Uber v Taxis
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@Kirwan said in Uber v Taxis:
@gollum said in Uber v Taxis:
On the criminal side, if the law makers have any concept of forward thought they should start enforcing jaywalking laws in the next few years. Start with warnings, then small fines, then ramp it up.
If self drive comes in & people just amble across the road that'll create huge traffic jams as the cars will brake. So then more & more assholes will just stroll across the road when they feel like it. So you really want 4 or 5 years of people being weaned off jaywalking before we get there.
That's a damn good point.
Humans being humans will find a way to game a system. The flip side will be it will be always safe to cross the road, I guess.
Cars won't need horns any more...so the horn money can be spent on installing tasers.
Edit - just realised I replied to a post a couple of months old!
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@Chris-B. Ladies and gentleman, welcome to Nelson, where the local time is 1987, please set your watches accordingly
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www.stuff.co.nz/motoring/news/92592333/petrol-cars-will-vanish-in-eight-years-says-us-report
That's quite the prediction... Marginal cost of EVs is much lower than PVs, so look for EVs to take over sooner rather than later, and go driverless while they're at it.
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@Godder Eight years. Eight.
Google, Apple, and Foxconn have the disruptive edge, and are going in for the kill. Silicon Valley is where the auto action is, not Detroit, Wolfsburg, or Toyota City.
Without wishing to shit on yet another economist's pronouncements; Prof Seba doesn't seem to be aware nor understand that the existing auto manufacturers are the ones with the giant playsets, the distribution channels and repair networks. They're the ones with the engineers and corporate knowledge to make vehicles. They're also the ones pumping more money than tech companies into automotive technology. He seems to think they're still playing Nero, while Detroit burns.
I don't see Google, Apple, and Foxconn in motorsport. Where's their efforts in F1 and Le Mans LMP1 class?
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@antipodean said in Uber v Taxis:
Where's their efforts in F1 and Le Mans LMP1 class?
The question for me: does electric car racing has as much to offer in terms of petrol car racing in terms of R&D?
Overall it is a lot simpler in terms of drive train, efficiency targets, etc. Most of the developments would be around battery life - mainly energy density - and that can be lab-managed probably as well as on the track.
I too am skeptical about 8 years. Certainly there are countries like India who have the opportunity to produce electric cars in quantity in a rapidly developing society. Nations like Norway and Denmark plan to phase out ICEV by 2025.
But jeez... you'd need a LOT more big auto players - particularly in the US - to move into the electric sector. Dealers lose money for selling the current Chevy Volt so they're not actually keen on selling it. In Europe the big automakers are only just starting to get going. A lot of electric options aren't even being offered in nations like Australia because the volume isn't high enough.
Maybe by 2030 we'll have ~25% of sales as electric.
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Putting aside that oddly optimistic prediction I thought this was interesting
The NIO EP9 Now Claims To Be The Fastest Road Car To Lap The Nürburgring - Jalopnik
The NIO EP9 electric supercar already set the set the record as the fastest purely electric car around the Nürburgring Nordschleife with a 7 minute, 5.12 second lap, but the weather wasn’t just right. So, NIO says they went back to set a sub-seven-minute ‘ring time just because they could, setting...
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@antipodean said in Uber v Taxis:
Without wishing to shit on yet another economist's pronouncements; Prof Seba doesn't seem to be aware nor understand that the existing auto manufacturers are the ones with the giant playsets, the distribution channels and repair networks. They're the ones with the engineers and corporate knowledge to make vehicles. They're also the ones pumping more money than tech companies into automotive technology. He seems to think they're still playing Nero, while Detroit burns.
I went and read the article. I think he's onto something - probably not in the timeframes he's talking about, but still imminent. The thing with the EV, is that all the technology is in the battery. That can be hard to reproduce or imitate - first to market has a strong chance of crushing all before them.
What's going to drive people to change is the fundamental costs. ANyone who uses their car can easily spend 15-20c/km in petrol around town. If someone offers you a similarly priced car, but at 2-3c/km, you'll take their arm off. Look for the taxis - they'll be first to change. They are all prius already; it'll be the electric that goes next.
The optimist in me thinks 10 years for routine self driving cars, and a similar time before electric is the normal 'new car'. It'll take years for the petrol station networks to roll up though, and for the legacy cars to get old enough to be worth replacing.
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@Kirwan said in Uber v Taxis:
That's a ludicrous prediction. How would the infrastructure to refuel cars be put in place to support it?
It's going to be a gradual change that will take decades.
As one example of the infrastructure:
ChargePoint to deploy 200 of its 'up to 400 kW' electric vehicle charging stations in the UK
We were excitted when ChargePoint unveiled its latest charging station technology earlier this year. It’s a modular system called Express...
And they need to agree on standards or people will need to carry adapters everywhere! Still going to take ages to be able to service that many cars though.
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@nzzp I agree it will happen and once a critical mass is achieved it will happen very quickly, but the two points I call out he's unequivocally wrong IMO. At best, Google/ whoever will licence their mapping. LIDAR is used extensively already by Defence and it's easier for automobile manufacturers to adopt multi-modal simultaneous localisation and mapping than it is for Apple to build, distribute and support heavy machinery.
For example; Toyota has been working on autonomous cars for more than a decade. It spends $10 billion per annum on R&D. Volkswagen spends even more. Google, Apple and Foxconn aren't doing that.
The legacy cars will be taxed out of existence in cities. Greens voters will ensure that and it's a stance in the very near future I will support entirely. Vehicles are too complex for 99.99% of humanity to control in proximity to anything, let alone with any level of efficiency.
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http://m.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11859781
An investment bank breaks down the cost of a cheap EV part by part, and finds that they are thousands cheaper than originally thought, and that there's room for more savings, so EVs will soon be cheaper than petrol equivalents.
