

 

[airbiscuit]

 

[airbiscuit]