Driverless cars, would you buy one?

Beta Ray Bill

Been having an interesting discussion over on AH about useless technology

I mentioned that I think Driverless cars are fairly useless.

Everyone keeps saying "They're Coming", but only one big car manufacturer is researching driverless tech (Audi).
Tesla are researching this area too.

As far as I can see, the tech that Audi and Tesla are researching is geared towards motorway driving and not Urban driving.
Googles Waymo is geared towards Urban driving, but Google don't make cars.

This coupled with a number of issues:
Legal: Liability in the event of an accident etc
Social: People like driving their cars, Driver vs Driverless cars etiquette
Infrastructure: Roads need to be marked perfectly and be in perfect condition
Technical: Driverless cars have no way to detect temporary lights/road markings or a Garda directing traffic.
Financial: They aren't cheap
Health: High exposure to LIDAR/RADAR in urban areas
Environmental: Currently they cant work in heavy rain/snow

Says to me that if they do happen, it wont be in my lifetime.

But IF they were available, and considering the driverless cars would probably cost a little bit more (say 15%) than a normal car, would you buy one?

EIRE forever

they coming for the RICH people no one else, an if the normal joe like me was to even attempt to buy one id need to be working two jobs an have no time at home with the fam.
why would anyone buy one anyways, that takes the fun out of driving the thing yourself. I personally wouldn't touch one even if I got offered for free.

just my opinion really

grahambo wrote: »

Been having an interesting discussion over on AH about useless technology

I mentioned that I think Driverless cars are fairly useless.

Everyone keeps saying "They're Coming", but only one big car manufacturer is researching driverless tech (Audi).
Tesla are researching this area too.

As far as I can see, the tech that Audi and Tesla are researching is geared towards motorway driving and not Urban driving.
Googles Waymo is geared towards Urban driving, but Google don't make cars.

This coupled with a number of issues:
Legal: Liability in the event of an accident etc
Social: People like driving their cars, Driver vs Driverless cars etiquette
Infrastructure: Roads need to be marked perfectly and be in perfect condition
Technical: Driverless cars have no way to detect temporary lights/road markings or a Garda directing traffic.
Financial: They aren't cheap
Health: High exposure to LIDAR/RADAR in urban areas
Environmental: Currently they cant work in heavy rain/snow

Says to me that if they do happen, it wont be in my lifetime.

But IF they were available, and considering the driverless cars would probably a little bit cost more (say 15%) than a normal car, would you buy one?

bladespin

Not a hope.

carsfan2

I don't think Audi and tesla are the only manufacturers working on this.
All the German car companies are doing it as are Volvo. Semi autonomous driving is already available on some of their models.
Legislation is way behind the tech already as government catches up.
A whole raft of jobs will be lost in the long term when this becomes the norm and it most likely will. No more taxi drivers, delivery drivers, lorry drivers etc.

CianRyan

The facelift Qashqai that's coming will have a semi-autonomous highway mode.

So saying that only Audi (Which are owned by Porsche who also own the entire VAG group) are the only company, along with Tesla, developing the tech is just uninformed.

It's not coming, it is already here. It's been here for years with self parking cars, it's simply growing as our technology gets more reliable.

drunkmonkey

Unless i'm allowed get ****faced in the passenger seat I'd rather be in control myself. I wouldn't pay a €1 extra.

Wetbench4

I predict the pubs will be booming when the driverless cars get popular

James Bond Junior

EIRE forever wrote: »

they coming for the RICH people no one else, an if the normal joe like me was to even attempt to buy one id need to be working two jobs an have no time at home with the fam.
why would anyone buy one anyways, that takes the fun out of driving the thing yourself. I personally wouldn't touch one even if I got offered for free.

just my opinion really

Are you anything to PLEASEhelp Thank You?

Del2005

I wouldn't buy one as they will be like taxis. You need to go somewhere you book it on your phone and a car, or pod, will take you.

