Life in the future with cars.

To reduce congestion on public roads trips will be scheduled by computer.   Much future work will be Work from Home. 
      Should  your presence be needed at work you'll get a text  with scheduled self driving car pick you up at 9:48.30 am and arrive at work at 10:27.40. 
 (Japan's trains keep time to the second because they are electric and computer controlled ) 

    What else will happen?

I think there will be less car ownership, largely because more people will be priced out of owning cars, it's starting to happen already.

Regardless of who owns or drives the cars, computer-controlled traffic scheduling could be a very good thing. Imagine your nav system telling you to wait a minute before you get on the road, so that you'll get green lights wherever you're going. Cars could travel at the speed limit in traffic blocks, lights turn green just as the block approaches and back to red just after the block passes through. You've probably been lucky enough to get on a "green wave" occasionally, with central traffic planning everyone could be on green waves all the time.

In reply to GameboyRMH :

I agree with the idea and have had those thoughts for decades - since I was commuting to college back in the late 80's. Do I think I will see it in my lifetime? Not holding my breath. The technology is there, but I'm not sure the collective will to give that much control to computers will be there for a long time.

sounds like humans commuting will be nothing more than a 1 or a zero traveling across a circuit board.

Ian F (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to GameboyRMH :

I agree with the idea and have had those thoughts for decades - since I was commuting to college back in the late 80's. Do I think I will see it in my lifetime? Not holding my breath. The technology is there, but I'm not sure the collective will to give that much control to computers will be there for a long time.

Trying very hard not to turn this political.  But the collective needs to experience  things before they will acknowledge the validity.  Fear of the unknown is what is driving a lot of the reaction to things like EV's.  
   
  Classic example is EFI.  A computer controlling the "carburetor "?  And Ignition?    Nobody would have accepted that.   The car companies just did it.   
   By now only a few old timers  know how to re-jet carbs and modify accelerator pumps.  But they are quickly becoming obsolete. Even they know what Luddites they have become.  
   I'm certain when Japan  exactly controlled train schedules  they simply did it and announced the new precision.  

The general trend for "the Future" is that:   

It tends to change a lot less than people predict it will

Asphalt_Gundam said:

sounds like humans commuting will be nothing more than a 1 or a zero traveling across a circuit board.

When dealing with anything  exceeding 8 billion,  ( earths population) the individual really does disappear.  
      That's difficult for the individual to accept.  But it's kind of like driving on the public highway.  While someone might want to drive down the middle of the highway.   With everyone else staying to their side of the road, the person driving down the middle is going to cause massive problems.  

GameboyRMH said:

I think there will be less car ownership, largely because more people will be priced out of owning cars, it's starting to happen already.

Regardless of who owns or drives the cars, computer-controlled traffic scheduling could be a very good thing. Imagine your nav system telling you to wait a minute before you get on the road, so that you'll get green lights wherever you're going. Cars could travel at the speed limit in traffic blocks, lights turn green just as the block approaches and back to red just after the block passes through. You've probably been lucky enough to get on a "green wave" occasionally, with central traffic planning everyone could be on green waves all the time.

Self driving cars could close ranks to increase volume on a given road.  Speed limits could  also be greatly increased. 
   A trip that takes an hour during rush hour  could be reduced to 10 minutes. 

I predict the future of auto travel in the US will look a lot like today, but less convenient. 

Suburban sprawl will continue to increase, and commute times and distances will increase. Some autonomy will be possible on freeway but nothing looking like the "full self driving" we have seen promised over the past decade. Cars will continue to increase in size and weight and our infrastructure spending will not keep up with maintenance needs, so roads will be in worse shape. 

In other countries, inner city car travel will be replaced a lot more by last-mile type of EVs - think city cars, eBikes, etc - with commuting from outside the city handled by commuter rail. This will probably also be true, to a lesser extent, in a couple North American enclaves like NYC, the Bay Area, greater Toronto and Montreal. 

I suspect that the driving landscape won't change much in the next 20 years. 

We'll get some autonomous cars and likely more people will be working from home but I personally don't see a radical change.

I also don't see EVs totally taking over either.

As an aside for Frenchyd: vintage racing is ever more popular so more and more people are deal with carbs.  In the age of the internet you can get enough information to get your car running at 95% optimal..............which is good enough for most people.

Some might be predicting less driving on the roads as remote work becomes more prevalent, but it seems like there are more people on the roads than ever where I am. Ugh.

In reply to frenchyd :

Trying very hard not to turn this political.  But the collective needs to experience  things before they will acknowledge the validity.  Fear of the unknown is what is driving a lot of the reaction to things like EV's.  
   
  Classic example is EFI.  A computer controlling the "carburetor "?  And Ignition?    Nobody would have accepted that.   The car companies just did it.   
   By now only a few old timers  know how to re-jet carbs and modify accelerator pumps.  But they are quickly becoming obsolete. Even they know what Luddites they have become.  
   I'm certain when Japan  exactly controlled train schedules  they simply did it and announced the new precision.  
 

