Benedict Evans, a blogger who works for a venture capital firm that invests in technology, has an interesting article on the shift to electric and self-driving vehicles.
Please consider snips from Cars and Second Order Consequences by Benedict Evans.
There are two foundational technology changes rolling through the car industry at the moment; electric and autonomy. Electric is happening right now, largely as a consequence of falling battery prices, while autonomy, or at least full autonomy, is a bit further off – perhaps 5-10 years, depending on how fast some pretty hard computer science problems get solved.
Both electric and autonomy have profound consequences beyond the car industry itself. Half of global oil production today goes to gasoline, and removing that demand will have geopolitical as well as industrial consequences. Over a million people are killed in car accidents every year around the world, mostly due to human error, and in a fully autonomous world all of those (and many more injuries) will also go away.
However, it’s also useful, and perhaps more challenging, to think about second and third order consequences. Moving to electric means much more than replacing the gas tank with a battery, and moving to autonomy means much more than ending accidents.
Electric Discussion
In regards to electric, Evans points out 150,000 gas stations while noting cigarette purchases and snacks are the way most of those stores make their money.
What happens to those stations?
On September 29,2015, Elon Musk said Tesla Cars Will Reach 620 Miles On A Single Charge “Within A Year Or Two,” Be Fully Autonomous In “Three Years”.
How’s that prediction working out?
On March 30, 2016, Bloomberg noted Tesla Model 3 Electric Car Seen Getting 225 Miles Per Charge and we are not there yet. Business insider a month later suggested a range of 215 miles.
Quartz reports Tesla’s cheaper, more powerful battery cell is the perfect embodiment of its factory model.
Supercharging
A Tesla presskit says Their “Supercharger network covers major routes in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. There are more than 3,000 Superchargers worldwide.”
Their click here link for Supercharger locations turn up “404 page not found”.
Tesla says their Supercharger can “replenish a half charge in about 30 minutes.” Why not state a quarter charge in 15 minutes or a 16th of a charge in 3.75 minutes?
If a gas fill-up takes up to 4 minutes, then via Supercharger you will only need to stop 16 times as often for a long trip.
Am I missing something here?
It would be one hell of a lot easier if there was a quick and easy way to slide one battery pack out and another into its place.
Home Batteries
Evans notes …
More speculatively (and this is part of Elon Musk’s vision), it is possible that we might all have large batteries in the home, storing off-peak power both to charge our cars and power our homes. Part of the aim here would be to push up battery volume and so lower their cost for both home storage and cars. If we all have such batteries then this could affect the current model of building power generation capacity for peak demand, since you could complement power stations with meaningful amounts of stored power for the first time.
Long Distance Woes
Large home batteries do not solve long distance travel.
There either needs to be much greater battery capacity, much faster charging, or a way to quickly swap batteries.
I suppose one could simply swap vehicles every 200 miles but that seems like quite a nuisance.
For those who drive back and forth to work, or only drive within a city, electric works.
But why have a car at all if that’s all you do? Fleets of self-driving cars will work quite nicely vs the cost of one of these babies.
Autonomy Discussion
Per Evans …
The really obvious consequence of autonomy is a near-elimination in accidents, which kill over 1m people globally every year. In the USA in 2015, there were 13m collisions of which 1.7m caused injuries; 2.4m people were injured and 35k people were killed. Something over 90% of all accidents are now caused by driver error, and a third of fatal accidents in the USA involved alcohol. Looking beyond deaths and injuries themselves, there is also a huge economic effect to these accidents: the US government estimates a cost of $240bn a year across property damage itself, medical and emergency services, legal, lost work and congestion (for comparison, US car sales in 2016 were around $600bn). A similar UK analysis found a cost of £30bn, which is roughly equivalent adjusted for the population. This then comes from government (and so taxes), insurance and individual pockets. It also means jobs, of course.
Even simple ‘Level 3’ systems would cut many kinds of accident, and as more vehicles with more sophisticated systems, moving up to Level 5, cycle into the installed base over time, the collision rate will drop continuously. There should be an analogue of the ‘herd immunity‘ effect – even if your car is still hand-driven, my automatic car is still much less likely to collide with you. This also means that cycling would become much safer (though you’d still need to live close enough to where you wanted to go), and that in turn has implications for public health. You might never get to zero accidents – the deer running in front of a car might still get hit sometimes – but you might get pretty close.
I am in complete agreement with the above. And with that is where it gets very interesting. Evans has given this a lot of thought.
if you have no collisions then eventually you can remove many of the safety features in today’s vehicles, all of which add cost and weight and constrain the overall design – no more airbags or crumple zones, perhaps.
As more and more cars are driven by computer, they can drive in different ways. They don’t suffer from traffic waves, they don’t need to stop for traffic signals and they can platoon – they can safely drive 2 feet apart at 80 mph.
Parking is another way that autonomy will add both capacity and demand. If a car does not have to wait for you in walking distance, where else might it wait, and is that more efficient?
So, the current parking model is clearly a source of congestion: some studies suggest that a double-digit percentage of traffic in dense urban areas comes from people circling around looking for a parking space, and on-street parking ipso facto reduces road capacity. An autonomous vehicle can wait somewhere else.
If you remove the cost of the human driver from an on-demand trip, the cost goes down by perhaps three quarters. If you can also remove or reduce the cost of the insurance, once the accident rate has fallen, it goes down even further. So, autonomy is rocket-fuel for on-demand. This makes it much easier for many more people to dispense with a car, or only have one, or leave their car at home and take an on-demand ride for any given trip.
Do you end up with reduced bus schedules? Do marginal bus-routes close, pushing people onto on-demand who might not otherwise have used it – if they can use it? Does a city provide, or subsidise, its own-demand service to replace or to supplement buses in lower-density areas? Does your robotaxi automatically drop you off at a bus stop on the edge of high-traffic areas, unless you pay a congestion charge?
Then, of course, there are the drivers. There are something over 230,000 taxi and private car drivers in the USA and around 1.5m long-haul truck-drivers.
Does an hour-long commute with no traffic and no need to watch the road feel better or worse than a half-hour commute stuck in near-stationary traffic staring at the car in front? How willing are people to go from their home in a suburb to dinner in a city centre on a dark cold wet night if they don’t have to park and an on-demand ride is cheap?
In 2030 or so, police investigating a crime won’t just get copies of the CCTV from surrounding properties, but get copies of the sensor data from every car that happened to be passing.
More Questions than Answers
There is much more in the article. It’s worth a closer look.
Evans raises far more questions than he answers. Yet, I think the question list is just beginning.
My timeframe for long-haul driving jobs vanishing has not changed. I still say it starts 2021-2022 at the latest.
How Many Jobs?
All Trucking says “There are approximately 3.5 million professional truck drivers in the United States, according to estimates by the American Trucking Association. The total number of people employed in the industry, including those in positions that do not entail driving, exceeds 8.7 million.”
I may have over-estimated the number of long-haul jobs that vanish. However, I may have under-estimated the add-on effects.
If a truck can be on the road 24 hours instead of 11, how many trucks do we need? How many people servicing trucks do we need?
Opportunity for short-haul drivers with smaller trucks will vanish as well. How quickly?
Package delivery by drone is going to happen, especially smaller packages in rural areas. How Quickly?
For now, the savings on long-haul trucking are the greatest, and the obstacles the least, so I see no need to change my belief this will begin in a major way within a 2021-2022 timeframe.
The competition is so massive, all of the above things will happen much faster than most realize.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
As a cyclist I lament the end of the gas station. At times they may be the only store open , a source of needed food or beverage and safety in the event of bad weather etc. As noted the gas station provides functions that have little or nothing to do with gas, some positive and some negative.
They will still be here for a long time
thank you mish for posting the article
@Mish – there is a third technology that comes into play when autonomy is matured…
Drones
Why have cars at all, when an autonomous vehicle needn’t traverse roads anymore.
NOW think of the implications of THAT!
@Mish – another thought – how about roving mini retail stores?
No more need to go to the mall – the stores come to you!
Expect Amazon to dominate this market.
The day will come when, despite age related disability from arthritis, hearing loss, vision loss and memory impairment, seniors will retain independence due to autonomous vehicles. I’ll hopefully into my autonomous uber electric vehicle and tell it to drive me to the grocery rather than depending on my adult children.
or you could live in a walkable neighborhood
Did you miss “despite age related disability from arthritis, hearing loss, vision loss and memory impairment”?
Walkable neighborhoods need a lot of small stores. The current suburban world is built around very very large retailers and low employee counts. When you need 10X the number of outlets because your customers need to walk to your location you’ll need to hire a lot more people to deliver and distribute products. Having autonomous delivery trucks will make that model much more attractive by keeping distro costs down.