They don't need good roads and the technology is advancing exponentially. The 1st DARPA autonomous vehicle challenge all the vehicles failed spectacularly, the 2nd they all finished bar 1.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge

jokser250

I wouldn't mind one since I broke my ankle last week and can't drive for a while !!

Sabre Man

EIRE forever wrote: »

they coming for the RICH people no one else, an if the normal joe like me was to even attempt to buy one id need to be working two jobs an have no time at home with the fam.
why would anyone buy one anyways, that takes the fun out of driving the thing yourself. I personally wouldn't touch one even if I got offered for free.

just my opinion really

Tesla Model 3 won't be just for rich people. It'll probably be here sometime next year.

Today cars can handle motorways but they're getting better all the time. Take a look at what Mobileye is doing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR0m4jkeBKY

Mooooo

Didn't clarkson get driven around the track by a beemer years ago? The tech will come but like all these things it's how long it will take to iron out all the gremlins and the fact it's dealing with transport and people safety would have to be top notch

biko

I think driverless cars is a great idea.
Step one is to make cars that can read the current infrastructure.

When enough cars are driverless we can start changing the infrastructure to help the cars.

When 80% of cars are driverless their data can be used to make various calculations which smart devices can take advantage of.

For instance your phone can let you know that you need to be in the car within 10 minutes to be able to get to the office on time.

El_Duderino 09

grahambo wrote:

I mentioned that I think Driverless cars are fairly useless.

They might be useless right now but they're not even in the market yet. It's as clever as saying the first cars were useless. They were do useless that they had a man walking in front with a flag or a bell. WALKING in front. So I suppose cars will never take off either

grahambo wrote:

Everyone keeps saying "They're Coming", but only one big car manufacturer is researching driverless tech (Audi). Tesla are researching this area too.

They are coming. That's crystal clear. VW announced that it's getting into developing them seriously just this week. And they're not cars in the conventional sense, they're much more technology driven than mechanical. So when you see that a little known (car) company named Google is developing them, you can rest assured the development is happening in the right place.

I think the opposition to them is mostly wishful thinking. So what if they're ONLY able to drive on motorways right now? Uber trialed using them in cities in the last few weeks.

People crash cars all the time and we don't worry about that. Autonomous cars would crash too. As long as it's happening at a lower rate than humans, then it's a good thing.

El_Duderino 09

Yes I'd love to buy one but they'll be expensive at first. Like all highly advanced technology it'll be expensive, then it'll become less expensive.

El_Duderino 09

Mooooo wrote:

Didn't clarkson get driven around the track by a beemer years ago? The tech will come but like all these things it's how long it will take to iron out all the gremlins and the fact it's dealing with transport and people safety would have to be top notch

People transport people all the time and accidents happen. Why would driverless technology need to be perfect when people aren't perfect. Anyone want to make the claim that human drivers are nearly perfect?

Northerngal

No, I'd miss the manual, nice opening up on good clear roads,I'd also miss the feel from driving/holding on to the steering wheel, the body flex going into corners the thrill of manual driving and the smell of petrol , what about hack ability of said tech

Mountainsandh

I'd love one. Would definitely buy if they were cheap to buy, run, and keep.
I'm rural so would need one outside the door.

Posting in Motors you're likely to get a lot of negative answers OP, but I'm not from round here, and like many others outside of the motoring forum, I've no interest whatsoever in driving, just do it because I have to.
I'd love to be able to read a book or browse the internet while the thing drives itself.

Brian201888

Can't wait for them and I'd happily pay a premium to be an early adopter

mloc123

Look at your average car now... With lane assist, adaptive cruise control, crash prevention etc...

The idea that you could buy a small hatch with these features 10 years ago would have been laughed at I think.

In the future all cars will be fully autonamous, most likely in our lifetime. They will not just be for 'the rich' as it is now though.

Edit: Just because a car can drive itself, doesn't mean. You can't drive the car also. I think it will be a mode.

A couple of weeks ago I was chatting to a guy who seemed to think we should reduce all speed limits to save lives. I am of the opinion that speed limits should be higher than 20 years ago given how much car technology has improved. I think reduction in the number of accidents will be a big selling factor for semi/fully autonomous cars.

