According to Ford’s just announced plans, my 2022-2024 target for mass deployment of self-driving vehicles in the US is right on target if not overly pessimistic.
Please consider Ford Plans Mass-Market Self-Driving Car by 2021.
Ford says it will build a totally self-driving car by 2021 as it seeks to take the lead in the global race to produce the world’s first high-volume driverless vehicle.
The car, which will have no steering wheel or pedals, will be used in the driverless taxi services that Ford said it expects to dominate the market in the coming decade.
There’s a real business rationale for this,” said Ford chief executive Mark Fields.
He said the cars will be “specifically designed for commercial” services such as ride-booking or ride-sharing.
The move pits Ford directly against Google and Apple as well as rival car manufacturers such as BMW, which has formed a joint partnership with Intel and Mobileye to develop a fully driverless vehicle by 2021.
When it announced the deal last month, the German carmaker said it wanted to become the “number one in autonomous driving”.
But Ford has announced a number of investments it hopes will give it the edge over its rivals.
Michelle Krebs, a director at Auto Trader, said: “General Motors has been grabbing all of the headlines of late, and Ford can’t be happy about that, especially as some Wall Street analysts have wondered if Ford is falling behind.”
Raj Nair, Ford’s chief technical officer, said driverless cars for individual use would come later. “We don’t expect to see fully autonomous vehicles for personal use for several years after they are first introduced”, he told a press conference in Palo Alto on Tuesday.
The industry believes that driverless cars will result in far fewer road deaths globally, as more than 90 per cent of accidents are a result of human error.
2021 Book It!
2021 is now nearly a certainty. Why?
Competition demands it!
Trucks Headed for Scrap Heap
My claim was “millions of long-haul truck driving jobs would vanish” in the 2022-2024 timeframe.
That time-line is looking a bit pessimistic. Why?
Because it’s a lot easier to navigate highways than city traffic. And there is a bigger economic incentive.
I covered this yesterday in Lack of Shipping Demand Sends Big Ships to Scrap Heap (Trucking Next!)
Key Ideas
- The daily [truck] driving limit is 11 hours maximum. The average is likely less, lets call it 10.
- Autonomous trucks will not have any limit. With driverless long-haul trucks, capacity will rise by at least 100% and perhaps as much as 140%.
- A massive amount of trucking capacity is on the horizon.
- Truck ship rates will collapse.
- The independent truckers will go out of business, unable to afford retrofit costs and unable to compete with the big trucking companies if they don’t.
The Fed will get a big boost in productivity. Will the Fed like the result?
Working Backwards
Google, Apple, Otto, Ford, GM, Tesla, Toyota, BMW, Audi, etc., are all in direct competition and all have dates in the 2021 time-frame, if not sooner.
On May 17, I noted Ex-Google Engineers Launch “Otto”: Completely Driverless Truck Testing Underway.
On August 6, I noted Singapore Unveils “Real” Self-Driving Taxis (No Steering Wheel, No Pedal) Dateline 2019.
Add a year if you like. Does anyone think that will not happen?
If mass-production of autos “specifically designed for commercial” services such as ride-booking or ride-sharing is in place by 2021 in the US, it’s logical to assume conversion of trucks will already be largely in place on the highways.
Interstate highways are much easier conceptually than cities. In terms of a trucking time-line, 2022 looks more like a worst case scenario than some super-optimistic projection.
Regulation has five years to catch up. It will. Competition between states (and political contributions from the trucking and shipping industries) all but ensures that outcome.
Nonetheless, I ask anyway …
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
Mish — you aren’t listening to your readers.
No one is disputing whether the basic technology will (probably) exist within the next 10 years.
The questions you ignore include:
(1) Will the average person pay up for self crashing cars they way we DO NOT pay up for the electric cars? Electric cars have been mandated by the enviroterrorists for years, but most people will not pay $80K for a glorified golf cart. Hollywood losers get their cars “free” (as promotional gifts) — they aren’t paying $80K for a golf cart anymore than they (don’t) pay $25,000 for a “designer clothing item” which they get “free” as promotional gifts.
Unless average salaries grow much faster than you or the liars in Washington DC are predicting, Joe Average isn’t going to pay the exorbitant costs. Many milenials aren’t buying cars at all (they take taxis, uber, or mass transit because that is all they can afford)
(2) Will the law catch up with the technology? Who pays when the cars start crashing — as they are doing now? Are you naive enough to think the trial lawyer association isn’t going to want a piece of this?
I could waste more time listing other problems — but both the above are show stoppers. Average pay is going to have to catch up with health care costs before your fantasy world can exist.