Look at New York City, and the “bodega” stores. Lots of them, one on every block. Very much a walkable city. Now look at Denver, built around automobiles. Giant mega-marts and sectioned off shopping centers, only accessible via car. Food is much more expensive in NYC because of all the hands that it passes through on the way to the customer. But transportation is much more expensive in Denver because of the expense of a vehicle. Not to mention added expense of needing much larger kitchens, refrigeration and a place to store the vehicle when not in use. But they both have their advantages. And (for now), vehicle still wins in the overall cost department. Once you get rid of all the extra distribution “hands,” the price might tilt to walkable again.
food is NOT more expensive in Manhattan than exurbanCalifornia
it’s cheaper and takes much less time to shop. ( I live in both locations )
I said Denver, not California.
The current electric grid could never handle that demand on summer peaking hours. Big heat wave and you have an interesting situation. I remember in ’02 when Cali was rolling blackouts daily. Imagine millions of cars wanting to tap in at the same time.
They can just double the capacity of AC grid by doubling, tripling grid transformer’s voltages. It’s not a barrier.
Sorry, it just ain’t that simple. First, the generating capacity has to be increased, then the long distance / high voltage distribution network has to be upgraded to carry the extra power (higher voltage and higher current (amps)), then the regional and local distribution networks gave to be upgraded (same as for high voltage), then probably the household connection, switchboard and wiring. We are talking decades and gazillions of $ investment here. And the US is deep in debt at every level. And you have a perfectly good (and paid for) gasoline manufacturing and distribution network. So, no. It ain’t gonna happen.
It’s going to be done gradually just like it has been doing for 100 years,
“AC in every home in the country!?!? Our grid can’t handle that, and upgrading it will cost gazillions of dollars.” ~ some Luddite in 1950
Increasing voltage does not increase capacity.
Have the electricity priced according to demand. My hot water service reheats late at night at a lower tariff than the general house power. Between about 11pm and 5am there is plenty of excess coal fired base generation capacity (so much so that the hydro plants in my state use the cheap power to run their turbines backwards and pump water back up into the reservoir ready for the next days peak demand). Your electric car will charge overnight at a low tariff and if tomorrow is a nasty heatwave then you could use the power in your car battery to run your AC cheaply.
it already is priced that way.
The rolling blackouts in CA were due to Enron pulling power off the grid in order to manipulate the price. Notice that it hasn’t been a problem since Enron went away.
In all fairness, NIMBY California holds a great deal of the responsibility for that.
The current electric grid could never handle that demand on summer peaking hours. Big heat wave and you have an interesting situation. I remember in ’02 when Cali was rolling blackouts daily. Imagine millions of cars wanting to tap in at the same time.
Great read Mish… I agree… sooner then later…
Here is another quesrion…
Where is all that extra electricity going to come from?
On what grid?
From what power plants?
Etc.
the grid has 15x excess capacity for charging electric vehicles
it’s not even the slightest concern
i would love to see that source. The grid does not work in a way that should allow math like that. Load is extremely volatile to which day of the week, what time of the day, and temperature. On peak hours on a hot enough day, the grid has little or negative excess capacity.
dude
like vehicle charging at el noché
demand at midnight is 5% versus August at 1400
power demand curves are predictable as farts & beans
only if you can predict temperature.
The National Weather Service, the power companies, and others do a rather good job of predicting temperatures and have for quite some time.
My company has a solar powered electric charging station for electric cars today. Three employees have them. They pull up, plugIn, and nine hours later they have enough juice to get home and back. Popular with the engineering crowd.
Can you buy cars with solar panels on the roof? They could self charge whenever they were parked in sunlight. Too small an area to be economical?
Much too small for most people’s use (think charge for a week to drive 10miles) and that’s assuming you can park during daylight hours with no occlusion the panels oriented south in the summer and your EV doesn’t employ a cooling system for its battery. I’ve been idly thinking about designs for an RV where some panels fold out from the side and the rest on the top can be angled up. Production in summer could be higher than (stationary) usage and charge the battery for a month until it makes it to the next site. If you don’t need external energy in theory your options open up (even more so if you don’t need water and sewage hookups).
trickle charge figure 50w/hr at most = 500w after 10 hours in full sun
worth about 10 minutes drive time.
The laws of thermodynamics make it difficult to significantly improve batteries, which is why we have had 20 years of press releases about great new batteries that never happened. If a radically improved battery did somehow arrive, it would destroy much of the utility industry as people went off the grid….which would wreak havoc on the present economic establishment.
The number of electric cars on the roads is about 1.4% in Europe.
33% of new cars in Norway are electric.
If they can get the range to 500 miles it will take a huge jump.
If they can figure out how to quickly swap batteries in 5 minutes ,even more.
Most uses are easily less than 200 miles. The problem is that is one hell of a restriction when you want to go further.
For those who never leave a big city, electric work, but then, why do they need a car.
The first big wave of switching might be the two-car family that only needs one car that is good for longer trips. They could easily go to one gas and one electric.
Correct. It is foolish to think that one car needs to do everything. I drove an electric citi-car back in the 70s. It would do up to 30 MPH, and had a range of about 50 miles (realistically more like 30 miles). Did that render it useless? Not at all. Consider a guy that drives 3 miles to work, 3 miles to the mall and supermarket. It would serve his purposes nicely. He could rent a car cheaply when he needed to take a long trip.
If 1% of the people have electric cars now, an electric car needs to only be suitable for 2% of people to increase market share. Gas-powered cars aren’t going away any time soon, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be electrics on the road, too.
There will be a large demand for auto-autos. (Autonomous automobiles.) The sales of autonomous RVs will be phenomenal. People who are retired and those who cannot afford real estate and taxes will drive up demand. All the failing cre will become valued parking.
You could make small battery trailers that could be rented fully charged at the charging station. Better yet electrify one lane of the freeway so cars can have a smaller lighter batteries, kind of like a slot car.
From the inventor of the lithium-ion battery, John Goodenough:
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlinson/article/Fossil-fuels-mortal-enemy-is-a-94-year-old-11056093.php
Three times the energy density, charges in minutes rather than hours, poses no fire hazard, works well in sub-zero temperatures, and expected to be on the market in as little as two years.
There really won’t be a reason to own a gas-powered car.
Better Place in Israel, battery swap stations. Went bust. Too early. Example of a closed down swap station below.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File%3A%D7%AA%D7%97%D7%A0%D7%AA_%D7%94%D7%97%D7%9C%D7%A4%D7%AA_%D7%A1%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%9C%D7%95%D7%AA_%D7%A7%D7%A6%D7%A8%D7%99%D7%9F.JPG
Hydrogen will come inner-city and bus/truck. Batteries too heavy and high percentage of payload.
With this power source – all cars and trucks will eventually be electric IF it works. This is amazing…and may explain Dark Matter and Dark Energy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dCzVUnnL00
The science behind it unfolds around minute 30 and also in Q&A after 1:07:00.
Here is a shorter presentation:
“If they can get the range to 500 miles it will take a huge jump.
If they can figure out how to quickly swap batteries in 5 minutes ,even more.”
A Chevy Bolt battery pack weighs over 950 pounds. A Tesla model S battery pack weighs about 1200 pounds. A major key to quickly swapping them would be making them a LOT lighter without losing significant range. But if they can get energy density that high then there will probably be no need to swap them.
Bingo – charge times are non-linear so you can get 1/4 charge faster than 1/2 and the last bits take hours. If you don’t fully charge then you shorten battery life. A full exchange for long range is the only way it will work because charge times will kill you. Instead of stopping at a gas station for a fill-up you will need a hotel.
I also wonder how many fatalities are in cities v.s. in rural areas where electric will be slower to adopt.
My guess is self driving cars will start in the city and will be electric. For long-haul they will be self driving but probably not electric.
On short haul trucking adoption will depend on the purpose. The large bulk shipping can be self-driving but anything not container like will take longer e.g. a recent move I made of a 5000lb milling machine. That was a special job start to finish.
I’m not sure that destruction of the utilities would be the case. Actual electricity demand continues to grow, so good storage would help ease the strain in places like NYC and LA; or Toronto, or… It would allow more off grid in rural areas, but in the cities would eliminate calls for reduced usage and use of time of day pricing, etc.
If a UPS “driver” didn’t have to drive the truck how many packages could he deliver in a day?
Platooning? WTF? Two feet apart at 80MPH looks fine until there’s a mechanical malfunction that wrecks the car’s propulsion. Then you’ve got your platoon weaving around the casualty. At 80MPH.
FYI, I ran over an unknown object on the freeway thursday night. My car, with a wrecked wheel, promptly became a hurtling threat to every car in front of me, to my right side (the car was jolted in that direction), and definitely behind me if they didn’t dodge while I tried to retain control, slow down, and get off the freeway.
When a platoon can cope with a member vehicle having a catastrophic failure on zero notice, THEN I’ll believe in platooning. Remember, the Demon Murphy never sleeps.
There is much more in the article. It’s worth a closer look at UN Agenda 30 and the loss of freedom.
