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Comment by pedalpete | Hacker News Reader

I've often wondered why the first use of electric and autonomous driving isn't the courtesy busses at airports.

They don't drive far, they don't drive fast, they run the same route again and again.

I'm not suggesting someone start with LAX, but if you look at San Diego, there is one pick-up point for all car rental locations. I'm not sure if hotels are the same.

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As far as electric goes I would imagine that it's is likely due to the fact they run all the time. It's a lot faster to fill them up with fuel than charge them. You would have to keep a spear or two just to rotate while they charge. And even though they don't go far in a single trip, I can see it adding up quickly enough to be an issue. But I bet they start getting replaced soon as the older vehicles reach their end of service life.

As for autonomous vehicles go you would think we would start with trains.

In a place like an airport, since the infrastructure is completely fixed and used every day, it’d be quite easy to do a battery swapping solution. Would potentially be faster than filling gas.

> it’d be quite easy

Is that speculation, or are you a bus mechanic?

Municipal bus lines are keeping spare busses so some can always be charging. And the batteries need to be kept warm (for range) so busses are getting five gallon diesel tank and small diesel engine to warm the coolant which is piped around the batteries.

On a fixed route where one organization owns the place, the sane solution is overhead electric cables.

Overhead cables probably wouldn’t work well at an airport.

> As for autonomous vehicles go you would think we would start with trains.

We did: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Island_Line

They run all the "time" but they don't travel far. Electric vehicles are less restricted by time than by distance.

Could even charge while loading and unloading.

And thinking of the automated rides at disneyland, why can't the bus be automated with mostly just big green and red mushroom buttons.

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