Future Cars: Electric and Autonomous Vehicles

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Silophant
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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Silophant » July 6th, 2016, 9:30 am

I already know plenty of people who rent cars for long trips rather than use their own car. I also know plenty of people at work who rent cars to drive to other midwestern cities, and who rent a car rather than get mileage to drive their own car. I also know of and have used plenty of car rental places inside the city. I'm also fully capable of refusing not-really-high-pressured sales tactics.
Yeah, Enterprise alone has 23 non-airport locations in the metro. In a "most people own personal electric cars and rent gas cars for long trips" future (most likely, imo), I'd imagine you'd see them get even more common. Or not, if you can take your electric self-driving car to a rental place 20mi away and have it drive itself home.
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Anondson
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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Anondson » July 6th, 2016, 10:25 am

I've rented cars for multi-state road trips many times.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Mdcastle » July 6th, 2016, 10:43 am

Yes I'm sure that in a world where specialized vehicles are frequently rented by consumers, all vehicle rental agencies will still be at the airport.
I don't think so, but they'll be no need to locate them in the neighborhood either, because no neighborhood location would be as convenient as one showing up at your door. More likely to the extent vehicle that they need vehicle storage at all they'll be in cheaper, out of the way locations. Even the airport storage will probably go away and cars will drive themselves to the airport to pick up renters.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Mdcastle » July 6th, 2016, 10:48 am

I already know plenty of people who rent cars for long trips rather than use their own car. I also know plenty of people at work who rent cars to drive to other midwestern cities, and who rent a car rather than get mileage to drive their own car. I also know of and have used plenty of car rental places inside the city. I'm also fully capable of refusing not-really-high-pressured sales tactics.
Well, I don't know any. Even if you live somewhere where Enterprise will pick you up, Under the current model it's just to massively inconvenient for most people to rent a specialized vehicle, whether a pickup to haul home wood chips or a minivan to transport the soccer team for a few hours, or a gasoline car for road trips. If you can subscribe to service that makes it a lot easier you'd see fewer pickup trucks being driven empty to work, more electric cars in the city, and such.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Mdcastle » July 6th, 2016, 10:52 am

Another idea is if when you've been picked up in a self-driving gasoline rental car to head to Chicago for the weekend, if you'd be able to rent the electric car you own to the same agency rather than have it sit in the garage for the weekend.

talindsay
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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby talindsay » July 6th, 2016, 11:13 am

We got by with one small car for years and rented a car whenever we went on trips. It's not an unreasonable approach, but it's certainly not currently the norm. Just as people tend to buy huge, sprawly houses with open floor plans because "it's great for entertaining", even though they rarely if ever host big house parties, people tend to buy cars for the myriad things they imagine themselves using them for rather than practically considering what they *actually* use it for 95% of the time. Understanding that it's cheaper and better to own a small car that's easier to park and costs less to purchase, use, and insure, and then rent a big vehicle when you need it, requires not only advanced math skills but also restraint in the face of a constant consumerist society that says bigger is better, and that feeds our innate sense that having something that does everything is better than something that doesn't. Electric cars have all the same issues but they *add* the severe range issue, and the mitigating factor right now is the (currently debatable) premise that they're somehow better for the environment. I suppose there's also the techie cool factor, and there's also the killer line speed, though most consumers won't be swayed by either of those.

I think a reliable range of ~300 miles before a long-wait charge is necessary is probably about the minimum before mainstream acceptance in the midwest US. On the coasts, where a larger proportion of the population travels shorter distances regularly, that's probably less important, but the midwest has very little infrastructure to help people get between mid-size cities.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby David Greene » July 8th, 2016, 4:15 pm

Electric cars have all the same issues but they *add* the severe range issue, and the mitigating factor right now is the (currently debatable) premise that they're somehow better for the environment. I suppose there's also the techie cool factor, and there's also the killer line speed, though most consumers won't be swayed by either of those.

I think a reliable range of ~300 miles before a long-wait charge is necessary is probably about the minimum before mainstream acceptance in the midwest US. On the coasts, where a larger proportion of the population travels shorter distances regularly, that's probably less important, but the midwest has very little infrastructure to help people get between mid-size cities.
The range issue is way, way overblown. It's a real concern for people, but only because people don't yet generally understand electric cars. I put the blame for that entirely on the electric car manufacturers. They still don't know how to sell 'em and even hesitate to do so.