Not sure what it’s like in the US but in Australia there is a growing problem of long haul truck drivers taking the drug ‘ice’ to stay awake at the wheel for days on end causing horrific road accidents. And over here they drive road trains which is a truck pulling 4 trailers of lengths in excess of 50 metres.
The sooner driverless trucks arrive the better.
Electric are good for metropolitan areas and Europe where everything is crammed together. They are not practical for country long distance driving.
Everyone assumes all cars on the road will be self driving. That automated car that flipped on its side was because a driver failed to yield. Also what about bicycles and motorcycles on the road with human drivers.
I still think autonomous vehicles will be limited to city driving just like electric. Price will keep people in gas cars too when electric and autonomous cars are just too expensive.
So my car mechanic will now have to have a degree in computer programming too.
And the complexity of the autonomous car will necessitate higher repair bills; first due to increased complexity, and later due to scarcity of mechanics.
20 years ago cable TV companies started introducing a new “digital cable” service. Some industry insiders thought it would be a failure because they couldn’t train people to work on it, being such a radical departure from analog TV.
15 or so years ago cable TV companies started introducing Internet service. Most industry insiders “knew” it would be a failure because cable techs couldn’t learn how to service it. After quite a few rough years, the industry did figure it out and now the largest ISP in the US happens to be a cable company (who has more Internet service customers than TV customers).
Yes, it is new technology. But mechanics have been working with computers for decades now, they know how to do it. Most of the time the fix will continue to be the simple stuff, swapping out the bad sensor, or cleaning the corrosion off the connector. Replacing the wiring harness where the mouse chewed it up. Or even replace the vehicle management unit and send it back to the factory.
I don’t think there will be a big change in the number of people servicing trucks with the advent of autonomous driving. Unless there are major changes to current vehicle technology trucks will still need fueling and maintenance. Current trucks can’t be run 24/7 even if the drivers could.
Yup, and most cars and trucks are driven until they can no longer be driven. I’m not sure what advantage there is, especially in ZIRP, of compressing capital utilization timeframes. And if inflation rises, vehicles should appreciate.
If anything, having to maintain all of those electronics, keeping sensors clean, dealing with failures of the automation, and the lesser reliability associated with redundant systems will reduce vehicle up-time and availability over conventional human-driven vehicles.
Plus a human operator does more than drives. The human operator takes care of government paperwork. The human operator is a loadmaster. Etc. So it seems very unlikely that self-driving vehicles will be able to shed their humans, even if the automation problem is somewhat resolved.
Having any piece of equipment working longer hours such that they wear out in fewer years has always made good economic sense. The investor has less capital tied up (better to have 10 trucks each working 100 hours/week than 20 trucks each working 50 hours/week), less need to have a big floor area (only need parking for 10 trucks and not 20) and replacing the equipment in a shorter time frame means having the latest technology.
Actually during the inflation of the 1970s, for instance, heavy utilization of depletable capital assets was discouraged as the assets themselves were appreciating.
For example, that when that relatively new American Airlines DC-10 jet that crashed in Chicago shortly after takeoff in the mid 1970s, the insurer had to pay more to American to replace the semi-depreciated jet, than the jet cost brand new.
The loadmaster remark brings up an interesting point. The truck driver is responsible for the load on the truck, from weight distribution, securing it, and total weight. With a driverless truck, who takes over these responsibilities? Who gets the overweight ticket when the shipper decides to cram as much cargo as possible onboard without a driver to monitor the load? Who signs the bill of lading?
The loadmaster remark brings up an interesting point. The truck driver is responsible for the load on the truck, from weight distribution, securing it, and total weight. With a driverless truck, who takes over these responsibilities?
Uh … the person who initially load the truck
Who gets the overweight ticket when the shipper decides to cram as much cargo as possible onboard without a driver to monitor the load? Who signs the bill of lading?
Uh…
The trucking company
Was that so hard?
Less than 1% of US new car sales are electric (including plug-in hybrids) – despite huge tax incentives. The main problems with them being:
1) They cost a lot more than typical ICE vehicles over their lifespan.
2) Very limited range, especially if you drive at freeway speeds and/or use the air conditioning/heating a lot (e.g. when stuck in traffic).
3) Few places to re-charge the batteries, plus wait times. Danger of being stranded.
4) You are sitting right above several KG of one of the most reactive elements known to man (lithium) that if the battery goes into thermal runaway it can burn you to a cinder
5) Lousy sustained performance when driven fast (yes, we have all heard of Tesla’s amazing 0-60 time, but if you drive hard for a while the battery starts to overheat and safety devices (hopefully) throttle the battery back to prevent it incinerating you).
In short, EVs do not make any kind of sense. I can’t quite understand why anyone would buy one.
The main issue with Li batteries is that they are fine unless you short the anode and cathode. The primary way this happens is if the plates in the cells happen to touch. The most common way for them to touch is due to physical impact deforming the plates. The less common, but also pretty much guaranteed, way for this to happen is the growth of dendrites across the electrolyte. Given that every lithium battery made today uses liquid electrolyte, it is only a matter of time until dendrites short out the cell.
There is a lot of research going into solid electrolytes and there has been a lot of promise in polymers and glasses recently. The cells we have today aren’t using pure lithium because of the dendrite issues. Once these new electrolytes are able to be mass produced, manufacturers can start to use more pure lithium and get much higher energy storage out of cells.
Million dollar (or more) per unit self-driving cars or trucks are not only going to be a non-event, but a complete non-force. And it seems very unlikely that they could reasonably deliver highly reliable systems for much less.
There’s also the maintenance problem. Currently even slack-jawed yokels can maintain cars and trucks with reasonable safety. Self-driving cars will require extremely regimented professional maintenance including supply chains for parts that have relevant surety safeguards (think: aircraft parts!). As well as external maintenance supervision and documentation.
Considering that most of the population can barely even afford their relatively cheap human-driven cars, just how does a self-driving car become reality? And who’s gonna front the trillion dollars or more needed to upgrade the existing highways to be self-driving capable?
Will Muslims be able to use self driving cars to kill people more efficiently?
Once autonomous vehicles are hacked, they are no longer “self-driving”.
You don’t need to hack the car to use it to deliver a bomb
Don’t worry; it’ll be the CIA hacking your car. It’s just that they’ll use software that makes it look as if it’s the Russians.
As inept as the CIA are? They’ll leave their prints all over it. But the ‘fake news’ outlets will comply and misreport it, if at all.
Those are in use already. They’re called drones. The US miltary murders thousands of people annually.
Massive loss of jobs due to (the above) automation or “something better” is fine, so long as there are other (even new) industries for these people to work in. We are already getting an inkling of the damage done when millions of out-of-work or under-worked Americans are so desperate that they elect pie-in-the-sky politicians who promise everything. Better have somewhere for these redundant workers to go in the morning, or no one is gonna give a damn about “vehicles that drive themselves.” Riots are very distracting.
Kunstler in fine form –
“It ought to be sign of just how delusional the nation is these days that Elon Musk of Tesla and Space X is taken seriously. Musk continues to dangle his fantasy of travel to Mars before a country that can barely get its shit together on Planet Earth, and the Tesla car represents one of the main reasons for it — namely, that we’ll do anything to preserve, maintain, and defend our addiction to incessant and pointless motoring (and nothing to devise a saner living arrangement).”
http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/musktopia-here-we-come/
Kunstler has been publishing the same ideas for 15 years. BORING.
And he’s been right all along.
Just look at the appalling condition of your country!
Americans, for the most part, have no idea of how appalling that condition is, because they’ve never seen anything different.
Mish, when it comes to trucking please note that there are two forms of truck operations. The first is the regular van/refrigerator van operation. Most of this traffic can be robotized, that is, the automated system by which vans are ferried from point to point and taken into cities by day cab drivers. This will happen for most of the van traffic. The other is specialized or flatbed traffic. Construction equipment, farm equipment, irrigation equipment, construction materials, and etc. This traffic will not be replaced by automated driving equipment. Think oversize loads, think irregular deliveries, think off road deliveries.
As to the question of automatic car operations where the automobile is programed to do the actual driving, that is another question. Will individuals readily give up their freedom to operate a vehicle for the accommodation of being driven by robot technology? The second question is by what route will the driverless vehicles take in performance of their operations? Imagine that you live in Los Angles and your robot vehicle takes a route that includes east LA and the slums. What is to keep incidents that include murder from happening? Think of the law suits that would result from such policies. For all the positive benefits of robotic automobiles there are almost an equal number of negative “benefits”.
Finally, the automated vehicle may be good for city operation but once out of the city, what good is it? Think about all the problems that crop up. City street work will cause disruption but once out on the interstate or worse, once out on the US and state highways, the stakes become higher. I drove for five years as a professional trucker hauling specialized freight. Let me tell you that the variables of driving are far greater than the programmers have considered. How will the automated vehicle deal with ice and snow? How will it deal with heavy rain? How will it deal with heavy fog? Man, I’ve got a lot of stories to tell, the things I’ve seen that automation can’t deal with. Benedict Evans may be a smart due but he’s never driven professionally. I got close to a million mile of driving in my life and I don’t know it all and I haven’t seen it all. How many miles does Evans have under his belt? I just love experts who don’t have much in the way of experience under their belts.
