Hacker News Reader

Comment by MichaelApproved | Hacker News Reader

Take the next leap and see that you don't need to actually own the car at all. No need to send a car back home. No need to negotiate with your neighbor.

We all share a fleet of cars like a taxi service. Need a car? Pull out your smartphone app and push the "call" button that sends a nearby car to your location. You could also schedule a pickup for the exact time you get off work.

No need to send an empty car back home to your family during the day. No need to let the car sit empty in between rides.

View on HN

This will definitely exist, but not everybody will want to give up personalized cars. Too many people see their car as part of their identity.

We have the tech right now for every workplace to have open seating and non-personalized computer workstations, and while some companies do this, most people still want their own desk space and personalized computer.

I think only freaks / hobbyists / throwbacks will end up owning cars. You don't have a personalised power station do you? Transport is just a means to an end. They'll be new and cheaper ways of signalling status with driverless cars, equivalent to 1st class travel on trains.

Note that in Europe car ownership amongst the younger demographics is plunging. The novelty has worn off, no one can be arsed with them anymore.

Yeah especially in cities I see this happening really quickly; most of my friends in Amsterdam and Malaga don't see the need for cars at all. If you need to go far you have trains, planes, busses and rentals.

I think a major point is using a car as storage. Many professionals I know keep a lot of stuff in their cars, particularly if they are not sure what kit they'll need when they go out to a client. In the trades this is even more extreme, some people run entire businesses out of their cars/vans.

Why not a semi-autonomous trailer? Hitch it to any car for charging. You can leave it on the site, arrange for it to meet you somewhere you're walking, even loan your kit to a colleague across town with the push of a button-- and still get around on your own.

Needing personal mobile storage is not needing a car if you already get a car for free.

>Too many people see their car as part of their identity.

I think that's because of the feeling you have when you drive a large machine yourself. If you are not behind the wheel anymore, will it still be the same feeling?

And yes, SOME will have this; there will exist a need for cars, I'm saying it will just be far less than it is now.

I foresee certain technical careers, such as us developers, having combo driverless cars that also double as their office. It picks you up, you simply start working. The destination that day is where ever you want to have lunch, or some meeting with a client or fellow developers on your team. You just work, in your traveling office, and arrive at desired destinations for your breaks.

I commute by bus, with the most skilled of drivers who somehow manage to travel at freeway speeds with standing passengers without killing them all. But trying to work on a moving vehicle is an unpleasant experience. I really can't do anything more productive than a phone call or reading.

I don't think there's anything inherent in a self-driving car that causes it to have a smooth ride with minimal sensation of movement like a train or plane, it's more a property of the road.

People used to make friends with horses-- and many of those who can afford to still do. But the massive economic incentive to sharing a car will make this not a choice for any but the very wealthy.

...except if said family has kids of the age that they need car seats, which are a pain in the ass to install correctly; ripping them out and putting them back in twice a day is both ridiculous and unsafe. And you can't realistically even have shared cars with pre-installed car seats, because they need to be adjusted all the frigging time as the kid grows.

FWIW, neither my wife or I had ever owned a car, we managed just fine with public transport and car-sharing. But once the baby came along, we pretty much had to buy a car.

Virtually all auto accidents are because of human error, and computers can handle any situation with lightning-fast (literally) reflexes.

If driver-less cars become the norm, the practical need for toddler car seats will cease to exist.

You could just request that the car have a child seat. If the rest of the auto-taxi system existed, easily adjusted seats wouldn't be a big blocker.

Yes, you too will benefit from robotic cars! You may have to pay your service some premium for a toddler-safe vehicle, but only when you need to take the kid; and what you'll get is a way more expensive vehicle than you could otherwise afford, with a back seat completely designed around toddler safety. There won't be straps to adjust, because there will be no requirement that this car can be converted for the transport of adults, or bicycles, or anything else.

All of that aside from that the system will be safe enough that you can trust your toddler to order and ride in vehicles by themselves if necessary.

Have you ever seen a toddler outside a movie? All the automation in the world isn't sufficient to contain the hijinks of a determined two-year-old.

That said, I'm totally in favor of self-driving vehicles and wish they'd hurry up so I can get one. Containing that two-year-old is way easier when you don't have to concentrate on traffic at the same time!

My experience -- admittedly not parental, and certainly skewed towards highly functional families -- has been that young children tend to be about as responsible as they need to be to get what they want. Not to say that we're going to obsolete parents any time soon, but I do think we can make our world safe enough that we won't need to watch them as much.

Yeah those kind of services are already very popular in, for instance, Amsterdam (Greenwheels.nl). I know a lot of people living/working there who just did away with their car and use one of the available short term cars all around the city. When they are auto drive they can just drive to your door; depending on the cost it's a no brainer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com