I don't think you have a very good grasp on what the average person thinks. The average person doesn't care much about the technology that powers their car. The average person has no clue how carburetors, EFI, direct injection, hybrids or EV's work, and they don't really care. When you started driving, you had to know how to work on your car. New cars were not reliable and every car required regular maintenance. Road side fixes were common. As cars got better, less and less people cared about fixing their own cars. We are around 3 generations removed from most people wanting a carbureted car. It took about 20 years for fuel injection to become widely adopted, and the early systems were very problematic. But even back then it wasn't fear of the unknown. It was people wanted to see an improvement, not just change. 

With EV's right now, it's not fear of the unknown. Quite the opposite, it's the very well know challenges that slow adoption. Price, range, and recharge time. Sure they are improving, and adoption will increase as improvements meet more people's needs. If EV's are a better solution for most people, the market will adapt and reflect that. It's not because the collective needs to experience EV's because they don't know any better. That is an incredibly ignorant position.

Your rosy outlook on what self driving cars would mean for traffic congestion is very similar. You are looking at the positive aspects without weighting any of the negatives. Idealistic sounds great, but in the real world, you need to be realistic. Best case scenario. Let's pretend self driving works flawlessly, and leave all of those variables alone for now. You are assuming that if cars drove themselves, people would continue with their current patterns unchanged. It would just be more efficient, because they would be driven more precisely and coordinated, eliminating traffic jams. But I'd wager that if people had self driving EV's, they would alter their current driving patterns substantially. Right now, there is a time incentive to plan your daily routes the most efficiently. But as we have seen with Amazon, Door Dash, etc.., we make more frequent, less organized trips when it's convenient and not costing us time. There would be cars going everywhere, all of the time. Maybe the increased efficiency would offset the increased volume. If it's 100% autonomous. Add human drivers to the mix, and traffic will be worse overall. 

In reply to Boost_Crazy :

Well said and I accept your arguments.  They make sense.  
 You could say that I see the glass 1/2 full while you see it half empty.  
      Right now the average person travels 13,000 miles per year. That amounts to 35 miles per day.   Range really isn't a factor in any practical sense.  
   With regard to costs?   A brand new Chevy Bolt will cost $22,000 after the tax incentive. ( yes as of Jan 1 it is eligible and you can apply towards the purchase.  Want a SUV?  The New Bolt is either the sedan or a new small SUV.  ( called an EUV) similar price.  
  The Nissan Leaf  is slightly cheaper but I don't know if it qualifies content wise. 
    Used car buyer?   You get a $3500 rebate and the Chevy's will all have new batteries replaced under warranty. ( that's the basis for the myth batteries need replacement in 2 years). 
  Now, recharge time on a Chevy Bolt. Assuming the commute    range 35-50 range, plug it into 110 volt outlet in your garage  and it will be charged back up long before you go to work.  
   OK, I haven't talked about the 1000+ mile vacation have I?  Once, Twice a year?  Rental car? Flying? Train trip?   Maybe even rent a Motor Home ?  
    Easy to pay for with the $2000 a year you save using EV rather than gasoline* Plus not spending $50-70 per oil change.  
 
   No, it's not going to happen over night.   But then neither is the switch to total renewables. 

J.A. Ackley said:

Some might be predicting less driving on the roads as remote work becomes more prevalent, but it seems like there are more people on the roads than ever where I am. Ugh.

I've noticed that it's more Hybrid and some days are a lot lighter ( Monday & Friday) while others are only slightly lighter.  
Weekends seem worse!!!!  

Erich said:

I predict the future of auto travel in the US will look a lot like today, but less convenient. 

Suburban sprawl will continue to increase, and commute times and distances will increase. Some autonomy will be possible on freeway but nothing looking like the "full self driving" we have seen promised over the past decade. Cars will continue to increase in size and weight and our infrastructure spending will not keep up with maintenance needs, so roads will be in worse shape. 

In other countries, inner city car travel will be replaced a lot more by last-mile type of EVs - think city cars, eBikes, etc - with commuting from outside the city handled by commuter rail. This will probably also be true, to a lesser extent, in a couple North American enclaves like NYC, the Bay Area, greater Toronto and Montreal. 

You're probably right.  Rail to be cost effective needs a population density  that America doesn't yet have. ( perhaps except the coasts? ). 

Tom1200 said:

I suspect that the driving landscape won't change much in the next 20 years. 

We'll get some autonomous cars and likely more people will be working from home but I personally don't see a radical change.

I also don't see EVs totally taking over either.

As an aside for Frenchyd: vintage racing is ever more popular so more and more people are deal with carbs.  In the age of the internet you can get enough information to get your car running at 95% optimal..............which is good enough for most people.

 

Much as I'd like that to be true I think that every single person in vintage racing  or racing using any form of petroleum  has to be less than 1/10 of 1% 

aircooled said:

The general trend for "the Future" is that:   

It tends to change a lot less than people predict it will

I agree. 

You'll own nothing and you'll be happy. 