“Will individuals readily give up their freedom to operate a vehicle for the accommodation of being driven by robot technology?” They don’t seem to mind when their passenger jet is on auto-pilot.
Auto pilot without any pilot in the cockpit?
I would refuse to board such a plane, as would millions of other Americans.
It would bankrupt the airline industry.
Flying an airplane is different from flying a jet passenger plane is different from operating an automobile. You have no more idea how to operate a D9 Cat that you do a grader than a 60 foot Genie lift. While these machines aren’t all that difficult flying is a very different skill. Besides, I’ve never seen an autopilot of a D9 Cat.
Big oil into big batteries soon? I don’t think so. Without subsidies, Tesla doesn’t exitist folks. EV is an urban thing at best. Just sayin…… ~current math is prohibitive
An urban thing at best is probably true (at least for the first few years). But in most countries the majority of the population live/work/travel in urban areas and they account for over half of all cars purchased. That is a big niche for EVs.
How about all the lost revenue to cities and towns for DWI, speeding, reckless driving and other traffic violation? DWI convictions are a cash cow for many cities. No human driver = no more DWI convictions.
When they say half a charge in 30 minutes, that’s important because of the way batteries work. You get about full speed charge (at 120kW or so) until the battery is about 80%, then the charge rate tapers off. (see picture at https://www.tesla.com/supercharger )
With the charging time added in the picture it is still slower to drive over 300 miles in a Tesla (Assuming a 100kWh pack) compared to a regular car.
A good resource is evtripplanner.com that would (given your selection of an electric car) let you estimate how much time you’d spend driving and how much time you’d need to spend charging.
Keep in mind that people also need to eat and use restrooms from time to time, so at times it’s unimportant that your car is done refueling in 4 minutes if you still need to stick around for longer due to other needs.
Some EV owners now proclaim that this new way of having a longer rest every 3 or so hours of driving is actually a lot more relaxing compared to the old way, but I guess that might be a Stockholm Syndrome too.
Exactly, how much of a pain it is dependent on a) what the car’s range is b) what range you are attempting c) how fast it can charge d) how convenient is the charging location.
To me, anything over 700mi (in ideal circumstances) using 85kwh battery in a day is painful. I can easily schedule my travel around the 3 ~40m stops at a supercharger, I can even alter my speed to make full use of two stops that have restaurants I like and at the third I can do some shopping/exercise/whatever. Whereas with a gas car I usually pack meals for the road and could do 700mi in 10 hours (with no traffic, which I alter my schedule for) that same trip becomes 12.5-13 but is much more relaxing. Anything more than that, and I’m looking at spending the night at a place I can charge overnight, ideally around the halfway point. Anything more than 1200mi and I’m renting a gas car, riding a bus/train, or taking a plane. With a 100kwh and a SC network your pain point is very similar to gas even at 900mi ranges (even though you will plan your trip and drive differently) which is about as far as almost anyone (99%) would consider going in a day. Stopping 4 times along this trip adds more time than the breaks with a gas car but less than the 2.5-3hr premium in the previous example (definitely stopping to relax and likely a hot meal en route and gas station breaks become pee and coffee breaks which you shouldn’t do while gassing).
With a 24 or 30kwh LEAF, even 150mi trips become painful and the erratic (often out of service or blocked or in use) and expensive nature of developing charging networks makes it intolerable for 99% of people. They would prefer to just use a second gas car or rent a car or whatever. You behave much like a city person sans vehicle with regard to locations outside your metro area.
Anyway, hitting your painpoint once/yr isn’t a big deal and if it’s more convenient on a daily basis (never having to stop for gas, never having to worry about oil, not breathing fumes) it may even out hitting your painpoint a few times/yr. Otherwise you should either choose a longer range EV (perhaps with a good charging network like tesla’s) or have a backup solution that works for you. If neither of those are good options…you’re the 1% that an EV can’t work for (outside the other 9% that don’t have home or work charging and won’t be bothered to orient their schedule around opportunity charging). 90% of households could make good use of $25k 30kwh EV today. Unfortunately we’re not quite there yet except with tax credits that won’t help the middle 30% that purchase new vehicles and the next 20% generally would prefer more attractive gas cars than the LEAF or even the Bolt (when its available nationwide in sept).
Tomorrow’s news released @ 11:00PM Saturday night by Mike Cernovich… same guy that broke the Susan Rice story:
McMaster Plan for 150,000 American Troops in Syria. Gas attack was a false intelligence and Trump fell for it.
All this is great right up until the hacking begins. Hack a few big rigs and kill a few dozen people. They’ll be shut down instantly. Hack every car made (pick your manufacturer) and crash it by having it drive straight as fast as is allowed.
After you’ve taken out all the safety equipment in the car (as mentioned in the story) the people will be extra-injured and really put a demand on the healthcare system!
These vehicles will have to be COMPLETELY autonomous, so much so that they do not connect to anything. Completely technologically self contained or this will go down in flames.
human drivers killed 40,000 Americans last year.
perhaps they should be shut down
Driverless Car will burn less fuel than regular car because the computer will make less kickdowns and will maintain stable velocity.
brilliant and true
likely 15-30% better Fleet MPG
yuge bigley
Interesting stuff – new technology certainly seems to pervade faster than one predicts.
I had a thought/question on how might legacy road users react to these overly polite zombie vehicles
Human psychology always seems to bring out the worst. Will there be road rage? aggressive over-taking? bating (trying to trick the machine into slipping up)? Imagine a queue of traffic stuck behind a thing operating with a safety margin that dictates 25mph is a 30 zone. There’s going to be a whole load of safety issues building up here caused by other driver impatience and distain for the owners of such machinery. In the worst cases people will overtake head on and just “know” the on coming car will give way to them to avoid collision. Most likely human drivers will evolve, and Darwin will apply in the way it normally does.
I can also see the technology just blue screening or wilting when put into many real European driving scenarios. This will further enrage the enraged other road users.
Somehow I don’t see a happy coexistence between autonomous and human drivers – we will probabably end up with designated autonomy zones or roads.
In the US, I can see it working much better – road infra-structure is more set up for it, and generally a much nicer class of other road users.
Infractions will be recorded, citations issued. No humans involved. If the driver ignores citations, their presence on a road will be forwarded to the authorities instantly.
“It would be one hell of a lot easier if there was a quick and easy way to slide one battery pack out and another into its place.”
I don’t see why standardized equipment to help switch a battery pack couldn’t become a feature at service stations. If you can build a sophisticated pump with gas flow meter reaching down into big container of flammable liquid, it should be not be that difficult or much more expensive to have some kind of robot that pulls your discharged battery pack out and sticks a charged one in.
Better Place did it, went bust. Too early, spent money like water. Google the name.
This is an industry where the engine from one manufacturer can’t mate with a transmission from another without heavy modification. An industry that can’t even agree on which side of the vehicle to put the gas tank fill up.
The only way they’re going to agree on a standard physical battery size and shape is if they’re forced to. And remember that it isn’t just a single battery now. The designers jam batteries into the floor, under the back seat, middle “hump,” anywhere they can fit them and still meet crash standards. If they have to design a “standard battery” it will either greatly reduce the range or lead to every car looking even more identical than now.
” If you can build a sophisticated pump with gas flow meter reaching down into big container of flammable liquid, it should be not be that difficult or much more expensive to have some kind of robot that pulls your discharged battery pack out and sticks a charged one in.”
Given their weight and size, the spare batteries cannot be carried around by the driver. Which means the battery is supplied at the “swap station,” leading to problem number 1: batteries, unlike gas, are not fungible. Would you want to pull into a place during a cross-country trip in your one-week old Tesla and have the battery swapped for an unknown?
On the matter of self-driving cars, which has been discussed here before, I re-iterate that there will be little point in owning a self-driving car which would require space at home and be very expensive, electric or not. When my non-self-driving cars croak, I expect to use a taxi service such as Uber. Since I won’t have the pay a driver, it should be less expensive than buying and operating my own. No time wasted taking it in for repairs, either. More and more people are already leasing cars every year.
” Since I won’t have the pay a driver, it should be less expensive than buying and operating my own.”
What if the capital and maintenance cost of a self-driving vehicle exceeds that of simply hiring a cheap driver? Through a taxi cab dispatch service like Uber?
If self-driving vehicles even displace 10% of the current commercial driver population, salaries will plummet. Thus challenging self-driving vehicle economics significantly.
I think people are assuming that self-driving cars, or the infrastructure associated with them (ie: upgraded roads) will be cheap. That is probably a terribly flawed assumption to make. Even the sort of talent required to maintain them and the associated infrastructure will likely be extremely expensive.
