Given there’s not any momentum that I’m aware of to convert light rail in any American city to automated (and increase security with labor savings) despite this being a solved problem for decades, I’m skeptical we’re anything less than 20 years away from automated busses replacing bus drivers in Americas blue cities.
I think the idea of self-driving vehicles is very exciting. But I wonder about the use case being developed versus what I would find useful enough to pay for. Robotaxis don't seem to offer that much savings versus an Uber or Taxi itself -- the driver just isn't that much of the cost when compared to the capital costs of a Waymo.
On the other hand, it would be very, very helpful to be able to have a few drinks, hop in the car and let it drive me home rather than risk a DUI. Or plop the family in the car in DC at 11:00 PM and wake up at Grandma's house in Jacksonville at 7:00 AM, fully rested and ready to go.
It seems the technology and regulatory path to the use cases I describe above will be measured in decades rather than years, though.
I remember seeing a study a few years ago where some researchers hired chauffeured cars for a group of people to simulate how people would use privately owned AVs. The big takeaways were that total VMT increased ~50%, trip volume increased 25%, and 80% of the number of new trips were deadheading (driving the car with no passengers in it). Transit usage cratered among people with access to a private AV. I’d be nervous of broad based adoption of private AVs without a major congestion tax to manage demand on our roads - the increase in VMT and deadheading would cause huge snarls of congestion without a way to manage it.
I dunno. Can't deal with snow and ice and requires absolutely massive capital investment to expand aren't really convincing me that the technical problems are going to be imminently solved and it is underhyped.
Matt, I generally like your articles, but sometimes you display an obliviousness to the obvious.
You talk about cab & truck drivers losing their jobs as "sad". It isn't "sad", it's a bloody crisis for the individuals involved, particularly if they didn't just lose their job, but that entire class of jobs has been automated away. I'm glad you'll benefit from saving a few cents on your Amazon deliveries (as will millions of others) but that doesn't obviate the harm to the people who's trade has vanished.
Perhaps you'll suggest they learn to code? Do I need to spell out the history here?
Much like free trade, the benefits are broadly distributed (and likely a net positive for the economies involved), but the pain is sharply concentrated. And one reason why we've become more reactionary is the complete ignorance of "knowledge workers" such as yourself have of the trades. If you don't have a realistic plan for how millions of suddenly-endangered taxi & truck drivers have to make a living, particularly older ones, don't be surprised by the viciousness of their reaction, particularly at the ballot box.
I feel like the time horizon gap between economical autonomous trucking and "I don't need my car anymore because I can reliably schedule an autonomous taxi to and from work every day" is a really big one. Actually I'm kinda skeptical that second one ever pencils out.
This article is *aggressively* incorrect in being completely blind to the fact that the first 90% of the problem takes the first 90% of the development time, and the next 10% of the problem takes 90% of the development time, and the last 0.1% takes the most development time of all.
Being a long-haul truck driver is a great job for antisocial people. You only have to talk to others a couple times a day. You don’t need to be that fit either, at least compared to warehouse or construction workers. You can drive around the country being obese and socially stunted and still make $50k a year, more if you go hard. It’s hardly obvious that a full employment economy will offer the kinds of jobs that displaced truckers can fill or that whatever jobs they do find will pay as much. I’m not saying other working stiffs should be forced to pay more for shipping to subsidize the long-haul trucker lifestyle, but I do think many men will be broken when they lose their niche.
Yeah I think this is a rare bad (as opposed to one I merely disagree) take from Matt. I think the experience of the Amazon checkout-less shops should make us far more sceptical about how personless these tech gimmicks are, and how easily they can scale. I think the reality is that to be anywhere near an acceptable level of safe, driverless cars just need far too much backroom support that it'll ever make financial sense to use them instead of just paying someone to drive
(1) Environmental: doubling down on car mobility, even if electric, still puts a high floor on transportation emissions because a 5000 lb vehicle will always be a very inefficient way to move a 150 lb person.
(2) Economic: Matt is dreaming of the wonderful cheap sprawl these things will enable. But sprawl is quietly expensive, and is actually already bankrupting us. This is because it has huge infrastructure costs that are paid for by the federal government that nobody thinks very hard about until it comes time to maintain it. Doubling down on sprawling development patterns connected only by cars has, of course, a dozen other issues, from the merely dystopian aesthetics to the lack of walkability that is a major public health issue.
