Slippery

I'm always amazed at the level of knowledge here as well as the amount of general insight as to how things work. There's also a pretty good amount of creative "out of the box " thinking.

Without making this a political debate, can anyone explain to me why the automotive industry is spending resources and money on autonomous vehicles ?

I’ll admit to being realistic cynical, but i see what I think are at least 2 major hurdles.

The first is the insurance lobby, which is huge. A fully autonomous vehicle – to be approved – is going to have collision recognition and avoidance systems which would take an event like a meteor falling from the sky to overload. There also won’t be any traffic infractions to generate higher insurance rates or even higher rates for young, inexperienced drivers. No accidents, no insurance rates at a premium due to high risk drivers; does anyone really think that when the insurance companies wake up and realize the potential for revenue lost they won’t have their lobbyists whispering in politician’s ears to kill the program ? I mean really, if the car is 100% autonomous, no driver input required, why would you need any but the most minimal insurance. There shouldn't be any accidents or thefts, the only thing to insure against would be a meteor (or tree, or baseball, etc etc) hitting and damaging the vehicle, right ?

The second is simply taking the first and expanding it a bit to the revenue lost by municipalities etc due to no traffic infractions. No more speeding tickets, parking tickets, DUI’s etc.. Red light cameras, photo speed traps, DUI checkpoints will be unnecessary because autonomous vehicles will be programmed to not do anything wrong. No more revenue from traffic citations.

I've also read that it's planned autonomous vehicles will help with downtown parking congestion because they don't need to park; they can drive around until you need to be picked up. But...if they aren't parking now they're contributing to traffic and, more importantly for this discussion, aren't generating any revenue at parking meters or parking garages.

Both "Big Insurance" and "Big Brother' are going to suffer serious revenue loss due to the implementation of autonomous vehicles that present no risk factor and can do no wrong.

I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I'm having a hard time believing when those two parties wake up and realize what it's going to cost them in lost revenue that there's any hope of the project going anywhere other than very limited numbers in closed environments.

Am I missing something ?

MR.HAPPY

Most of the average folks wont be able to pay the high prices to own one of them & there will be much more Uber or Lyft services to get people to where they need or want to go!
So if less folks own cars, there will be a lot of things changing!

phragle

iTrader: (3)

I'm suspecting federal grants or tax breaks.....

Plum_Crazy

I've been involved with writing and testing firmware, the code that runs hardware, for over 20 years. There is no friggin' way I'd ever trust my life to some millennial engineer automating my vehicle. Even the best and brightest can't think of every possible failure scenario. There are ALWAYS bugs, not to mention good ol' Mother Nature. Imagine sensors trying to navigate during a snowstorm. Aside from installing sensors in all of roadways, this is an impossible task to make it work everywhere.

Baja Rooster

iTrader: (1)

hotrodford

thirdchildhood

iTrader: (6)

I agree that a fully autonomous vehicle will never be viable as it can never come close to the human brain in recognizing potential hazards. For example, a deer standing near the side of a road ready to jump out. On a different note I think it's exciting that we are on the cusp of practical, fun and mainstream electric cars; But that is for another thread!

Keith Atlanta

I am not an electric car fanboy but I listen to news all day and also read a story about this within the last couple of days. At this moment electric cars have a collision rate of almost 20% higher than regular cars. We all know that will go to almost nothing eventually due to AI and the reasons you stated. Just a few days ago the price of Tesla Model S and X dropped almost $20,000. It pissed off current Tesla owners because it decreases resale value, but the price is coming down none the less. So now he has the car model S the suv model X, the new smaller car model 3 and a new crossover suv that I think they are calling the Y. Starting soon when you buy a Tesla it will come with insurance. Tesla will Insure all their own cars for the very reason you stated. He is taking out all of the costs of ownership and soon will have it down to significantly cheaper than owning an internal combustion engine vehicle. Especially if he beats the crap out of Geico, Progressive, State farm etc.

BDiggity

I bet 90% of the people on this board in 1908 would be complaining about this new automobile thing & it will never be as fast, reliable, work worthy as your trusty horse & carriage. In less than a century we went from having a horse was a necessity, pretty much everyone had one & only the rich, select few had auto's, to pretty much now the reverse.

When you look at the technology that has made its way into vehicles that we now take for granted & trust; power steering, power brakes, cruise control, navigation, lane detect, etc that when something does fail real time, a human doesnt have the processing & reaction time to adapt as quickly as all the autonomous control systems. I think the average for a human to process & react is like 2.5 secs. That is an eternity at speed.

We are launching our 5G network this year which will really allow these systems to take advantage of the communication necessary to let autonomous vehicles grow. I am excited to be laying the foundation & hope to see it take off. I hate the inefficiency of our current intersections & highway use. Give me a computer system controlling us at 100mph, multiple vehicles within inches of each other, cars merging with precision, etc.

Wally

iTrader: (1)

people are becoming more stupid as of late...i don't know why...maybe its all the artificial crap that's in our food rotting the brain?? i don't know...but the more people get stupid the more we try and protect them! And here's a great cartoon rant that was sent to me by a buddy of mine a while back about just this subject