RHJ

This post has been deleted.

Ubbquittious

No. Fck 'em they're boring.

Alanstrainor

Northerngal wrote: »

No, I'd miss the manual, nice opening up on good clear roads,I'd also miss the feel from driving/holding on to the steering wheel, the body flex going into corners the thrill of manual driving and the smell of petrol , what about hack ability of said tech

Of course I love manual gearboxes, I love the sound of a great engine no matter how many cylinders it has, I love the corners the straights and everything in between. But, it's hard to shy away from the reality that autonomous cars are coming, they are here already to a limited extent.

There's huge benefits to them too, your commute to work would be a doddle. You could just sit back and relax with a cup of coffee and browse boards the whole way in and out. If there were enough of them it would actually make traffic easier as you wouldn't have retards rubbernecking and jamming on the brakes causing tail backs.

Yes there are legal hurdles involved, yes the technology is not there yet, yes infrastructure might need to be improved (or the software improved to make better decisions!). But all of this can be solved.

Hell, maybe it will increase demand for track days (and tracks in general!) for us petrol heads and our classic "manual" cars? :cool:

Ubbquittious

I just hope the driverless cars and the oldschool petrol manual cars can coexist peacefully. I happen to like driving and no interest in trying to spend as much time as possible looking at a screen. We'll be the robots pets soon enough at the rate things are going, people will spend the whole day consuming youtube videos and lose their ability to fend for themselves in any way or interact with real human beings

El_Duderino 09

Ubbquittious wrote:

I just hope the driverless cars and the oldschool petrol manual cars can coexist peacefully. I happen to like driving

People probably said the same thing about preferring riding horses when cars were we. People can still ride horses if they like. You probably wouldn't choose to ride a horse from cork to Dublin if you had the choice going.

Person driven petrol cars would be a lot more fun if they were built purely for entertainment rather than needing to be functional commuter/family cars too.

Four Phucs Ache

In 2050 I will be 70 and my grandkids will ask why I called my car kitt.

CianRyan

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

Person driven petrol cars would be a lot more fun if they were built purely for entertainment rather than needing to be functional commuter/family cars too.

This is so true, boring cars will die off and scrapped to help produce new driverless cars and we'll be left with nothing but entertaining cars in the "manual" market.
When the tech becomes cheap, an ordinary commuter car would be completely obsolete if it were not fully autonomous.
Not to mention, these cars will more than likely be fully electric, graphene batteries are getting extremely close and I believe they will truelly accelerate the next industrial revolution. Elelectric cars will have diesel range.

Autonomous electric cars are GOOD for petrol loving, manual car drivers. That is undeniable.

Ubbquittious

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

People probably said the same thing about preferring riding horses when cars were we. People can still ride horses if they like. You probably wouldn't choose to ride a horse from cork to Dublin if you had the choice going.

Person driven petrol cars would be a lot more fun if they were built purely for entertainment rather than needing to be functional commuter/family cars too.

Hopefully. The horse would be fairly tired after bringing it on that journey. The world would become very dull if all the supercar and kitcar manufacturers had to close up shop because of driverless cars

RicketyCricket

No I get a thrill from driving and I have been told I'm a terrible passenger. Maybe when I'm in my 70's and senile and it has a mini bar in it.

CianRyan

Ubbquittious wrote: »

Hopefully. The horse would be fairly tired after bringing it on that journey. The world would become very dull if all the supercar and kitcar manufacturers had to close up shop because of driverless cars

Do supercar and kit car builders design and sell cars for commuting?

Andrewf20

For me its another modern solution for a problem that doesnt exist. I love driving. A chance to put my mind at relative ease while eating up the miles & listening to the radio or music is one of lifes little pleasures.

Beta Ray Bill

Interesting replies.

It's fairly 50/50

My big problem is this:
I work in IT, have done for the last 12 years. IT systems are never perfect. The more complex they are the more buggy they are.