“What if the capital and maintenance cost of a self-driving vehicle exceeds that of simply hiring a cheap driver? Through a taxi cab dispatch service like Uber?”
I am not sure what you are asking. I am going by the assumption that, by the time my vehicles are no longer worth the upkeep, self-driving cars will dominate the road. I believe that taxi services such as Uber will be the first to have them and that’s how I expect to get around – by not owning my own car and thus not worrying about maintenance. I am assuming this will be no more expensive than purchasing a vehicle or using a taxi with a driver – probably a lot less.
If my assumption turns out to be incorrect, then I’ll keep doing as I’m doing – buying older model cars with stick shifts and driving them until they’re done.
” I am assuming this will be no more expensive than purchasing a vehicle or using a taxi with a driver – probably a lot less. ”
I doubt this is a good assumption to make. Unless you’re already in a position of using a vehicle so little that using a taxi cab to get around everywhere already makes sense.
The whole idea that self-driving cars will reduce the cost of driving is, IMHO, quite flawed. A lot of people will be disappointed when they actually do the math and realize that, when a reasonable long-term cost of capital is used, there is little to no savings to be had.
If you’re into buying cheap cars and driving them into the ground, you’ll likely do eons better than taking self-driving taxi cabs everywhere. As your own labour, presumably free, would substitute for the extreme capex required in a self-driving vehicle.
Training on high voltage handling needed along with emergency service training for chemical and high voltage.
What about the fact that todays’ roads are made with human drivers in mind? Once you get rid of the allowable margin for error you can make the lanes much thinner. Once every vehicle can talk to every other vehicle, on and exit ramps can get much tighter. It might even be possible to reduce the number of lanes since the speed limits will be adhered to. Then there’s all the guardrails, signage, all the effort that goes into keeping construction zones safe, etc.
And that’s just on highways.
profound insight
What about the car manufacturing, sales & repairs jobs? A nightmare for young engineers!
Some opaque groups indulging Orwellian phantasies of total control of the people? (“Switch off their cars” if the Thought Police says so. No more cash. No more bank runs. What a nightmare!
Germany has 5.25 M civil servants. Surely, IT can replace half those jobs as well? And for the rest of us – getting taxed like the Swedes? Forced mortgages on homes? Taxes are there to be levied by some and spent by others.
Yesterday, I took my Honda VFR 800 motorcycle for a ride. Bimbling along on a sunny Spring day. That JOY bothers some fanatics, doesn’t it?
Accidents and death are part of the human reality.
Add AI and robots and then tell me how we will keep out standard of living with all this stuff. Oops, that has never been on the agenda, has it?!?
“A nightmare for young engineers!”
Hardly. If SDC’s take off, there will be tons of jobs in regulatory compliance and even infrastructure engineering associated with all of the in-road systems, communications networks, etc., required for SDC’s. Employment prospects for engineers probably would never be better with SDC’s.
There are two big problems:
1) Can a self-driving car actually be delivered at a price that’s realistic for individual or even fleet capital investment? Pricing in excess of $1M is quite likely at least for the first decade or two of public use, a significant chunk of the up-front cost being amortized engineering, cost of significant additional electro-mechanical redundancy, and up-front liability/legal costs. What about the ongoing operating costs and insurance, which is certain to be dramatically higher than traditional cars?
2) Given that Americans can’t even afford the current driver-driven fleet of vehicles, nor the infrastructure on which they drive, just who is going to be buying self-driving cars in any significant quantity? Where is the capital investment going to come from? Will the public fork out the $1-$2T for self-driving car infrastructure when the benefits will only accrue to a small number of self-driving car owners? Seems to me that the future is small fuel efficient cars, and far fewer of them on an American road network that is significantly less invested. I’d personally put more money on a long-haul rail comeback than self-driving cars taking off given how appallingly poor the US economy is in terms of availability of capital and capital formation.
I’m sure you had a great time on your motorcycle. But it’s the 90/10% rule: 90% of the time you spend in vehicles is not the least bit exciting. It’s boring routine stuff. It’s sitting in traffic. It’s dealing with other drivers who won’t go with the flow. It’s the threat of Jonny Law chasing you down for moving faster than some arbitrary speed.
Over the years I’ve had a few sportier cars. The last one, my Audi A3, will probably be my last one. Yes, it was great fun driving down highway 93 and hitting the twistys just right, but the rest of the time it wasn’t worth the added cost. Last year I came very close to getting a motorcycle. But then my friends who own them reminded me that they just didn’t ride much more than a few months a year and spent a lot of time and effort keeping them on the road. So I bought a drone instead, which feeds my photography hobby and is much easier to deal with, even though Uncle Sam is trying to make it more difficult.
Thanks for the great read Mish!
John Goodenough, the physicist widely credited with the invention of lithium-ion battery have come up with a solid-state battery that can hold three times the charge of a similar-sized lithium-ion pack, charges faster, and isn’t as dangerously volatile as lithium-ion batteries.
https://news.utexas.edu/2017/02/28/goodenough-introduces-new-battery-technology
Claims to have invented the next big thing in battery tech come along once a month, but Goodenough’s involvement here is enough to give it at least a second look.
No doubt new tech will at some point increase battery density and reduce charge time and this is likely why nobody is ready to take the risk to invest in quick battery swapping station.
Toyota is moving ahead with hydrogen fuel cell technology. Saw a Mirai on the road the other day. Looked cool. 300 mile range. 3-5 minutes to fill-up. Costs around $60k.
https://ssl.toyota.com/mirai/ownership-experience.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Mirai
Hyundai too with car and busses. Suzuki supplying London Police with FC scooters. Honda have a car and BMW have proof of concept.
Musk is Barmouth ingredients hydrogen but he would as it’s competition in the making.
Range solved, infrastructure to be addressed with efficiency. Batteries are not going away but don’t fit all demands. FC fills a gap batteries can’t reach.
Then there is the effects on the huge auto insurance market.
=======
Self-Driving Cars Raise Questions About Who Carries Insurance
April 3, 2017
http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/04/03/522222975/self-driving-cars-raise-questions-about-who-carries-insurance
Joe, did you also get a laugh at this from the NPR piece?
“James Lynch, chief actuary for the Insurance Information Institute, says if manufacturers have to bear the entire cost of insuring vehicles, that would create a huge, long-term expense. That, in turn, would create disincentives for the development of a technology that many believe will ultimately lead to safer roads, he says.”
Did NPR add a “dis” there?
Interesting subject, though. Consider that auto manufacturers became financial services companies. So it doesn’t seem too far-fetched for auto manufacturers to become insurance companies. Wait for GM to buy Geico. 🙂
In an autonomous vehicle world, is there really any need for an auto insurance industry? Especially if most consumers no longer own their own cars and depend on Uber/Lyft type services when they need a car. Manufacturers owning insurance companies or even just self-insuring makes a lot of sense.
Of course, no auto insurance leads to a lot of insurance job loss.
I do expect huge losses in insurance jobs
And I also expect losses in title insurance for a different reason – blockchain
Evans gives interesting information about long distance truck drivers.
They are in short supply right now. They are old (average age of 49). They’ll be retiring at a rate and time that matches pretty well with automation taking those jobs.
The energy density of hydrocarbons, be it fossil or manufactured, be it per mass, per volume or per dollar, is amazing. Batteries will not come close for a very long time, if ever.
Batteries don’t have to come close. They just have to be good enough at a reasonable price. Internal combustion engines have a huge problem: the cost of maintenance and repair. I’ve never seen an EV broken down on the side of the road. But I see ICE vehicles broken down everyday, because people don’t have the money or knowledge to maintain them properly.
Most non-urban American households own at least 2 vehicles already. No reason one can’t be EV and one can’t be ICE.
Battery pack storage capacity varies with temperature and number of cycles. The pack is less than perfect. Range variation is a big source of anxiety as a pack ages.
The reason you haven’t seen them on the side of the road is because there are so few of them. I’ve seen a few Teslas on flatbeds on their way to Aspen, although I’m sure they are just being transported for their (Gulfstream flying) owners or because they ran out of juice.
No accidents, no body and paint shops. How many jobs is that?
No trial lawyers making a living off other people’s accidents…
No democratic congress members getting millions in campaign donations from the trial lawyers association…
Millions of local court judges, stenographers, jury pool coordinators — all out of work
“The results of a rain dance are all in the timing.” Same thing for all these predictions above and below.
As mentioned above, Dr. Goodenough’s new battery has 3x the energy density of current Lithium Ion batteries. Tesla’s most quoted range are 208 and 265 miles. Three times that are 624 and 795 miles. Musk’s quote of 620 miles is about right for the smaller pack. How fast will it take Goodenough’s new battery to make it to market???
As far as convenient stores go. I can see the store owners replacing their pumps with recharging units and catering to apartment dwellers and people who do not have ready access to a plug of some type or need a quick charge to get to the next job.