Repealing Obamacare and replacing it with something economically feasible is going to occupy the next administration — whether they like it or not.
Oh fuck, this moron again.
@Greenberg — Mish needs stupid commenters like you to give the better commenters something to swing at
Otherwise he would have banned you long ago
(((Greenberg)))….’nuff said
Go git’em Frank
Figure out what a white knight is yet cretin?
Trader Joe, wear your anti-Semitism proudly!
http://img.aroundme.com/slides/6/0/1/0/9/9/601099070/4ddb07d179b10dc0c11cefd769075d797d89c941.jpeg
My prediction is simple “Millions of truck driving gobs will vanish by 2022-2024”
What is it about that that you dispute?
I never claimed the average person will have a self-driving car in that time-frame. They might, but I never made that claim. You are rebutting a straw man of your own making.
As for insurance claims, I have rebutted such nonsense as you have written, time and time again. Driverless vehicles will be safer 100% guaranteed. They don’t get drunk, drive when tired, make text or phone calls when driving, etc. etc. etc.
What the heck about that simple statement do you fail to understand?
So, Ford says by 2021. That should mean a real world rollout of ~2041. I say closer to 2050.
I can’t wait to see the risk mitigation tab… and who has the out of pocket cost. I worked on the automatic braking system for a while. We used a 36X36X8 yellow foam pad as the target in the middle of the track. Long live Sponge Bob, poor fellow. I’ll have to get back with the people I still know there to see how it’s really going in the wonderful world of autonomous vehicles… none of us were really thrilled, but we’ve had autonomy in the assembly and production plants for 25 years already.
You don’t understand insurance. Before these trucks, or cars, get preferential insurance rates, they will need to ESTABLISH that they are actually safer, and that juries are not going to award huge judgments when things go wrong, as things will. So far, these safety claims are mere pie in the sky….
Nobody wants those long haul truck driving jobs anyway, they can’t fill them, even at $65k+. Turnover is 70-90% depending on the year.
Long haul truck jobs are already being replaced by a really super duper fancy high-tech device called a “freight train”. Faster, cheaper, economically more efficient than any truck.
Human truck drivers like to be home with their families/friends at night, which is much easier if they drive only local delivery routes… conveniently those are the routes these new fangled freight trains gizmos can’t handle.
Take the cargo containers off the ship (most efficient), put them on a freight train (almost as efficient) — and have trucks with human drivers who know the local roads handle “the last mile”.
Mish — you are being ridiculous.
Tesla’s own in house attorneys are telling Elon Musk to stop calling it a “driverless car”… they forgot more about the law than you ever knew. For starters, you are a man giving legal advice in all 50 states without a law license in any of them.
Decades later, there are still Sony Betamax salesman whining that Betamax technology was years and years ahead of VHS. The VHS companies conceded that point from day one.
The total cost of ownership of a Betamax (the costly consumer machines, PLUS the cost of filming on a different format and producing the high density “tape”) was more than the market would bare.
Consumer cars already have “driver assist” technology — not coming in 2021, but widely available back in 2013-14. Many models already offer a gizmo that does parallel parking for you, and even more offer “lane drift warning” alerts.
I don’t know how many people actually use the parallel parking technology. I know lots of people who have tried it and think its “really cool”, but they confess they often don’t use it. Parking along a street is dangerous (your car gets sideswiped, vandalized, etc), and the meter maids drive everyone nuts. The people who can afford automated parallel parking gizmos already use parking garages and/or valet service.
I don’t know if the Tesla not really automated / driver assist gizmo was drinking when it plowed into the side of a truck in Florida at 87 mph (while the human watched his last viewing of Harry Potter). The car (whomever the lawyers decide was at fault) was clearly speeding and driving out of control (it was not able to stop in time to avoid colliding with an 18 wheeler).
The law clearly is not as ready as you claim. Take your silly argument up with Tesla’s in house attorneys; Elon Musk already lost your argument. It won’t hold up in an actual court.
Consumers are drowning in out of control Obamacare costs and stagnant wages. Spiraling college indoctrination costs just add to the financial mess.
Anyone who can do simple math will tell you the next two industries that will face technology disruption and job force changes are healthcare and education — it is a matter of financial survival and necessity.
” (while the human watched his last viewing of Harry Potter).”…..Mish’s point exactly!!!
So??? If there’s an accident between a commercial truck (driverless) and a family car, who’s going to get sued? In our real world now, the driver is always to be blame, and without a driver who is going to be blamed? Witch motor carrier will take that risk? Will Ford take on the law suits? Will Google pay out for an accident? Are any insurance companies going to assume this risk?