It's important to distinguish short day-to-day driving from longer trips. The vast majority of miles driven by metro residents fall into the former category. If everyone in every Midwestern metro city drove an electric car for those trips it would be a game-changer for clean air, domestic security and international trade.

After five months owning a 2016 LEAF (107 EPA mile range) I will not go back. Range has not been an issue at all. When we need to travel longer distances we jump in the gas car. No biggie. One day I was putzing around St. Paul and then the toddler fell asleep so I took a road trip west. Got almost to Waconia before the charge went below 50% and I turned back to be safe. I arrived home with 30% charge. I could have gone a lot further. I could have gone even further if I'd really concentrated on saving energy (keep below 50 mph, etc.).

When we bought the car I assumed we'd have to get an L2 charger fairly quickly. We still don't have one. Haven't needed it at all. The car almost always is at 100% charge in the morning even on a 110 line. The rare days it's not (because we drove it a lot the previous day), we haven't needed the full range. Honestly, we rarely dip below 50% charge on a given day.

I'm not sure what we'll do when the battery degrades enough to care. Maybe we'll just buy a new car. The statement in the article about needing replacement after 300 charges is completely bogus. That would mean yearly replacement. Most LEAF owners expect to need replacement in 5-7 years. Since we don't need the full range very often, we may very well be able to stretch that to 10 years. That's another advantage of longer range. Even if it doesn't cover all your trips, it can extend the practical useful life of the battery. All the savings on maintenance of other parts (the maintenance manual is: rotate tires; rotate tires; lube chassis & rotate tires; rotate tires...) may very well be enough to cover a new battery. I see it as a wash, financially.

The electric car is absolutely practical for all kinds of people *today.*

As for the environment, we have WindSource from Xcel so the car is essentially wind-powered. Once we win the Made in MN lottery, we'll be installing solar and the car will be sun-powered (yes, the solar array will cover the electric needs of the car over a year).

As a LEAF owner I'm sure I'm "optimism biased" but I'm relating real experience. The electric car is not for everyone but I'll say it is right for at least 80% of metro populations, for 95% of their trips.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby kiliff75 » July 9th, 2016, 6:55 am

It's also worth pointing out that even if the electric car is currently powered by coal or natural gas (making carbon emissions not much different than gas cars), some long-term carbon benefit comes from incrementally improving the infrastructure for lower-carbon transportation. Slightly higher demand for charging from each car will increase the supply of charging stations, increasing demand for cars. Also, as more electric cars are bought and manufacturers become more efficient at making them, they should become cheaper and more abundant. As we move to cleaner power sources (from coal to wind, solar, and natural gas), electric cars will become cleaner. At this point, it seems much more plausible that cars will have lower emissions in this manner rather than through some sort of liquid fuel.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Mdcastle » July 9th, 2016, 8:29 am

So what's the best way going forward?
1) Continue to invest a lot of money into trying to improve batteries so an electric car can be an "only car" for everyone, including those that make 500 mile road trips?
2) Forget about that, and improve marketing since we could make an enormous impact if multi-car families had one electric car and one gasoline or gasoline/hybrid car? Write off the idea of most single car families owning only an electric car until self-driving cars make renting a specialized vehicle a lot easier?

Worth noting is we don't need to switch 100% of driving to electric to end our dependence on foreign oil since we have some of our own and in addition can make ethanol.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby David Greene » July 9th, 2016, 4:02 pm

Personally, I don't think we're going to see an affordable and practical 500 mile electric car for quite some time, so to me it makes sense to educate people about what's available now. 200 mile cars will be out by the end of the year and that should cover the vast, vast majority of trips for people in cities and suburbs, and even the majority of trips for people living in rural areas.

I'm sour on super-range 500-mile electric cars not because I don't think the technology will be there eventually but because it seems like a huge waste going to diminishing returns. Plus every increase in capacity means more time to recharge. 20 minutes for a quick charge is bearable if you can grab a coffee or something nearby. 40 minutes would just be too much.

