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Comment by afinlayson | Hacker News Reader

And self driving cars, could make this worse. If your car has shocks for stop and go traffic as well as for bumps, you might not mind a 3 hour commute if you can instagram, and even do work from it. Meaning more people will live further away so they can get their half acre of land.

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The next step - and my favourite future scenario - is the self-driving motorhome that picks you up from work and drives you to the beach while you eat dinner or sleep.

Are you taking pre-orders for this?!

On a more serious note, this just sounds awesome and could work towards workforce mobility as well. Unfortunately, people commuting in RVs will probably make traffic a lot worse.

I suspect there will be a few hackers who do this to avoid paying SF/ SF Bay prices while doing their internships. Especially as more "No motor home parking" signs go up.

But self-driving cars never need to circle looking for a parking spot, and can head off to the dense "autopark" to hang out until you need a ride home. That will alleviate congestion.

I would argue it just displaces it. Instead of you needing to walk to the parking lot and get jammed in after a high traffic event (Sports, or Concert), the auto parked cars will have issues getting out, and lining up in the street to pick everyone up.

How is that worse than the same thing with human drivers? All of that parking lot space could be repurposed as loading space for humans, and more humans would probably be happy to use a cheaper ride-share service in which they can take the first available car instead of waiting for their personal vehicle to get through the line. (Note that ride-share isn't going to be "register with a particular car and wait for them to find you", but rather "get in the nearest available car"--automated taxis instead of automated Uber).

Or even better: it will drive off to pick up random people in an Uber/Lyft scenario, so your car makes you a small amount of money while you're working by itself.

Would be cheaper to slowly drive around congested areas.

Seems like it could go either way. The hope is that self-driving cars will alleviate stop-and-go traffic (they have faster reflexes and better ability too coordinate than humans). Further, fewer cars could support more people (not everyone will want to own their own car if Lyft can get them to and from work for $0.50/mile). That said, humans are uncanny in their ability to consume (faster network speeds, better processors, cheaper storage, etc).

We moved 46 miles outside of Atlanta in anticipation of self-driving becoming much cheaper and accessible. We may not benefit from it in our working career but I now have 25 acres that my daughters/spouses will be able to build on. Looking 25 years out it just made more sense fiscally for our family than buying in a subdivision again. ...plus we grow a portion of our own food.

I have a remote job and am looking at a setup like this. Land seems like a very valuable commodity and I would like a lot of it. The peace of having distance between neighbors, the ability to grow food, building structures (I'm thinking workout equipment), having some animals. It seems like the ideal set up for me and I do really think self driving will allow people to work further and further away. I think it will also help normalize remote work, when you regularly work for an hour on your commute, it should be easily transferable that you work at home.

I'd recommend finding a telework job to hedge your bets.

SDC would not need parking close to the place they drop you of and if you could use the time you spend in the car to work that would mean people with an hours commute would arrive an hour later at work, and people with two hours commute would arrive two hours later at work. In effect rush hour would be stretched out through the day - and as somebody who goes at different times a day, that makes a massive difference to road usage.

This isn't going to be a problem in reality. Most people will not care about owning their own self-driving car, IMO. It will, in fact, be a waste of the owner's resources to park them, much like airlines do their best to keep their jets off the ground and earning revenue.

Ever wonder why Uber has a higher valuation than General Motors? This is why.

So you think everyone's going to want to call a cab to go anywhere? Why don't they do that now?

They do. Just not in your neck of the woods.

Not yet.

Disagree? Explain Uber.

Uh, well, I don't think the metro Boston area is an area known for particularly high car ownership in the US.

Yes, and it's about to get even lower.

Are you even arguing the same point that I am?

You're trying to tell me I live in a place where people are way less likely than average to use Uber to go everywhere and don't buy cars while I am telling you the opposite is the case.

Well, it's been surreal. GG

I don't know what you're talking about, man. The resources are there for people to call an Uber every time they want to go somewhere, but that isn't what most people do.

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