We're not talking about traction control, or lane assist or brake priming here. Those systems leave the driver to make the decision and they assist.
What we're talking about here is handing control over to a computer, and hoping it makes the correct decision. And given what I've seen in my experience so far, I'm not willing to hand over control of my life or my kid's life to a computer.

I think James Rhodes put it best in Iron Man:

The future of air combat... Is it manned, or unmanned? I'll tell you in my experience, no unmanned aerial vehicle will ever trump a pilot's instinct.

obviously replace air combat with driving and pilot with driver

Ubbquittious

What I'd be afraid of is that at some point some lad with a can of fanta in his hand while driving his Morgan 3 wheeler will bang into some 4 year old girl who ran out after a ball or whose own (unpowered) trike took her down a slope and onto the public road and there will be mass media hysteria and people will be saying if only it was a driverless car that would have braked a few milliseconds earlier she would still be alive.

This will be the precursor to everyone having to hand in their Morgan 3 wheelers and whatever other toys they might use on the public road. It will be a terrible shame but the "if it saves 1 life" crowd will be out in full force

Sofiztikated

With the amount of horrendous drivers I've seen in the last week, taking the reigns from the ****wits can't happen soon enough!

As long as there are security protocols in place, they'll be infinitely better than most drivers.

Would/will I buy one? When the tech becomes cheap enough to hit my bracket, sure, I'd have one.

eeguy

A few points on your comment:

grahambo wrote: »

Everyone keeps saying "They're Coming", but only one big car manufacturer is researching driverless tech (Audi).
Tesla are researching this area too.

Pretty much everyone is researching autonomous driving. I've heard it being compared to the new Arms Race
Audi, Mercedes, BMW, Tesla, Uber, Waymo and Apple are the big players currently, and there's dozens of smaller companies feeding into this too. Truck and tractor manufacturers like John Deere are looking at it from a different perspective too.

grahambo wrote: »

As far as I can see, the tech that Audi and Tesla are researching is geared towards motorway driving and not Urban driving.

Motorways are easier and more controlled. If you think of it, most commutes are about 90% on the motorway and 10% urban areas, so it makes sense to start at the easiest, most common challenge.

grahambo wrote: »

Googles Waymo is geared towards Urban driving, but Google don't make cars.

Google only recently made phones, but Android is the most popular mobile operating system on the planet.
It's a cinch for Waymo to perfect the software and license it out to whoever wants it.

grahambo wrote: »

Legal: Liability in the event of an accident etc

This is the big one. Most countries have expressed positive attitudes to autonomous driving and parts of the US are making big strides in allowing them on the road.
Some car manufacturers (Volvo is one I think) have said they'll take responsibility if the software fails (with a long list of disclaimers). I think this will be the way every goes. Responsibility on the auto maker puts greater pressure to perfect the software. Everyone wins. When you think that VAG and others operate their own banks, it's not too big of a leap to offer insurance.

grahambo wrote: »

Social: People like driving their cars, Driver vs Driverless cars etiquette

I like driving. I hate commuting. About 95% of the time I'm in a car, I'm stuck on a motorway somewhere hating life. I'm willing to sacrifice my 5% of fun if I dont have to do 95% of drudgery.

grahambo wrote: »

Infrastructure: Roads need to be marked perfectly and be in perfect condition

They don't. Autonomous trucks work the mines in Australia and drive on dirt paths with no signs or markings.

grahambo wrote: »

Technical: Driverless cars have no way to detect temporary lights/road markings or a Garda directing traffic.

They can see traffic lights no matter where they are, fixed or temporary. I saw a tech demo where the car can recognise uniforms, so it can see if a policeman is giving directions.
Another demo give control back to the driver, who avoided the obstacle, then the car communicated the correct path to others, so they could work around it
For now I'd say the car will hand control back to the driver, but it's not an impossible challenge.

grahambo wrote: »

Financial: They aren't cheap

They're not expensive. A Model 3 is 35k maybe.
The hardware is little more than a bunch of Kinects, sensors and some graphics cards. All the money and development is in the software.

grahambo wrote: »

Health: High exposure to LIDAR/RADAR in urban areas

Is there an issue with this? No more than putting a phone up to your brain?

grahambo wrote: »

Environmental: Currently they cant work in heavy rain/snow

Currently they're sh*te in snow, but that could change in a few years.

grahambo wrote: »

Says to me that if they do happen, it wont be in my lifetime.