Once again – Drivers cause accidents : drunk driving, tired driving, careless driving (eating or texting or phone), driving too fast for conditions (snow rain, ice).
Safe prediction: Insurance costs will rise for those insisting on driving themselves.
Safe prediction: Regulation will take care of this within 5 years
Mish
LA has its own weird legal system styled after France, but in most states the law says the owner and the driver of a vehicle are jointly responsible.
So if your family car hits a truck — you are still legally on the hook.
And Mish keeps ignoring the legal advice that Tesla’s own lawyers gave to Elon Musk: the car does NOT drive itself, the technology is merely a “drivers assist” device.
If Tesla claims their software is driving the vehicle without a human — than Tesla is the driver.
Last I heard, no one in the real world has been dumb enough to claim their software is perfect — zero bugs and zero malware vulnerabilities. Only an idiot (there are lots commenting here) would suggest millions of lines of software would be flawless.
Anyway, trial lawyers would be really excited if Tesla is foolish enough to stick to the “driverless” fiction — it would mean the software is driving, and thus Tesla is jointly liable. Something is making driving decisions — either the human or the software, and that something can and will be held legally responsible.
There will be software bugs, there will be road conditions they didn’t anticipate, weather conditions they didn’t anticipate. GPS navigation was supposed to be “perfect” also — RECALCULATING — except that it isn’t. Sometimes the Iranians will hack the GPS signal and hijack a heavily secured drone; other times a church priest will buy a cell phone jammer to prevent parishioners from playing angry birds during the sermon… both already happened
I bet you were a huge Star Wars fan, eh Mish?
Look, technology is a great thing. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. All in good time. But I’ll never see the routine use of self-driving cars in my lifetime and chances are excellent that you won’t either. The car itself is not the problem. Those would be relatively easy to make. The problem lies in the multitude of problems that the cars would create. Society won’t be able to adapt to such changes for at least 50 years. The rollout would be very slow in limited test markets. I won’t see it. And you won’t either. Be satisfied with what ya got.
Simple. If a car causes an accident, the driver — or the entity that controls the car — is liable. I wouldn’t trust *anyone’s* control software if I was still financially responsible for any accidents that it caused. I wouldn’t trust anyone’s control software unless they assumed full liability — just like I wouldn’t let any jackass off the street drive my car if I didn’t know them.
With so many competitors in this market, information and regulation are critical. Because *when* accidents occur, each controller company will have the entire time history of its vehicles’ location, state, & sensor information. This information will need to be automatically uploaded to public servers immediately, with public access, so that no one has an opportunity to edit or falsify the sensor data. If a Google-controlled car slams into an Apple-controlled car, or vice versa, don’t you think that each will blame it on the other?
The current state of the art is probably around 98% reliability, or maybe even 99%. Even at 99.9% reliability, it’s a liability nightmare. Especially when you look at the transition from driver control to full control. Google, Apple, and the rest will be blaming all the horrible, unpredictable drivers, and wanting to get them off the road, and not wanting to be responsible for accidents that they cause.
Also, it will take *years* of testing, under all sorts of conditions, to go from 99.99% reliability to 99.9999% — which is where the technology has to be for reasonable people and governments to adopt it.
Mish, your view in this area is extremely one-sided — biased in favor of tech companies and their investors. What’s a great deal for them isn’t necessarily a great deal for all of us.
I still look at this as a Worker, and an economist. You think that the loss of millions of driving jobs is a good thing? The wages of millions of professional drivers are going to leave the economy, right in the middle of a Global Economic Slowdown. It’s a great way to accelerate the Collapse, with higher profits and a tanking economy. It’s a sure way to magnify all of the distortions that we already have, and drive us into the ground.
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Mish Again with little understanding:
” Safe prediction: Insurance costs will rise for those insisting on driving themselves.
Safe prediction: Regulation will take care of this within 5 years ”
Mish – you do realize a regulator could be placed in EVERY Vehicle
and each year standard inspections could determine it exists and is functioning
at very little cost
a regulator which would not permit the car or vehicle to exceed 75 mph.
Right there – that would wipe out thousands of accidents and save
lives and money.
Insurance costs would be reduced for those that have done so.
And regulation could take care if it in 6 months.
MISH Another Example
We all have the electronic pass that permits you to go through the
highway car tolls and bills you.
We all know they could easily track the timing it takes you to get From ONE
TOLL to the Next TOLL and easily calculate your speed AND COULD ISSUE
a traffic citation for speeding.
But they have not.
Insurance Costs Would Reduce and the Regulation Is Already In Place
they already track the money and time/date.