How often do people drive 500 miles? I see no problem with using gasoline or some other fuel for that purpose as it's rare and the car is probably running at its highest efficiency for most of such trips.

My plans are to get a series hybrid when the gas car goes (which I expect will be some years from now). Then both cars can use very little gas for most of our trips but we'll still have one for longer trips. If the rental model changes/becomes more convenient we could very well just have an electric.

So basically I think your #2 is likely going to be most effective, with the added statement that "gas cars" will actually be hybrids.

Work is moving to MoA so I'm planning to bike/LRT it most days. Not sure about winter yet but I'll give it a go. :)

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Anondson » July 10th, 2016, 5:22 pm

Google is going to start teaching its cars to look out for bicyclists.

http://readwrite.com/2016/07/10/google- ... lists-tt4/

I dunno why this is a big deal, it sure as heck needed to happen for AVs to be able to function on a normal street. I'm sure tech-utopians will cite this as obvious progress towards inevitability. I'm still skeptical that perfectly legally driving autonomous vehicles will gain wide acceptance... cars that won't speed, won't blow stop lights, will make full legal stops at stop signs, will stop for every pedestrian at unmarked crosswalks, will give cyclist the full legal amount of space on the road... this will piss off so many normal drivers. Getting these cars to recognize cyclists and operate legally around them needed to happen, this is a start.

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Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Anondson » July 10th, 2016, 5:31 pm

In this NYTimes opinion: "Silicon Valley-Driven Hype for Self-Driving Cars"

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/opini ... p=cur&_r=0

Found this quote at the end...
In February, though, a Google car caused its first accident; a bus collision with no injuries. A few weeks later, Google made a significant, if little-noted, schedule adjustment. Chris Urmson, the project director, said in a presentation that the fully featured, truly go-anywhere self-driving car that Google has promised might not be available for 30 years, though other much less capable models might arrive sooner.

Historians of technology know that “in 30 years” often ends up being “never.” Even if that’s not the case here, if you’re expecting a self-driving car, you should also expect a wait. And so you might want to do something to pass the time. Maybe go for a nice drive?
Maybe the best we're going to hope for are "Assistive Vehicles" where cars loaded with sensors correct certain wildly unsafe human errors?

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby David Greene » July 10th, 2016, 8:47 pm

Franky, that's all we need. Again, diminishing returns.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby Mdcastle » July 10th, 2016, 9:55 pm

I'll have to disagree that it's "all we need". Being able to sleep while the car drives opens up a lot more travel possibilities, it would be easier to make a weekend trip to Chicago if you let your car do the driving on Friday and Sunday nights, to say nothing of the elderly and handicapped that can't drive a car.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby David Greene » July 10th, 2016, 10:43 pm

We will never be in a state where people can sleep in their cars, certainly not in our lifetimes. If you want to sleep, take the train.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby RailBaronYarr » July 11th, 2016, 8:34 am

I don't know whether fully automated vehicles that require zero human interaction will actually be available in our lifetimes. I don't want to dredge up that whole discussion from earlier, but I'm in the camp that it seems at least somewhat likely that before I die (2060+, god willing) we'll see it. But whatever. I don't think the ability to sleep in the car is what makes Level 4 autonomous vehicles attractive for most people, most of the time. I think Monte has a personal affinity for taking more road trips like that, so he brings it up a lot because it interests him.

But I disagree in diminishing returns of full automation. That's where you actually get a huge bump in safety (to say nothing of the mobility benefits for elderly/people with disabilities, ability to park somewhere else, etc). Requiring humans to be the primary driver with a buttload of sensors still means you can speed, drive drunk, blow stoplights, ignore pedestrians, etc etc. Maybe I'm wrong in assuming people will let cars regulate drivers by ignoring the gas pedal push during a yellow light, or putting an electric speed governor at 25 mph when on certain streets. I doubt it. The level where the car mostly drives itself but humans need to be prepared to take the wheel in emergencies is even worse, should be totally banned. There's a lot that can be done with the type of things car manufacturers are already rolling out, but I mostly think they're tackling fatalities at the margins.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby David Greene » July 11th, 2016, 9:22 am

But I disagree in diminishing returns of full automation. That's where you actually get a huge bump in safety
Can you give some examples? My sense is that distracted driving is a huge problem and having the car stop/swerve/etc. in emergencies seems like a huge jump in safety. Beyond that we're talking edge cases I think.