(3) Technological: Matt correctly points out that the urban problem is harder, but like everyone, he's still underestimating how *much* harder. It's not 10x harder, it's 1000x harder. These existing cabs have millions of dollars in route-specific training, and exist only in good weather places with fairly freeway-like infrastructure. This is very difficult to scale. And now you'll get pressure to make the urban landscape less chaotic, which is a fundamental feature of urban places. We'll probably have automated gates for crossing the streets, or maybe we'll make bicycles illegal, just to make self driving cars work.
Counterpoint: now that I have kids I see that the robo taxi is unlikely to replace cars for kid transport: too much variability in car seats, lots of other specific stuff parents have in cars, the huge mess kids create.
I'm not sure about self-driving buses saving money. I take the bus a lot, and a large part of what the driver does is kick people off who are throwing things out the window or fighting, giving people who are lost transit advice, securing people in wheelchairs and making sure they get on and off the bus safely, etc. A larger number of bus passengers are disabled or elderly or don't have technology than in the general population. We may not need drivers, but they will probably still need staff to make it a pleasant and efficient experience for passengers.
places with nonzero parking costs need to be very careful. Right now it’s not possible for my car to loop the block for an hour while I shop, dropping the cost of that antisocial behavior to ~zero would totally destroy the road network even in midsize cities
Maybe I'm just one of those jaded folks that Matt describes in the opening of his piece, but he's written is basically the same stuff that I heard 10+ years ago when I worked in the auto insurance industry. Yes I know some self-driving cars operate, but not a material or meaningful percentage.
There are still a lot of known problems (e.g. bad weather), but I'd imagine that there are also a lot of unknown unknowns that will emerge as future problems as this stuff continues to be tested in more situations and more scenarios.
And, while I hate to sound like a boomer or a tech doomer, I would worry greatly about the scenario that my self-driving car gets hacked while driving down the freeway at 70 mph and runs itself into a guardrail or oncoming traffic or something like that.
That said, I hope I'm wrong because I have no particular emotional attachment to driving and would prefer to not have to do it.
Counterpoint: it’s already possible to get much safer roads, judging by international example. Will robotaxis be an excuse to avoid solving problems we already know the answer to?
Given there’s not any momentum that I’m aware of to convert light rail in any American city to automated (and increase security with labor savings) despite this being a solved problem for decades, I’m skeptical we’re anything less than 20 years away from automated busses replacing bus drivers in Americas blue cities.
I think the idea of self-driving vehicles is very exciting. But I wonder about the use case being developed versus what I would find useful enough to pay for. Robotaxis don't seem to offer that much savings versus an Uber or Taxi itself -- the driver just isn't that much of the cost when compared to the capital costs of a Waymo.
On the other hand, it would be very, very helpful to be able to have a few drinks, hop in the car and let it drive me home rather than risk a DUI. Or plop the family in the car in DC at 11:00 PM and wake up at Grandma's house in Jacksonville at 7:00 AM, fully rested and ready to go.
It seems the technology and regulatory path to the use cases I describe above will be measured in decades rather than years, though.
I remember seeing a study a few years ago where some researchers hired chauffeured cars for a group of people to simulate how people would use privately owned AVs. The big takeaways were that total VMT increased ~50%, trip volume increased 25%, and 80% of the number of new trips were deadheading (driving the car with no passengers in it). Transit usage cratered among people with access to a private AV. I’d be nervous of broad based adoption of private AVs without a major congestion tax to manage demand on our roads - the increase in VMT and deadheading would cause huge snarls of congestion without a way to manage it.
I dunno. Can't deal with snow and ice and requires absolutely massive capital investment to expand aren't really convincing me that the technical problems are going to be imminently solved and it is underhyped.
Matt, I generally like your articles, but sometimes you display an obliviousness to the obvious.
You talk about cab & truck drivers losing their jobs as "sad". It isn't "sad", it's a bloody crisis for the individuals involved, particularly if they didn't just lose their job, but that entire class of jobs has been automated away. I'm glad you'll benefit from saving a few cents on your Amazon deliveries (as will millions of others) but that doesn't obviate the harm to the people who's trade has vanished.
Perhaps you'll suggest they learn to code? Do I need to spell out the history here?
Much like free trade, the benefits are broadly distributed (and likely a net positive for the economies involved), but the pain is sharply concentrated. And one reason why we've become more reactionary is the complete ignorance of "knowledge workers" such as yourself have of the trades. If you don't have a realistic plan for how millions of suddenly-endangered taxi & truck drivers have to make a living, particularly older ones, don't be surprised by the viciousness of their reaction, particularly at the ballot box.