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Frank, if some bellicose nation flew drones over our airspace I would like to think that we would ‘hijack’ & ‘hack’ them out of the sky, if not just flatout shoot them down as they did on 9/11. Err, wait a sec, oops.
I’m certain our country in the not too distant future will be in such dire straits that people will be hacking & hijacking these autonomous trucks and making off with its valuable contents. Who will insure & secure these things?
Mish’s infatuation for all things autonomous & ridesharing has obscured his judgement. It will be a long time before driverless vehicles gain widespread acceptance.
You can almost assuredly believe that the driverless truck will have loads of cameras AND that the video will be stored in case of an accident. When the video shows the driverless truck to not be at fault, it will convince insurance companies.
At the very worst the autonomous driving programs will eventually take dumb court decisions into account.
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Mish is again mishing many points.
I have corrected him before I will do so again briefly.
A. As of this date regardless of manufacturer, No vehicle can drive in heavy rain or snow. None. Zero. And NONE have any idea how to do so, in fact few if any have attempted it.
B. In order to do so, in the future, the roadway and highway will require multiple signs and demarcations, in order for the computer to orient itself. Significant investment would have to be made in roads.
This in and of itself will require enormous government subsidy ( State Fed and Local)
something the ” trucking ” industry simply does not have the political weight for.
What the Trucking Unions will roll over and allow the Fed Gov to subsidy them out of business ?
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C. The moral programming will hit a brick wall.
What happens when the computer determines:
An accident is about to happen – A school bus is coming at me –
i. If I turn right to avoid the accident and onto the sidewalk I kill a pedestrian.
ii. If I turn left to avoid the accident I kill a bicycle rider.
No One has determined how to program for morality.
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P.S. Mobileye and Tesla just broke up.
And what would YOU do in that exact same situation?
No One has determined how to program for morality.
No, but they can easily program for liability.
Mish, I enjoy your articles. I really do. You make me think. But your obsession with these self-driving cars makes me laugh. We get at least a couple a week. There’s a greater chance of the sun rising in the west tomorrow than Ford mass-marketing a self-driving car in 2021. Society is simply not ready for it. As a passenger I get nervous as hell when my wife is driving the car. I’d go berserk yelling at a robot driver that ignores my commands, or worse yet, does the opposite of what I tell it. I suggest to launch the self-driving cars in some low-population state like South Dakota. After you’ve worked the bugs out in 25 years or so – roll it out into the populated states. By that time I should be dead.
https://consumerist.com/2016/08/16/ford-plans-to-make-autonomous-ride-sharing-vehicles-available-by-2021/
Ford says it will only allow the car to travel in predetermined areas mapped with high-definition 3D technology.
This means that while passengers won’t have to lift a finger, or step on a brake, they won’t be able to take that dream road trip, either.
You still haven’t explained how these driverless trucks will be able to apply chains and remove them going over the high mountain passes here out west like on I-80 and I-90 and the non-freeway main arteries (US-2, 12, 14, 16, 20) are worse.
Add construction zones where everyone is marked different, there can be temporary new speed limits (do they read signs – the current technology requires the route’s legal speed and traffic patterns be pre-mapped) and other things which will affect them and it will be much harder.
If you are saying that in a few cherry-picked highly connected and 3d mapped areas or some selected optimal cross country routes (roughly corresponding to existing railroads which can carry more than a fleet of driverless trucks non-stop across the country and always have the right of way), I’d agree, but you’ve constrained the problem so that you can’t not win. San Diego will be mapped and it will work, but you won’t be able to go to Temecula, and I doubt there will be driverless cars for Billings, Montana even by 2030.
A driverless truck will be more expensive than a railroad, so until they aren’t in themselves intermodal (ignoring the need for chains in the passes), railroads will be cheaper, ex-regulation,
In China, they don’t have conveyors in most factories. Wages are so low that it is cheaper to pay someone to carry the work and parts between stations – lower than the price of a conveyor much less maintenance.
Uber and Lyft are also cheap by comparison. Driverless cars may or may not be competitive, or be a niche – there are always niches, and maybe the first place for driverless vehicles will be armored cars or trucks for Milwaukee.
2021 is now nearly a certainty. Why?
Competition demands it!
I hope I can get my flying car that doesn’t require me to pay for any fuel (Tesla like) by 2022 because “competition demands it”. Or get electric cars that go farther than diesels yet are cheaper to buy and run because “competition demands it”.
Doesn’t competition demand an investment fund with a guaranteed 8% return no matter how large its capital so it can fix the pension fund problems as well as give a good return to IRAs or just bank accounts – and one that you can write checks on? Doesn’t competition demand that? Can’t AI provide it? Why don’t you predict that by 2021?
