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Originally Posted by STK
So it looks to me you have three points --- it won't work, it will cost more, and it will be less convenient.
As for the first, I guess we'll have to wait and see. I was surprised to read that GM had a petition at the DOT to roll out a 2,500 AV fleet in SF or Scottsdale in 2019. We'll see if DOT approves. GM claims that its AVs are safe.
It's not as if the nascent AV industry hasn't thought about the problems you raised. They're spending billions trying to solve them and the investments are rapidly increasing. The tech guys and the money guys see big progress. All we know for sure is that the technology will improve quickly over time as semiconductor, sensor, and AI improve. I think you agreed that this was feasible in an earlier post. So its really a matter of time. I'm trying to think of another industry of this magnitude where everyone was all in -- in this industry every car manufacturer is devoting massive dollars, the two leading CPU/GPU companies - Intel and Nvidea - are all in, the parts guys are all in, several tech companies (Google) are in, the truck producers are in, and the ride services are all in.
The Uber example kinda disproves your point. Prior to Uber, the cost and inconvenience (as well as regulation) of taxis, limited their use. Today Uber is valued in the billions because it is able to provide on-demand taxi service in minutes with ease of payment. That convenience and cost has caused the demand for those services to explode making it feasible to leave the car at home, do without a car all together, and make a trip that would not have otherwise been made due to inconvenience or cost. The fleet model makes great sense for the urban environment. AV will take over that expanding market when its overall cost is less than an IC Uber. As this scales, there will be less driver-owned vehicles on city streets and less need for street and underground parking. Less congestion. The biggest benefits are in the most densely populated and congested cities. Less congestion means everything is faster. (Unless you assume poor technology.)
As for rural areas, it's likely AV will be individually owned, at least at first due to the lack of density. Pretty simple economics - if the total cost of ownership for AV is less than IC, it will take off. That total cost includes the convenience of not having to drive. It depends how you (and the market) value your time. So when you do your comparisons, make them apples to apples: fleet to fleet or individually owned to individually owned. Also,the convenience factor will expand the ratio of fleet to individual ownership over time. The long-haul trucking future is subject to the same economics.
So at the end of the day, I think your argument boils down to how quickly the technology develops. The cost saving trend is already baked into the underlying declining-cost technologies (batteries, sensors, and semiconductors) and scale..
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If the same people need to get to the same places at the same times as they are doing now, but driving themselves rather than the car driving them, how is that relieving congestion? It will be the same amount of vehicles on the road. The advocates of AV say their cars can drive better than humans and that because they can, more cars can be on the road at the same time at a higher rate of speed. They say one advantage of the AV tech is that each car knows where the other car is programmed to go, so all cars can anticipate other cars lane changes and speed changes. It all sounds great until there is a person driving himself in a non-AV vehicle. The movement of AV from the lab environment to the real world is going to hurt and kill people because no tech ever has behaved in the real world fault free as it did in the lab. Hurting and killing people will not go over well with the DOT and the trial lawyers.
Everyone thinks because their iPhone can take a picture and instantly send it across the world to another person, AV is just going to pop out in 5 years and be error free. That is apples and oranges.