I would support speed limiters on vehicles. It doesn't necessarily need to be set at the absolute speed limit.

Mobility improvements for the disabled I can see. But is it better to build out a public transit system for that, one that serves everyone? I don't know.

As for parking elsewhere, I'm not sure that's a win. It'll potentially create more traffic and make driving in urban areas even more attractive. I'm not sure I want to do that.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby RailBaronYarr » July 11th, 2016, 1:26 pm

Can you give some examples? My sense is that distracted driving is a huge problem and having the car stop/swerve/etc. in emergencies seems like a huge jump in safety. Beyond that we're talking edge cases I think.

I would support speed limiters on vehicles. It doesn't necessarily need to be set at the absolute speed limit.
I guess I was operating under a world where real humans won't allow their somewhat-autonomous vehicles to be governed too much. I'll call it the "real world." Nobody stops for pedestrians or drives the speed limit or doesn't blow that red light every now and again. Why would they let a car they're mostly driving do it for them? Things like forward collision detection or lane departure warnings (or even prevention), sure. But nobody will stand for the type of thing that would limit their ability to go 35mph on Hennepin Ave or 70mph on I-35W where the speed limit is 55. In fact, I'd bet most people would say that a law or widespread implementation of vehicles stopping for pedestrians is bad for overall safety since it might cause more rear-end crashes - just like that's an argument used against red light cameras. Ignition interlocks for BAC could be mandatory (or, fines/punishment for drunk driving much much steeper), but again they're not existent today. I dunno.
Mobility improvements for the disabled I can see. But is it better to build out a public transit system for that, one that serves everyone? I don't know.
I agree, but if we're being honest about the built environment where 90% of Americans live, a public transit system to get those people to their daily needs is never going to happen. If anything, self-driving cars as feeder routes might enable focusing high-quality, high-frequency/speed trunk transit lines by shifting resources from a more coverage-optimized system.
As for parking elsewhere, I'm not sure that's a win. It'll potentially create more traffic and make driving in urban areas even more attractive. I'm not sure I want to do that.
Plenty of tradeoffs! What happens to Hennepin and Lyndale (or wherever) if we all of a sudden don't need 11' lanes and 2 lanes of parking on either side? What if we could use the extra space to remake streets with bike infrastructure and bus lanes where right now it's "not feasible" because of parking politics? So much of the outcomes related to AVs is dependent on public policy.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby talindsay » July 11th, 2016, 4:27 pm

The reason I don't think we'll see full automation is that we already have everything we need for people to get from point A to point B while napping, making out, eating tacos, watching movies, etc. We have trains, buses, taxis, etc. We could waste a tremendous amount of money trying to take drivers out of cars, or we could put that energy into making mass transit, public transportation, and private transportation a better alternative. We already have everything we need for the latter. Have we as a population gotten so anti-social that we'd rather be shuttled around by extremely expensive robots on extremely difficult networks of chaotic systems instead of interacting with another person at any point? Don't want to sit with people? Pay some money to a driver. It's already there, and in ten years it's likely to cost you less than buying an automated car, plus all the infrastructure that will be needed to make that safe. Plus, the tech won't be there in ten years anyway.

An elderly woman I know recently paid $450 to hire a cab from a small town in Iowa to drive her to Minneapolis. Absurd! Well, given that she'll need to make that trip at most a couple times a year, she'd have to get a lot of use out of an automated car before it became nearly as cost-effective as that cab ride. And that ignores the storage problem, the fact that she would have to maintain it, fuel (either with gas or electricity) it, carry insurance, etc.

When we envision the problems with single-passenger vehicles, we shouldn't think that automating single-passenger vehicles will solve any of those problems. It just makes us more indebted to tech companies, while continuing all the problems with single-passenger vehicles. Taxis and ride-shares are much better solutions for actual private transportation, and public transportation is *ALWAYS* a better choice where it's feasible.

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Re: Future cars / Driverless cars

Postby mamundsen » July 11th, 2016, 4:33 pm

On another note... I saw a Tesla with Florida(!!!) license plates in Minneapolis today. I think that's the first out of state plate I've seen on a Tesla.


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