Competition only functions in a market. The market can not and does not demand anything, it can only choose between what is offered. It can only offer what is possible and of that what it practical.
I-80 & I-90? Piece of cake; how about I-70 between Denver and Grand Junction in the winter?
http://wac.450f.edgecastcdn.net/80450F/mix1043fm.com/files/2015/02/108758595-630×420.jpg
An autonomous car would be smart enough to not bother getting on the road in the first place in those conditions. If you want to override the autonomy with your own stupidity, the manufacturers will probably allow it, but your insurance company will know about it so it knows who is liable when the accident happens.
If you were to get a, say, 80% discount on your insurance TODAY if the insurance company knew that you NEVER parked at a bar or tavern, most would gladly let the insurance company install a monitor proving that fact. It’s a whole lot for accurate (and perhaps “fair’) than simply using your zip code.
Please stop and think.
The freaking highways will be mapped.
Major roads will be mapped.
Big trucks will drive on major roads and highways.
The question on chains was already answered by someone else.
It’s trivial. There will be services to do it if necessary.
Mish
So long as California’s laws remain as they are, I will not but a self driving vehicle, as I see no benefit. As it stands, the person in the driver’s seat is responsible for everything the car does, consequently I receive no benefit as I have to be just as engaged as I currently am while driving. Conversely, a self driving vehicle with no human fail safe will not garner my dollars either. Never trust technology fully.
The real test should be on the Rocky Mountain road. Mount Evans, Co. the highest paved road in the world, and no roads anywhere with guard rails.
Tesla already builds and has on the highway fully autonomous vehicles. By this time next year you’ll see 300,000 of them on the highway.
Since a Model S or X costs plus 100,000 grand on average fully autonomous won’t be the only thing Tesla will be selling…400 mile range, 8000 pound towing capacity, battery electric boats, trailers with regenerative braking. Folks waiting around for 2021 have already missed out…although if I were Lyft I would have taken the money instead of telling GM to pound sand.
Your absurdly optimistic forecast would make even Elon Musk blush.
But you will never get a job at Tesla, because their in-house lawyers already told Musk to stop saying the cars can drive themselves. They have “driver assist” technology. Musk already protested, and the lawyers told him his position would not stand up in court….
Soon after, that Tesla in Florida plowed into a truck at 87mph while the driver watched Harry Potter DVD.
If Tesla was driving — the lawsuit will end the company. Mish is the only **un**licensed attorney claiming otherwise.
If the human was officially driving, and the human must pay attention to the road and override the computer when appropriate — then it is merely a driver assist technology. The human is still driving, and legally still responsible.
There were a number of other Tesla crashes in the news lately (not just in the US)… and at least a few of them look like they are headed to court.
Meanwhile, Tesla announced they are ending their promo that guaranteed trade-in values would not be lower than purchase price… turns out the secondary market for their vehicles is not as strong as they hoped.
But you will never get a job at Tesla, because their in-house lawyers already told Musk to stop saying the cars can drive themselves. They have “driver assist” technology. Musk already protested, and the lawyers told him his position would not stand up in court….
Soon after, that Tesla in Florida plowed into a truck at 87mph while the driver watched Harry Potter DVD.
If Tesla was driving — the lawsuit will end the company. Mish is the only **un**licensed attorney claiming otherwise.
Yet another idiotic as well as inaccurate comment
When did I ever say by 2016?
A quick check of my computer says this is 2016 not 2021
And when did I ever claim Tesla could say today its cars were already self-driving?
The idiocy of these comments is staggering
According to the local paper in Florida:
Tesla Driver Killed in Florida Autopilot Crash Was Speeding, Feds Say
The National Transportation Safety Board has issued a preliminary report on a fatal crash involving a Tesla driver using autopilot.
http://patch.com/florida/newportrichey/tesla-driver-killed-florida-autopilot-crash-was-speeding-feds-say
Tesla car mangled in fatal crash was on Autopilot and speeding, NTSB says
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-autopilot-photo-20160726-snap-story.html
The reports from local police said the car was going 87mph — the NTSB says it was only 74mph… both said it was speeding
Speaking of corporate press releases, Lockheed issued one last year claiming it was making substantial progress on fusion power. Every scientist in the field called BS on them, and there has been deafening silence ever since. Lockheed was probably trying to distract attention from the disastrous F-35…
http://media.cagle.com/139/2014/05/22/148807_600.jpg
I could see the advantage in urban areas with poor / expensive parking. Just get out and send the car out to find a space for itself maybe in the next county. Then call it back to pick you up.