My roof top array generates enough power each month of the year to supply all my driving needs electrically. If Goodenough’s battery is cheap enough and the replacement cost of gasoline climbs to $50 to $100 to $150 a barrel (e.g. corresponding replacement gasoline prices at the pump would be in the $2.50, $5.00, and $7.50 a gallon ranges respectively), this will drive people to electrics with their adding roof top arrays of their own and storing their excess in Goodenough’s batteries at home. Roofs may be reengineered to be longer lasting and for easier incorporation of arrays.
I can see long distance travel causing electrical lines to be built paralleling local interstates and railways. Arrays and battery stations along the way would feed these grid. There maybe “on the go” recharging using overhead pickup wires or through induction devices in the roadway. Or there could be fast recharging at Supercharger convenient stores. Innovation, cost and time will all be factors interacting with one another along with resources and energy related issues.
The non-ownership of cars won’t work in the burbs. No one wants to wait 1/2 an hour for a car to show up to go somewhere. Folks in urban areas are used to that sacrifice. If priced reasonably, I’d consider owning one if I ht my ’80’s and driving becomes dangerous. But before that, I don’t want to be subject to the police state.
I can’t believe I am agreeing with Jon Sellers on something… 🙂
I am not sure you “city folk” are as patient as you claim though. If you were willing to wait 30 minutes for an uber, not sure why you won’t wait 20 minutes for a bus that costs a lot less.
In the city, in the ‘burbs, in rural areas: the loss of privacy is a huge road block. Its not just a worry about a “big brother” police state (although that is a huge problem with the crooks in Washington both parties).
What if you want to visit your significant other? Does the whole world need to know? Does your dating schedule need to be in a database? What if you are dating someone your parents (or her’s) don’t approve of? Montegues vs Capulets takes on a whole new creepy vibe when Romeo and Juliet have to register every visit in a database.
What if a business person is meeting with a client, or a potential acquisition target? Are we supposed to believe any rational business is going to want that info in Uber’s databases?
Uber or self driving vehicles don’t work without databases — and life is full of 100% legal situations where the ride consumer simply cannot allow records of the ride to be in a database…
In short, Mish hasn’t thought through the 2nd order cultural impacts of his self driving obsession
Part of what you’ll be paying for is good stewardship of your privacy. Comcast recently announced that even though Trump rolled back the (never implemented) ISP privacy rules, they aren’t going to sell their customers’ data, mostly because they get plenty of money from the customer already, and why put that at risk?
Google and Uber and Faceplant and so forth make their profits from selling your data. You aren’t worth anything to them except what your data can be sold for.
Uber’s entire advantage (such as it is) over a standard taxi service is because they supposedly know who wants to drive and who wants a lift. They can adjust prices on-the-fly to match supply and demand… They don’t have a business model without the data
And for many other businesses (consumers of taxi / limo services), we don’t have a business model without client discretion. If Uber messes up ONE transaction, just one, it would destroy the reputation of many lawyers, investment bankers, real estate agents, etc…
Under their current business model Uber (or anything like them) cannot guarantee the anonymity required. The two business models cannot co-exist. I don’t care how many times Uber’s CEO pinky swears, it is not worth the risk.
PS — Comcast doesn’t sell your data to **third parties**. They do use your usage data “in house” for load balancing data bandwith and for determining what shows to keep / discontinue. The data is more valuable to Comcast if they don’t share it… hardly the same thing as guaranteeing your privacy
If you live in the ‘burbs’, and request a car, it might be anyone of your idle neighbor’s cars that responds to the call.
Why drive anywhere? Delivery will be so cheap, why would someone drive to the supermarket if its cheaper to have food delivered? Why visit friends if you can catch up virtually? We could all living at the edge of forests and go outside only to commune with nature.
Lots of when and if. It will arrive when engineering solutions are sufficiently solved. Why the infatuation on this topic as there will be changes in many things that impact living on the planet both good and bad. Electric cars that drive themselves will not add anything meaningful to the human experience. Perhaps our continual preoccupation with the future keeps us from being here today?
Another bleeping post about self driving EV fantasies…
As even Mish and Tesla are now admitting (in a round about way) — a battery charge “a year or two from now” (back in 2015) is two years later (in 2017) getting less than 1/3rd of what windbag Musk promised. Let’s stop putting Elon Musk on a pedestal he never earned in the first place.
Without on-going taxpayer subsidies, Tesla wouldn’t be in business at all. It keeps losing money. Its not a viable business. Actual businesses from Ford to Toyota to BMW to Honda have all concluded that commercially viable electric vehicles are still many many years away. (Govt Motors is not commercially viable without subsidies, but they reached the same conclusion). Electric cars are a research experiment intended to placate Gov Moon beam in California (where the cars are not financially viable either).
Meanwhile, short haul trucking like the local UPS / Fedex delivery trucks, are switching to use cheap natural gas. They return to the local distribution facility every night, and can refill natgas almost as fast as gasoline. They already have 1-2 employees trained to do high speed filling on site — as well as on-site mechanics.
I can’t believe Mish has researched this matter and not realized the economics of nat gas completely wipe out *ALL* battery technology fantasies. The current economics (for vehicle fleets that return to the fill up location, like UPS/Fedex or taxis) is already 5-6x better than Tesla’s wildest scenarios for several years hence. As companies like UPS/Fedex modify more trucks (spreading the fixed costs across more vehicles), they should double economic efficiency (cost per mile driven). nat gas delivery trucks, simply by rolling out more trucks, will be more than 11x as efficient as the imaginary technology Tesla hopes to have 4-5 years from now.
Electric batteries won’t happen unless the government forces people to use them at gunpoint, and even then its going to require trillions in taxpayer subsidies.
With Uncle Sam already running trillion dollar spending deficits, with out of control health care costs and an aging population, trillions in unpayable debts already, and an effective tax rate already at the top of the viable range… where would government come up with trillions in subsidies for Tesla’s fantasy world?
Without a fascist government forcing uneconomic batteries down consumers throats, viable EV batteries are several decades away. And a BIG F U to wanna-be Fuhrer Elon Musk for expecting taxpayers to pay for his fantasies at gunpoint.
Lots of other commenters already pointed out the myriad of cultural and social issues with self driving cars, but Mish doesn’t listen and doesn’t want to hear.
Two thoughts.
First, I’ve taken up aerial photography using small uavs (drones). They are capable of fully autonomous flight and indeed maintain stability and position in windy conditions far better than I could flying manually. I have a program that will let me plan a route, upload it to the aircraft and basically push start and watch it do its thing. As I get better at programming it, this will likely be the default way I use it mostly because I want to make the most of the very limited flight time. The aircraft has anti-collision sensors that will attempt to keep it from flying into objects and the ground, but it gets confused when pointed at the Sun. The battery is the primary limiting factor in these devices because of the power to weight trade off. At some point you’ll have diminishing returns when you add more battery. And the batteries themselves are very fragile, again to keep weight down. It is pretty much a given that if you should crash the battery should be discarded, even if it looks to be in good shape. The batteries only last about 60 flights or so before they start to show reduced life due to dendrite growth.
Second, my Cherokee has adaptive cruise control and lane departure. While driving in Saturday traffic on I-70 it constantly overreacted to vehicles changing lanes and insane drivers’ speed changes. And if there weren’t clear lines on the road (typical in the spring thanks to plows and other effects of winter) it just gives up. Long way to go before it is ready.
kojeg, how much better is your Cherokee’s cruise control and lane departure than that of your previous car?
Extrapolate that learning curve forward.
The “Charging” problem will be “solved” by in-flight charging and powering along fast moving highways. Not ever more “Park and Grow Old Waiting” “Superchargers.” Dragging around massive, expensive, toxic, heavy battery every day, just for that one trip to the parents on Thanksgiving, is simply too inefficient to ever amount to much.
As a luxury product a high range Tesla is fine. Allows Fed welfare recipients to show off how wealthy and “green” they are. And politicians in Norway to feign superiority in their “competition” with the Swedes across the border.
But it simply doesn’t scale. And the failure modes are really thorny. Partially due to long charging times, many/most ecars on longer trips, are running fairly low on charge. A power grid disruption knocking out one supercharger station, knocks out all in the affected area. It’s not like gas stations, that have independent supplies. So you quickly get cars who can’t get anywhere queuing up. Until things get really critical…
Whereas with in flight charging, infinite range freeway travel without stop is possible. So you’ll need ever less battery, as more and more freeways become “hot.” And the utilities powering any section of freeway, will have “their” sections overlap, reducing, a-la RAID disks, the chance of interruption. Plus, almost all cars on the freeway will run around with a full charge. Allowing things to keep running even if a freeway stretch goes black for a while. You need layered redundancy in infrastructure as critical as transportation. Or the, even if only occasional, disruption quickly becomes catastrophic.
