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Comment by murtali | Hacker News Reader

I can already envision it: Google self-driving cars making deliveries.

Just curious, how do you actually see this? Maybe:

A self-driving car pulls up and double-parks in front of your building. It texts you to come outside and gives a four-digit pin. You go to the car, type the pin in, and a small door opens with your package sitting there. I guess the car has some weird conveyor system for moving packages into the pickup area.

Is this what you are thinking? I'm not sure how well double-parking by a self-driving car would work (delivery people do it, but they also can use their judgement). The conveyor system also seems like it would create problems.

Is this what you are thinking?

I'm thinking murtali just didn't think that far.

That the car is self-driving doesn't mean there isn't anyone inside.

Put one of these on wheels: http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/3/4180118/google-owned-buffer...

When self driving cars become popular, the double parking issue could be solved, by many ways from parking automation , to regulation(even by the people living in the building), to the problem not being there at all, since nobody would own cars.

And conveyors are pretty reliable in industry.

The car could launch a quadcopter to handle the driveway-to-door part. The car wouldn't even need to stop. By the time it's turned itself around, the quadcopter would have probably made the delivery. Security of the package and picking an appropriate drop point seem the most difficult parts to me.

Something like that is actually a great idea. My thought was more along the lines of economics of same day delivery. It's incredibly expensive at the moment for a number of factors one of them being employee costs but also inefficiencies in volume and demand for the service. Self driving cars I figure solve some of these issues.

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