Wait until you see the new paint job the taxi driver’s union gave your car! And the Uber drivers association added some extra wear & tear “character” to your wheels, bumpers and quarter panels.
But you will have to see those features later… right now there is a lawyer on the phone representing a guy your car hit, and as the vehicle owner you are legally responsible.
Wait til my vehicle’s camera has video of the idiot damaging my parked vehicle.
They could have tested its capabilities in Milwaukee this past weekend. Maybe could have let a couple of CNN reporters use it for free… Complete with body cameras. I wonder how you would go into override mode?
This article was about self-driving trucks, not cars, so I’ll address my comments to the former. I agree that the 2020s will see many waves of robots – be they self-driving trucks, local delivery vans, or taxis – as well as those deployed in fat, er, fast food restaurants, warehouses, and in particular, agriculture. I also agree that these will be a boon to productivity.
The question that interests me is: what happens to the Fed’s “full employment” mandate, as a result? And, what happens to millions of illegals heading to El Norte looking for non-existent jobs? I doubt Janet Yellen has given either much thought.
Full employment? After two years, the BLs will just count these displaced drivers as “not in workforce”. Problem solved.
2021 isn’t soon enought. Self driving cars are needed now given the rapid increase in driverless cars on the road from texting, pokemon hunting and whatever other birdbrain distration venue pops up in the next few years.
There will be no point in buying a driverless car – the cops would be able to steal it any time they wanted. But there will be every point in forgoing the purchase of ANY car and, instead, just calling a self-driving taxi when you need to go somewhere. If you don’t have to pay or tip the driver, it ought to be cheaper than owning a new or late model car.
For a time, drivers might be needed to get the truck to and from the highways and major roads (the local part of the trip), but I can’t see there being any difficulty about the highway portion of it. The biggest logistical problem is probably having an attendant at a gas station to refuel the truck before automated hookups get deployed.
Eventually the local portion will also be mapped out in detail, down to driveway and dock locations, and I suspect facilities will be incentivized to do that on their own so they don’t have to pay the trucking company for the cost of a local driver.
Personal cars I can see having this feature sometime in the 2020s, but probably not a required or mandated option anywhere but on limited-access roads or certain highly congested core urban areas like NYC. I suspect manual mode will continue to be an option for a long time to come to deal with the local end of driving and recreation.
” Does anyone think that will not happen?”
C’mon Luddites! Wear your insane ignorance like a badge of honor!
Or
Why do Luddites love that 50,000 people die every year from human-driven cars and want the death toll to continue unabated?
Tesla has already had plenty of accidents, and at least one death where the driver assist device had the car going 87mph in a 65mph zone while the human driver was reportedly watching a DVD instead of the road.
Despite absurd marketing bravado — the driver assist technology does not drive accident free.
Oh, but I am replying to an idiot who believes in free lunches and unicorns. Come back when you graduate from kindergarten
Frank – you are on a roll
Tesla did not pick a speed of 87MPH
It is time consuming policing wildly inaccurate statements
Next one and you go into moderation
Well Mish — NEXT ONE and I go into moderation???
Both the NTSB and the local FL police said in their official reports the car was on autopilot and it was speeding. The NTSB says it was “only” going 74mph (10 over the speed limit) — local papers reported the local police had estimated 87mph from brake marks and impact damage.
Apparently Mish decided to block the comment with the links to local papers and NTSB report — both of which support my statement that the Tesla was on autopilot and speeding.
Google the stories yourselves, since Mish doesn’t want you to see
Mish, since you don’t really cover economic news anymore, and financial markets have become dependent on the whims of central planners, I have decided to put you in moderation…. putting the RSS feed from your site into the recycle bin.
It is summer, there are far more important economic happenings to monitor during the day, and more interesting diversions at night.
I regret wasting so much time here, so your blog site will be blocked right after this posts.
Hmmm……with ‘self driving cars’ JUST ’round the corner, then we should look at the experience of, say, self driving lawnmowers, correct?
There aren’t any.
crocodilechuck: Interesting point, as there have been self-driving vacuum cleaners for years.
I can guess reasons why no SD lawnmowers. Mostly about safety. Kids in the area. That sort of thing. Currently takes too much engineering to handle such things. The logistics of fuel and cut grass removal may be killers, too, for your typical suburban lawnmower.
So far as safety is concerned, lawn mowers in suburbia will likely wait for other, less inherently dangerous thingees to pay for the engineering costs of operating around the general public.