Left with the need for range covering only local driving, ecars can be made cheaply enough to seriously challenge ICEs. Even without small-oil-country-sustainable-only subsidies. (you’ll still have local chargers at home and work. Just not enough battery to go 500 miles at sustained German Autobahn speeds.)
The real question is really whether to attempt retrofitting in flight charging to existing freeways, with ecars coexisting with legacy ones. Or to go whole hog and fit the ecars with some form of rail connector. The former may be quicker to get rolling. But the eventual upside of, say, building separate maglev tracks, will allow for much higher speeds, higher efficiency, lower pollution, and less politically charged squabbles about whose interests get prioritized on common used roadways.
Anyways. in flight charging is coming. Whether to Reno, Scandinavia, Korea or China first, is still an open question…..
Many states (ahem) in the USA are already in WAY over their heads just maintaining simple highway lanes. Potholes and cracks and patches, criss-crossing painted lane lines, lane closures for all sorts of random reasons (some of which drivers can figure out, many times its not obvious).
The idea that my journey is also going to depend on magic charging stripes built into / on top of this road chaos is just plain absurd. Only a fool would put their trust in such nonsense.
Yeah yeah, some politician promises to waste how ever many billions of taxpayer money fixing infrastructure. 90% will be embezzled by state unions and state contractors bribing state unions. The potholes are unlikely to get fixed, and they will not stay fixed. This outcome is true regardless of which political party is telling the lie or how well the politician reads a teleprompter.
For a charging stripe in the road to be possible, it would require a massive cultural and ethical change in how government works (or doesn’t work). Until then, you sound just as ridiculous and out-of-touch as that con artist Musk.
Your idea relies on government getting fixed, and lets just say you will have to prove that can be done first — before you can daydream about embedding power strips into roadways.
Stop the lying. Just stop. You have no credibility, none. Any proposal that relies on government being efficient is just going to get you ridicule you deserve
If you can’t get to what you call magical charging strips, you won’t get to widespread use of battery electrics at all. As the other alternatives all presume battery improvements that are vastly more speculative than “charging strips.” The latter just an engineering and coordination problem.
An H2 infrastructure is another option. Definitely much less central planning dependent. Which will ultimately help it prevail according to many. Simply because the populations of drivers in countries with a power grid reliable enough to even dream of electrifying the auto fleet, are becoming an ever smaller share of the world’s total number of drivers. The technology to make H2 viable is definitely well into the future, though.
Or, just keep using petroleum ICEs. Improving their efficiency over time. Perhaps slowly electrifying them as plug in hybrids. Which are honestly the best of both worlds as far as efficiency goes. At a steady highway speed, the difference in efficiency between an optimized ICE and a power turbine + transmission grid, is at it’s lowest. While local hops can be driven just as electric and “emissions free” as a Tesla.
I really don’t have much of an issue with either an H2 nor an ICE/hybrids scenario. It’s the whole “plug in and wait forever,” “cross your fingers and hope there is no power outage lasting more than 10 minutes since you’ll have half of Nevada piled up on offramps,” “add about a ton of battery to even the smallest commuter car” (and it’s ultimate conclusion: 50mph speed limits since that is the only way to get decent range out of the oversized RCs) myopia that is a dead end. And yet, that is the future that is currently being hyped as some sort pf panacea.
But aside from that, I’m with you. Heck I’ll double down: Government can’t even maintain roads, so just get rid of them both. Screw paying taxes “because we need roads.” Let the people spend their money on Ecoboosted Raptors instead and roam the desserts freely 🙂
I am saying that governments that have a proven inability to do basic road maintenance (eg, see the 50 states in the USA) are not going to have reliable charging strips built into their defective road systems.
The battery technology is so far in the future its embarassing that Elon Musk managed to con Obama out of billions in subsidies — and anyone being honest with themselves that is exactly what happened.
I suspect UPS, FedEx, and possibly Walmart and Amazon will operate fleets of natgas delivery trucks. UPS/Fedex trucks already return to their base at the end of deliveries, and both companies already operate their own gas stations and mechanics bays. Both companies are already experimenting with duel fuel engines (that can burn natgas or gasoline). And for most of the US and most “business centers” around the world, both companies already have trucks passing by your house several times a week (if not daily).
Whether it makes good business sense or not, Amazon seems hell-bent on doing same day deliveries. Walmart already has physical stores in most US neighborhoods, a local delivery service (operated by walmart or UPS/Fedex) wouldn’t be a big leap.
But magic cars driven by Elon Musk’s empty promises? Mish should know better. Without ongoing taxpayer subsidies, Tesla isn’t viable. There isn’t enough float for people to short the stock. Delorean had more chance of success and involved a lot less vapor-ware.
Charging strips are technologically possible, but not practical in a world where states can’t maintain simple asphalt roads. The neglect of roads is not a temporary thing, several politicians promise to fix US infrastructure every election, the socialist that just left the white house promised $700 billion to fund shovel ready projects. The decay of US bridges and highways continued without even a blip.
Lots of interest here regarding both electric and autonomous vehicles.
Regarding electric: The adoption of electric vehicles will continue at a slow and steady pace over the next three decades, perhaps reaching as high as 50% of all road vehicles. The reason for this slow rate of adoption is the lack of significant benefits to the owner. Unless there are some unforeseen technological advances in battery technology, there will remain a significant number of gas, diesel, and natural gas vehicles on the road. I believe the discussion of this topic to be “not worth the time”.
On the other hand, autonomous vehicles are worthy of discussion because they will transform society to a greater degree than any other recent development. I am less optimistic than Mish as to the time line for adoption, however I am perhaps more optimistic as to the net benefits of this technology.
That said, the adoption of autonomous vehicles will be far faster than electric vehicles simply because of the significant benefits to the owner. Autonomous technology will be adopted in diesel long haul trucks, natural gas delivery vehicles, hybrid/electric taxis and busses, and personal vehicles (no matter the mode of power) simply because the owner will benefit so much.
However, the greatest benefit of the increasing number of autonomous vehicles will be society. The changes that result will be “transformational”. I don’t have time right now to discuss all these benefits (as I could write an entire book about it) but here is a short list:
Millions of lives saved
Hundreds of millions of accident related injuries avoided
Huge cost savings in Insurance and Medical Care
Greatly reduced number of vehicles on the roads requiring fewer road repairs, fewer road expansions, fewer parking spots. This also results in better traffic flow, less travel time, no gridlock, less pollution, less fuel use, etc etc
As with all change, there will be negatives, including job losses. But as always with technology, there will be job gains as well.
This is going to happen, no matter what anyone thinks: not because it’s the right (or wrong) thing to do, not because of government, or people of influence, but simply because of the benefits to those who embrace it. As human beings we will always follow the path that benefits us individually. It’s really that simple.
@realist — “…the greatest benefit of the increasing number of autonomous vehicles will be society.”
@realist — “… the path that benefits us individually…”
.
You defeated your own argument.
The reason that autonomous vehicles will be adopted is because of the benefit to the individuals and companies that buy them. This benefit will be too big to pass up. That is why they will be adopted. We all do what is in our best interest as individuals.
Once they are adopted, then society as a whole reaps an even larger benefit. It’s win-win.
Sorry you didn’t understand.
At least half the individuals commenting here do not see a benefit and/or see significant downside. They won’t adapt the technology.
And once the loss of privacy becomes clear, a lot of other individuals will stop using it or never adapt it. You have to separate what you and your fellow cult members in San Fransisco will accept, versus what the average person will accept.
In the real world (outside of San Fran) — businesses cannot accept the corporate espionage these hideous self driving cars entail. There goes the most lucrative market. Then you have people who like to date (ahem), which includes most of the planet.
Do you visit planned parenthood? A domestic battery shelter? Attend alcoholics anonymous? See a psychiatrist? Going to a marriage counselor? Because if you take a self driving car your attendance is now in a database that you have zero control over. Your spouse, your neighbors, your insurance provider, potential employers, potential landlords — all have instant access to the database of your visits.
Now tell us all a giant whopper of a lie, that the database will never be rented or sold or hacked.
You definitely live in a different world than I do. Perhaps, living in America, you see conspiracies all around you, and an Orwellian future. I, however look forward with optimism that the future will be better for all, as humans continue to solve more of the problems that surround us.
I assume you don’t use a smartphone, as that would be the best method of keeping track of you. Why bother with designing Autonomous vehicles to keep track of people’s lives when almost everyone already has a smartphone that can track you instead. Or wait; I’m sure all Americans have already had chips embedded in their bodies by the government. Or maybe they were embedded by the Aliens! I’ll bet that Trump is actually an Alien. His body has been snatched!
Grab that gun and head for your bunker before they come for you!
What a moron.
for an idiot going by the name “realist” you sure are out of touch with reality.
Amazon was just sued in the US for the data in their Alexa home automation product — by a court of law as part of a murder case. Now that the data is admissible in a legal proceding, any civil case can also subpeana all your uber records.
You aren’t an optimist, you are clueless and uninformed.