I feel like the time horizon gap between economical autonomous trucking and "I don't need my car anymore because I can reliably schedule an autonomous taxi to and from work every day" is a really big one. Actually I'm kinda skeptical that second one ever pencils out.
>I am still not a technical person
Oh, indeed.
This article is *aggressively* incorrect in being completely blind to the fact that the first 90% of the problem takes the first 90% of the development time, and the next 10% of the problem takes 90% of the development time, and the last 0.1% takes the most development time of all.
Catch y'all for the evening shift.
Being a long-haul truck driver is a great job for antisocial people. You only have to talk to others a couple times a day. You don’t need to be that fit either, at least compared to warehouse or construction workers. You can drive around the country being obese and socially stunted and still make $50k a year, more if you go hard. It’s hardly obvious that a full employment economy will offer the kinds of jobs that displaced truckers can fill or that whatever jobs they do find will pay as much. I’m not saying other working stiffs should be forced to pay more for shipping to subsidize the long-haul trucker lifestyle, but I do think many men will be broken when they lose their niche.
Yeah I think this is a rare bad (as opposed to one I merely disagree) take from Matt. I think the experience of the Amazon checkout-less shops should make us far more sceptical about how personless these tech gimmicks are, and how easily they can scale. I think the reality is that to be anywhere near an acceptable level of safe, driverless cars just need far too much backroom support that it'll ever make financial sense to use them instead of just paying someone to drive
Ugh I kinda hate this on multiple fronts:
(1) Environmental: doubling down on car mobility, even if electric, still puts a high floor on transportation emissions because a 5000 lb vehicle will always be a very inefficient way to move a 150 lb person.
(2) Economic: Matt is dreaming of the wonderful cheap sprawl these things will enable. But sprawl is quietly expensive, and is actually already bankrupting us. This is because it has huge infrastructure costs that are paid for by the federal government that nobody thinks very hard about until it comes time to maintain it. Doubling down on sprawling development patterns connected only by cars has, of course, a dozen other issues, from the merely dystopian aesthetics to the lack of walkability that is a major public health issue.
(3) Technological: Matt correctly points out that the urban problem is harder, but like everyone, he's still underestimating how *much* harder. It's not 10x harder, it's 1000x harder. These existing cabs have millions of dollars in route-specific training, and exist only in good weather places with fairly freeway-like infrastructure. This is very difficult to scale. And now you'll get pressure to make the urban landscape less chaotic, which is a fundamental feature of urban places. We'll probably have automated gates for crossing the streets, or maybe we'll make bicycles illegal, just to make self driving cars work.
Self driving cars are still overrated.
Counterpoint: now that I have kids I see that the robo taxi is unlikely to replace cars for kid transport: too much variability in car seats, lots of other specific stuff parents have in cars, the huge mess kids create.
I’m worried that this will increase sprawl as people sleep through a 2 hour commute.
I'm not sure about self-driving buses saving money. I take the bus a lot, and a large part of what the driver does is kick people off who are throwing things out the window or fighting, giving people who are lost transit advice, securing people in wheelchairs and making sure they get on and off the bus safely, etc. A larger number of bus passengers are disabled or elderly or don't have technology than in the general population. We may not need drivers, but they will probably still need staff to make it a pleasant and efficient experience for passengers.
places with nonzero parking costs need to be very careful. Right now it’s not possible for my car to loop the block for an hour while I shop, dropping the cost of that antisocial behavior to ~zero would totally destroy the road network even in midsize cities
Maybe I'm just one of those jaded folks that Matt describes in the opening of his piece, but he's written is basically the same stuff that I heard 10+ years ago when I worked in the auto insurance industry. Yes I know some self-driving cars operate, but not a material or meaningful percentage.
There are still a lot of known problems (e.g. bad weather), but I'd imagine that there are also a lot of unknown unknowns that will emerge as future problems as this stuff continues to be tested in more situations and more scenarios.
And, while I hate to sound like a boomer or a tech doomer, I would worry greatly about the scenario that my self-driving car gets hacked while driving down the freeway at 70 mph and runs itself into a guardrail or oncoming traffic or something like that.
That said, I hope I'm wrong because I have no particular emotional attachment to driving and would prefer to not have to do it.
Counterpoint: it’s already possible to get much safer roads, judging by international example. Will robotaxis be an excuse to avoid solving problems we already know the answer to?