Now, if we’re talking farm equipment, there does seem to be activity in that area. Delivered product, even.
re: ‘self driving’ vacuum cleaners:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/15/roomba-robot-vacuum-poopocalypse-facebook-post
Ha-ha!!
Self-driving lawnmowers already exist and have existed for years. The engineering concerns you have are actually non-existent as you don’t need fuel for them since they are electric and plug themselves in. Also, since they cut frequently, you don’t need to remove grass. It’s silly to remove grass in reality as the soil needs the nutrients to regenerate and saves money on fertilizers. They are mulching mowers and do not leave a mess behind as they cut frequently enough to avoid leaving clumps of grass behind. They are safe as the blades shut off the moment anyone gets near to it.
Actually, Crocodilechuck, there are self driving lawnmowers. My father in law has one and it works beautifully. It’s made by Roomba, same company that makes the vacuum. He hasn’t mowed his lawn in years, the lawnmower does it for him.
Just google Self-driving lawnmowers and you will easily find half a dozen manufacturers of them. They work the same way dog fences do, you bury a cable and the lawn mower will not cross it and recalibrates it. The one my father in law has works incredibly well. It has a sensor on it that shuts the blades off the instant anyone comes close to it. It even mows his hill in his back yard (albeit with some difficulty). His lawn is even, looks great, and he hasn’t touched it in years (other than to fertilize).
What about flying cars?
http://www.newearth.media/anti-gravity-the-future-is-now/
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/brave_new_world/2002/10/feeling_antigravitys_pull.html
http://www.enterprisemission.com/anti-grav.htm
1. Mass adoption of this self driving car idiocy
2. The Federal Reserve raising rates back to “normal levels”
Kreskin says: Name two things that are not going to happen in your lifetime
Question: In Mish’s dreamworld of self-driving cars and more and more people earning next to nothing in his “right to work” paradises, where are they going to get the money from, to buy this stuff??!! By further expansion of the credit bubble??!!
In the future, most people likely aren’t going to own cars, they’ll be paying per ride or they’ll subscribe to a certain level of service. Heck, Ford may convert itself to a “driving” company and buyout Uber et al and manufacture/maintain its fleet of autonomous vehicles. Riding 5 miles in a beater will be $2, riding 5 miles in a luxury vehicle with enough room for all your Xmas shopping bags will be $8.
The world in 2021 will not be the same as the world in 2016, much like the world in 2016 is not the same as the world was in 2004. Things change, and they change a lot more quickly than you remember them changing. And things change more quickly than you want them to change.
If all cars transmitted their coordinates, direction and speed, every car could calculate a safe path. Maybe pedestrians would have to also. But until this happens, there are too many unexpected occurrences that could cause an accident. I can see autonomous commercial vehicles along very selective routes but not mainstream. I imagine we’ll see this about the same time google delivers my packages using a drone.
Hacking these things (self driving trucks) will be hilarious. I can think of at least a dozen exploits without even trying. But the most basic one is forcing them off the road to steal their contents. Doesn’t even require any tech.
No driver, so wrecking the truck has no consequences beyond the theft itself. These things will be easy prey on any lonely highway across the country. Some will do it just for the fun on it, others for the profit. Either way, the losses will be enormous.
Evidenced by many of these comments, people continue to fear technology and resist change. There will be risk of auto accidents with self-driving cars. There will be people who die as a result of buggy software. As the technology rolls out and those bugs are minimized the rates of accidents and fatalities will diminish. Compared to human drivers the rate of fatalities should be much lower, probably dramatically.
What people fail to see is that money is what will drive the progress. Large companies can either save money by using vehicles without drivers or make money by selling these vehicles. These large companies will push legislation and control the politicians. Like it or not the technology will arrive and grow quickly.
All this talk about Tesla is nonsense. They pushed out software before it was ready. Eventually, a company had to be on the bleeding edge of this technology. Tesla will work out the bugs and continue to push on. That’s how technology advances.
I still remember so many people that feared the microwave oven but the majority embraced the technology. Yes, there are still those who resist using a microwave oven but my point is that technology will continue to push forward while a small percentage resist. It took a while for people to use bank ATMs yet it became second nature. There are still some that refuse to use an ATM but that does not mean banks will cater to the minority. Banks, along with most business, stand to increase profits with automation.
Will we reach the point where it will be illegal to drive a car on US highways with a steering wheel. I doubt it but I think we will see the day when cars with steering wheels will be a niche market.
Dean, most people today think “Get a horse!” is an insult when the reality it was adive directed at a motorist in 1892 fixing a broken wheel on the side of the road – because 98% of the people were riding horses and only the few 1892 nerds thought a machine would be more reliable than a horse.