Hackers will have a field day with these self driving cars.
rather doubt it
Hacking can be a whole spectrum of behaviours, not just ones you’d traditionally associate with computers.
Denying GPS or cell service is pretty trivial these days. Position such a denial device near a busy freeway, and there’s instant chaos until a specialist can locate and remove it.
A little bit of mud applied to a sensor or two in a parking lot could feasibly disable the instrumentation on a self-driving car.
The list of relatively simple “hacks” can go on and on. Trivially dealt with, or of no consequence to human drivers, but game-stopping issues for self-driving vehicles.
Oh come on Mish…
Do you expect your readers to believe the US air force expected Iran to hack into a predator drone? Because that was fool proof and hack proof too.
Long range problem with electrics? I see none!
Where 90% of a owner’s driving is done short haul, the rare event of a long haul could offer multiple solutions.
1. Renting a gas autonomous will be cheaper, because of minor insurance costs, and your excellent renting history (always return vehicle in good condition).
2. Hitch a rented battery trailer (camper included?) that greatly extends your range, allows more baggage room, and if needed, can be exchanged with another along the way.
3. Denny’s with charging stations are a no brainer. Have a glass of wine with your meal, and doze off on the highway.
Driving on ice and snow in the northern tier of states will give the plaintiffs bar an auto industry breaking pay day and will require all safety equipment to be continued. A freezing rain in Atlanta or Dallas will create havoc with massive pile-ups, deaths and injuries and many legal actions against the car companies.
Sorry. It’s humans who don’t react well in those conditions. Autonomous vehicles will be much safer as they will adjust properly for the conditions. The number of legal actions will drop dramatically as there will rarely be any accidents. This will result in tremendous savings in legal fees, court costs, and insurance rates. Though I’m sure the naysayers will point with delight to every single accident involving an Autonomous vehicle, even if the number of overall accidents drops by 99%. Autonomous vehicles never drive drunk, high, or distracted.
Yeah, yeah… the infamous all-knowing, all-seeing, never ever fails super computer.
You don’t get out into the real world much, do you “realist”?
Actually, I get out a lot. I’m an avid outdoors type. I get the feeling that you hide in your bunker, wearing a tin foil hat to prevent the government from controlling your thoughts.
You sound like someone who can’t read.
Did you read the news story that amazon’s alexa data has already been subpeana’d in a court of law in the US?
Have you read any of thousands of stories about secure systems getting hacked?
Maybe you shouldn’t spend all your time in the woods, and you wouldn’t write such stupid comments
They don’t need to be perfect, just better. Insurance companies will let you know who wins.
So this computer is driving down the hiway observing the speed limit when suddenly it hits a patch of black ice. The back end of the computer passes the front end and the vehicle is in a spin and heading for the ditch in only 1 second.
The computer runs thru all of its algorithms and deploys its helicopter blades to take flight above the black ice and deploys additional sensors to detect when the stretch of black ice ends.
Winter driving will not work with computers.
Non-self-driving transportation is an historical oddity.
100 years ago well off people (in extreme poverty in today’s terms, but reasonably well off in those days of yore) had self-driving technology. They called it “horse”.
We have self driving vehicles already… they are called taxis and buses and trains and … you just sit back and leave the driving to a professional
… and they have been available long before Mish started getting excited about software controlled (and hackable) “self driving” cars.
Roger that, Medex Man.
Which, the popularity of both goes to show us to ignore those who assert self-drive is something not enough people want, need, or will pay for – usually by noting they will only allow their steering wheel to be pried from their cold, dead hands.
Mish seems to think that taxis driven by software will take traditional drivers off the road — which is an assertion that simply doesn’t hold up to simple observation.
Maybe uber or self driving cars will replace many taxis and some limos, but that means the majority of cars on the road will still be privately owned and human driven.
Auto-pilot is available on boats and planes (has been for decades). It hasn’t put boat captains or pilots out of work and no one in their right mind is suggesting auto-pilot will. Its a driver assist technology, and that is all this self-driving car nonsense is going to be.
Even Tesla calls their technology “driver assist” — because that is all it is
Here is a bit of honesty:
“Tesla’s Technical Chief, Jeffrey Brian – maybe the dream will never be possible ” (in Norwegian)
http://www.side3.no/motor/tesla-sjef—drmmen-blir-kanskje-aldri-mulig/3423257722.html
Nowhere is the source of the energy for the batteries mentioned in the comments above. I guess belief is the important thing.
A huge drop in the number of accidents would cause a similar drop in car and truck sales to replace them. Also, trucks running 24 hours means fewer trucks needed so a big drop in truck sales.
Who is going to maintain the trucks running 24/7? Who is going to build and supply parts for the elves that do these magic repairs?
This whole discussion reminds me of a clueless PhD visiting from LA who wanted to know why a deer hunter was brutally cutting apart the deer he had just shot (normal people call the process “butchering”).
The bimbo asked, with a completely straight face, why this monster of a man didn’t just get his meat like a civilized person, you know, from a grocery store?
I am guessing that “Mark” has a similar grasp of how magic elves repair trucks while he is sleeping. The sad part is he votes, and probably in California
I was talking about truck sales, not repairs. Repairs would be done by your magic elves, very highly specialized mechanics, so shade tree mechanics need not apply. The sad part is I vote, but have never lived in CA. You should read my post again: I said sales, but not anything about repairs.
Its a good point, if you’re into details. So how many hours a week would you suppose a continuously used truck should be down for PM and the occasional repair?
Driverless trucks will still have to stop for fuel. They will also continue to spread pieces of tire all over the roads, and will have to sit on the shoulder waiting for the tire service truck, just as they do now.
Correct
Driverless truck have to fuel and handle blowouts.
Those things don’t change.
I work on chargers for electronic vehicles. 20 minute charges are here, from empty to full. Hardly compares to a 3 minute fillup, but that’s what is here, now. I doubt it will ever get below 10 minutes simply because the voltage and amperage involved is, well, terrifying even with all the safeguards in place.
There is heavy government subsidization in this area as well, unfortunately. We now live in a fascist system which the government picks the losers and winners.
Elephant in the room – BATTERIES.
Batteries are a lousy technology, and all of these pipe dreams are 100% dependent on them.
Batteries are non-recyclable. Batteries are toxic. Every military & space program on the planet has been trying to improve batteries for 100 years… and their progress? marginal, AT BEST.
Heavy, toxic, physically limited, non-improvable batteries are the turd in the punch bowl here, and absolutely no one is acknowledging/admitting it…
I agree with everything said about self-driving vehicles. However, I have seen no discussion on driving behaviors encoded into the algorithms. For example, will hill-climbing trucks on the interstate always stay in the right lane or will one try to pass the other, backing everything up? If all cars drive EXACTLY the speed limit, the vehicles become commodities. What will happen to high performance vehicles? Why buy a Porsche if it drives like a minivan? “Passing lanes” will no longer make sense because everything drives the same speed.
The list goes on. There are a zillion behaviors built into the algorithms–how much latitude will buyers have to tweak those variables?
For starters, trucks will not attempt to pass each other.
That’s an amazing improvement in and of itself
As someone working in cyber security – it will be quite interesting to see how people will attempt to mod their machines to gain higher performance.
This is disregarding the fundamentally insecure nature of car systems today, period.
You can already firmware update most cars newer than 2000 or so with higher performance packages – how attractive is the ability to influence the behavior of all those slugs around you?
The meme that parking is responsible for a lot of big city traffic is an attractive one, but is false. Is either traffic or parking better in SF – the epicenter of ride sharing worldwide?
Sadly, no. The reality is that ride sharing means driving 50% to 100% more miles per trip delivered than having your own car. The net result is moving the parking lot into the roadway.
Secondly, the estimates for autonomous cars delivering rides at lower cost is also false. Barring an enormous change in pricing for the equipment needed: lidar, computing, sensors, etc plus some magical way to service/clean these cars, the capital costs for an autonomous vehicle will be very large and likely offset any human labor savings.
why in the world would i buy a self driving car?
why in the world would i want to share a public one?
the insurance industry concerned with drivers would shrivel up and die.
there will still be accidents- just lack of responsibility – way to breed dependence, eh?
no free man who knows that mobility is one of the 5 laws of freedom will give it up willingly.
my view is that autonomous passenger cars have no market but corporate fleets or taxi service and that market may be significant but only exists in high population density areas.
no farmer is going to use an autonomous vehicle to haul bales of hay to the pasture.
no rural person is going to wait for an uber-bot to drive out to the boonies for a trip to the clinic when the contractions start.
but auto industry and auto insurance industry suicide might be on the agenda- there’s no limit to what a fool will do for the green agenda.
i can’t imagine what laws will be required to enforce this… it will have to be taken to a new level.
Your opinion does not matter. Mine does not either. Personally, I like to drive. I talk of what I believe will happen
Here’s the working link: https://www.tesla.com/findus
https://youtu.be/2b3ttqYDwF0