Especially cars. 

But secretly you won't be happy. But you will be afraid to step out of line to say that you aren't happy. 

I'm going the other way with this, mate.

Self-driving cars running in tight packs together down the highway sure seems like making light rail the hard way 

Jokes aside, I'm staring down the barrel of a 1200 mile road trip almost entirely on I5 next week and I'd love to just plop into my car and not have to drive it myself. There's nothing particularly exciting about cruising down the freeway for hours. 

In reply to frenchyd :

I'm not looking at the glass as half empty. I'm just telling you how it is. Everything you listed about the current state of EV's- is not good enough for most of the market. Those examples currently satisfy only a small slice of the demand. If and when the EV market gets to where it needs to be, you won't have to explain the merits of EV's and why people should buy one. The fact that you think you need to explain them is evidence that they are not ready. 
 

I took a serious look at buying a Lightning last month. Drove one, there were lots of things to like. Enough to offset the negatives- range, recharge time. But the pricing was not quite there. One, $40k Lightnings Don't exist anymore- the base price has moved up to $50k. That makes the XLT more appealing at $60k. But those were pretty hard to find, most were $70k starting Lariates. Plus- they all had large markups, effectively eliminating any financial incentive. Doing the math- with the extra tax break subsidy- the payback was just too long. Most owners won't own them long enough to realize a savings over a gas truck. In the end, the pluses and minuses over a standard F150 were so drastic that they might as well be different vehicles with different purposes. In the end we ended up with an Expedition, it was what my wife really wanted. There is no EV version at this time, but it would be high on her list in a few years if the pricing were comparable. 

My guess (way in the future) is that transportation will become a utility.  Remember back in the day when we all had landlines?   You could buy your own phone or you could lease one from the phone company.  Same thing goes today for internet service.  You can buy or rent the modem.  I think road systems will become homologized kind of like train tracks.  Hard to predict if it will be a government-run thing or private companies.

So you can own a car and program it where to go.  It takes you where you program it.  Or you can order up a ride and pay per trip.  AI Uber, so to speak.

Dont forget about infrastructure, plenty of cities were built long before self driving and scheduling was even considered. Its not just the cars, they have to be able to interface correctly with failed and outdated infrastructure for wide adoption to happen. Not saying it wont happen but there are still some pretty big hurdles to overcome, including the quality and price of EVs, adoption, energy infrastructure, and legal ramifications.

We are still legally trying to decide if "self driving" cars manufactures have any liability in the event of an accident, who's responsible for the decisions made by programmers and who is prioritized in the event of an accident, and if you take away my ability to drive and everything is autonomous do I have to carry insurance (when Im not making decisions why am i responsible.), to name just a few.

The benefits people talk about with autonomous cars traveling faster and closer and integrating with traffic lights etc, seem to all go out the window if there is just one human piloted machine in traffic.

Datsun310Guy said:

I'm going the other way with this, mate.

I 'm with 310GUY...

Boost_Crazy said:

In reply to frenchyd :

I'm not looking at the glass as half empty. I'm just telling you how it is. Everything you listed about the current state of EV's- is not good enough for most of the market. Those examples currently satisfy only a small slice of the demand. If and when the EV market gets to where it needs to be, you won't have to explain the merits of EV's and why people should buy one. The fact that you think you need to explain them is evidence that they are not ready. 
 

I took a serious look at buying a Lightning last month. Drove one, there were lots of things to like. Enough to offset the negatives- range, recharge time. But the pricing was not quite there. One, $40k Lightnings Don't exist anymore- the base price has moved up to $50k. That makes the XLT more appealing at $60k. But those were pretty hard to find, most were $70k starting Lariates. Plus- they all had large markups, effectively eliminating any financial incentive. Doing the math- with the extra tax break subsidy- the payback was just too long. Most owners won't own them long enough to realize a savings over a gas truck. In the end, the pluses and minuses over a standard F150 were so drastic that they might as well be different vehicles with different purposes. In the end we ended up with an Expedition, it was what my wife really wanted. There is no EV version at this time, but it would be high on her list in a few years if the pricing were comparable. 

 

Interesting.   I frankly don't believe the truck market is anywhere near ready.  One hundred mile range pulling a trailer?   Seems like it's time for that on board Generator Ford mentioned in the introduction to the lightening.   But then isn't that then just an expensive truck?  
    But car and SUV market is close.  I'm currently looking at 6  with the price and range needed but only 1, the Tesla offers the self driving feature I believe seniors  will need to remain independent in their last years. 
     Yes it requires an alert stand by driver.  The get in the back of the car and go to sleep is at least a decade away if not more. 

  But self driving by alert seniors will allow grocery and other  shopping, making Doctor and other appointments. 
 During mid week non busy hours. Affording seniors the ability to remain in their homes.  Without the $5000/ month cost that assisted living costs. 
    $60,000 a year is what it costs once forced out of their home and into assisted living.     
       
I just saw an Aston Martin SUV  that if I won the Lottery I'd get.