Most people laughed the the gigantic cellular phone in 1973. 20 years later everybody wanted one.
On the Vice channel, there was just broadcast a Cyberwar episode that clearly showed how incredibly vulnerable our entire public and industrial infrastructure is to cyber attack. Add self-driving trucks and cars to the mix without the capability for manual override and you are creating an even more orgasmic environment for any high-level, state-based hacking effort of an adversary to completely take down a technically advanced nation like ours. And as pointed out in that show, the “rules of war” for such attacks aren’t established nor will positive attribution for any such attacks be quick to determine nor even absolutely certain, so how does one retaliate, retaliation being the only real deterrent to such an attack? What if the nation making that attack isn’t even remotely as vulnerable to that kind of attack as we are, like North Korea for instance? A proportional response in kind would then not even be possible.
Extract from James Burke’s 1978 TV series “Connections”. This segment, from Episode 1 “The Trigger Effect”, James Burke describes how we can be trapped by the reliance on our own technology. I’d say our “technology trap” now is vastly more dangerous and vulnerable.
I remember loving that series in 1978. I started watching it again about two months ago I find myself having to pause the show, rewinding, and thinking about Burke’s statements instead of just taking them at face value. I see all sorts of political bias, mistakes of logic, mistaken assumptions, and historical errors in it. I still like the series but it is more of an intellectual exercise to watch it now as I find myself realizing how much I took for truth as a 14 year old that ain’t necessarily so.
There is absolutely no political bias in that segment of “The Trigger Effect” and that is the only thing relevant to the point of my post.
We are setting ourselves up for a HUGE fall from everything I’ve read and watched and the total automation of trucking and automobile transportation with no manual driving backup will only make it worse. It will be possible to bring this nation to a halt with targeted malware.
Most people are not even remotely aware of just how very serious of a threat this is and how very vulnerable we are. I’ve read and watched a great deal on this subject and if you haven’t, watch:
Hacking the Infrastructure
https://www.viceland.com/en_us/video/hacking-the-infrastructure/5786ba04272f9b1b43240f43
A documentary on PBS from 2015:
CyberWar Threat
http://www.pbs.org/video/2365582515/
Seems to me the biggest trap one sets for one’s self is reliance on bureaucracies for security, infrastructure, electricity, etc. Burke alludes to that without actually flat out saying it – probably because being funded by the BBC and PBS he’d be biting the hand that feeds. (And I enjoyed reading that sentence in James Burke’s voice!)
But certainly anyone thinking the problem through realizes that as much as individuals have put themselves in a sort of technology trap, governments have set themselves up even more so. Individuals can adapt and adjust to change rather quickly – witness Venezuela 2016 – but large bureaucracies really do trap themselves. The trap then really isn’t technological as much as it is institutional.
We refuse to believe we could quickly adapt to a network of autonomous vehicles even though most of have lived through the dismantling and complete replacement of telephone networks and can no longer imagine life with things like telephone party lines. We can’t imagine the insurance industry changing from a “car” insurance model to a “driver” insurance model even though many of us have already transitioned from a car ownership model to a car rental (leasing) model. One needs to spot the difference between clinging to technology (few of us actually do) and clinging to institutions that are outliving their usefulness.
And while it may be foolish to rely on new bureaucracies that tell you, to coin a phrase, “leave the driving to us”, we forget that we are already leaving road quality to a bureaucracy. In Omaha the city is tearing up asphalt and returning the roads to dirt and gravel because the bureaucracy can’t maintain the roads. Maybe there IS a better way to maintain the roads than relying on tax-supported government to do it. But it won’t happen if we’re afraid to let go of failing institutions.
“But certainly anyone thinking the problem through realizes that as much as individuals have put themselves in a sort of technology trap, governments have set themselves up even more so. Individuals can adapt and adjust to change rather quickly…”
Government economic idiocy and inefficiency are the slow path to collapse. Try quickly adapting and adjusting to no power, no water, and no food being trucked in due to a massive cyber attack.
“We refuse to believe we could quickly adapt to a network of autonomous vehicles”
I have nothing against autonomous vehicles other than if not very, VERY carefully done as most consumer products AREN’T with respect to anti-hacking security, they create the UMPTEENTH technology trap component.
Buh bye Frankie boy. Loser. Next time try harder you amateur.
Great now not only do I have to worry about a teenager running me over while they text or someone playing Pokémon running into me, now I have to add some stupid computer malfunctioning and running up on the sidewalk and killing me. Lawyers are going to love self driving cars. Mish, this is not going to take hold for at least a generation for people to accept.