OT: Chevy Volt autonomous autopark

Uncanny valet?

--sp

Does it bark and get the morning newspaper?

Or it might just prowl around looking for a spot not finding one until you are done shopping. What is to say it won't be more convenient and cheaper to let the car drive on low speed streets than to pay for parking?

If autonomous cars become common place this could result in massive traffic jams with the streets clogged by cars with no passengers. I suppose parking lots could be made more space efficient by having no lanes, just isles of cars which all move along at a low speed like a bubble memory or hard drive. As each car comes out the end of the queue it either cycles back in or comes to your call.

Before this happens, I expect car ownership will fade away. Autonomous cars will allow everyone to simply use a car service that provides a car when you need it. You won't need a garage or even a driveway anymore. Call for a car and it shows up in a few minutes. The same car will be able to service dozens of users each day dramatically reducing the number of cars needed. It is very possible the car companies will vertically integrate taking responsibility for every aspect of personal transportation as a service... well, maybe after Google buys them all. ;)

This would also change the nature of a large portion of our energy consumption. You won't be filling your car with gas at the local gas station, refueling would be done for you, whatever the fuel. Facilities would be larger scale and more centrally located including repair and maintenance and not involve the customer at all. Think of how much easier it will be to use autos! This will be almost as big an improvement as replacing the horse!!!

This may eventually end up incorporating the roads. Once cars are no longer owned or driven by people, roads can change dramatically. They won't need the ubiquitous curb parking, lanes can be made more narrow and it will greatly facilitate the use of public transportation instead of roads. If the subway or train could be used without paying for parking it would become that much more useful. A bus stop many blocks away would become much more convenient. The changes these vehicles will make to transportation will be huge.

I think you underestimate the way that the American identity is tied up in the automobile. I'm sure there will be a significant fraction of Americans who will always want to drive themselves and own their own vehicle, until their generation gives way to a younger one which grew up with autonomous vehicles and views driving oneself around as terribly old fashioned, in the same way that the generation that's coming after me (kids in their 20s) view actually talking on the telephone instead of text messaging.

I own a Volt plug in hybrid, and there are still quite few around here. People ask me questions about it and are extremely skeptical, even though _I_ know based on my own short experience that it is, in the main, an incredible piece of engineering that's a pleasure to drive, at a very reasonable price.

A gentleman sneered at me at the gas station the other day and said "So how does it feel to own one o them electric cars when gas is $1.95 a gallon?" I thought about showing him the app on my phone that tracks my power usage and says that I've travelled 786 miles on $4 worth of gas/electricity (there are tons of free Level 2 chargers around here).

People are resistant to change. Oh well, their loss.

Free ? Where do you live ? Norway or something ?

Occupied Massachusetts ;)

We went to a restaurant that has valet parking. When we got out and were waiting for our car, I started talking to the parking boss, a huge mean looking black dude. I said, why don't you do ballet parking? He liked the idea. "We could wear tutus! We could do Swan Lake!"

The idea of free chargers doesn't scale, in several ways.

Free energy for upper-middle class tekkies is indeed a loss.

The problem with market distortions is that it might. If there is an effective subsidy (via military spending, environmental or whatever) on fossil fuels that exceeds the cost of providing the equivalent transportation value in free juice it might actually scale.

No idea if that's actually true- but it might be.

Excessive smug emissions?

--sp

Sure, there will be resistance and not everyone will jump on the bandwagon (or band autonomous vehicle) right away. But like many things (cell phones are a great example) with time they become pervasive.

I look at the possibilities and can't see an end. This could very well be the start of a 100% autonomous transportation system. That is where the real payoffs come in because the very nature of transportation changes. This is analogous to the difference between manned and unmanned spacecraft. Adding people to spacecraft makes them *much* more expensive. Letting people drive cars makes them *much* more expensive to build infrastructure for.

I'm not big on US car makers, but I am going to be looking at a new auto soon and the Volt will be one of them.

Everything is a smart phone app these days. I bought a eval board for an MCU/FPGA and the bluetooth test app is for a smart phone that I don't have! Why can't you get that info from the car?

Resistant, but not un-compliant. Some people want the family truckster to get to Truckee. Soon they can do it without driving themselves.

Oh yeah, I used to think autonomous vehicles were an answer to the problem of so many deaths. But recently I found out that in 2013 the number of deaths from guns exceeded the deaths in traffic accidents in the US. I guess we are going to need autonomous guns too.

I was thinking of congestion at the stations (they supply free energy

Emitted from thousands of Toyota Pious cars.

Imagine the world 50 years from now, people will be laughing of those that had reservations about autonomous cars.

I can see great benefits:

Working in the car on the way to/from work No ownership of a car Less insurance costs Almost no accidents in the traffic Better utilization of the infrastructure No more frustration with elderly drivers/wowan (flame war coming) than cannot operate the car Less CO2 emissions from various reasons Yada yada yada...

Cheers

Klaus

they could use spaces 2 feet narrower than occupied cars need. they could also park (eg) 5 deep. if your car is in the middle of the pack when requested it could request the ones in front to go around to free it.

• Maybe better yet, the "parking" area ("lot"?) could be made of moving belts that either drag the car or if car is on top of belt, move it around. This is if it is less expensive to move the car as compared to the car moving itself. Net car movement is topologically in a circle even if a number of stories (your car is a part of this DNA...). Different lengths and movement rates for different parking times (1Hr, 4HR, etc).

Yes; TINSTAFFL. _Someone_ has to pay for the energy and for the dispensing infrastructure.

ICRYAA

You are amazing good at making things much more complex than they need to be.

But it would also free up parking lanes and spaces. Net number of cars on the road are the same, whether they are moving or not.

I don't see how this would be cheaper than the car moving itself. The main cost for valet parking is human driver. There would be no cost for autonomous vehicles.

You are thinking of parking the cars nearby, in expensive spaces. If i don't have to walk, i don't care if the car park itself miles away in cheap open space.

Right. There is no need to have the cars constantly in motion. That does nothing but waste energy.