Elon Musk's predicted in a TED talk last month that a Tesla will drive from San Fran to NY totally unaided by the end of next year.
Currently autonomous busses are being trialled in about 30 cities around the world.
Ford and others say they'll have a car by 2021 with no steering wheel.

We'll have to see what happens.

Agricola

Driverless will just be a mode. There will always be a necessity to give control of the car to a person. For that reason, I'd love one. Be great to read, browse the net, or watch youtube on long boring motorway trips and then have control for when you actually want to drive yourself.

RHJ

This post has been deleted.

Mountainsandh

Ubbquittious wrote: »

I just hope the driverless cars and the oldschool petrol manual cars can coexist peacefully. I happen to like driving and no interest in trying to spend as much time as possible looking at a screen. We'll be the robots pets soon enough at the rate things are going, people will spend the whole day consuming youtube videos and lose their ability to fend for themselves in any way or interact with real human beings

Don't know about that.
Commuting times are not interacting or exercising times anyway, I see them as lost fragments of my life, and my commute is only 25 minutes in stunning scenery country roads. Ok, I do enjoy a drive with the music on sometimes, but I could still enjoy the music on and the scenery while being driven.

I think pretty much every adult I know checks their social media and the news before work in the morning, all my colleagues do anyway, as our job doesn't accommodate sitting for half an hour checking all this before the day's work.

If I had these 25 minutes commute to do my morning online check while being driven by a robot, I would have 25 minutes to either sleep a bit more, or go for a stroll before work, while waking at the exact same time. (edit : I'm sure sportier people would make better active use of the time than a walk, but that's my game )

r3nu4l

As long as the car would allow me to switch to human driving as and when I please, that would be great! Take it easy and relax when you like, then let rip on the clear and free stretches of road!

Awesome!

Noveight

I wouldn't buy one. Wouldn't mind having cruise control though.

Stephen15

I can see them coming but not in as near a timeframe as people say mainly for the reason that the infustructure will have to be there to accommodate them.

jackofalltrades

For me it's always come down to this, is the enjoyment I get from driving more than the stress of having to do it.
Years ago I would have Yes, but not anymore.
Between boring commutes, increased traffic, speed vans and penalty points it not worth it anymore.
You have to drive like a robot, so why not let a robot do it for you.

grahambo wrote: »

My big problem is this:
I work in IT, have done for the last 12 years. IT systems are never perfect. The more complex they are the more buggy they are.

I'll agree with you about IT systems not being perfect.
But right now you share the road with a lot of drivers that are far from perfect.
Whether they're drunk, high, tired, inexperienced or downright dangerous.

What we're talking about here is handing control over to a computer, and hoping it makes the correct decision. And given what I've seen in my experience so far, I'm not willing to hand over control of my life or my kid's life to a computer.

The thing is though if you fly you are already doing this.
If two planes are about to have a collision it's computers that sort it out, the pilots then follows these instructions.

eeguy

To be fair, 15 years ago you could have started a poll "Mobile phones, would you buy one?" and you'd get a similar discussion.

I don't want people to always be able to reach me.
I don't want to bother with charging something
I don't want to have ANOTHER thing to carry around.

These are all fair arguments, but time will show that driverless cars (busses, trucks, trains etc.), like mobile phones, will go from niche to ubiquitous in a small space of time, and we as a society will adapt without even realising it.

CianRyan

The real clincher for me is that soon we'll have 5G connectivity in cars, we're talking faster than the wifi being routed into your D4 or dock land residence. That will be used to let cars of all makes and models communicate to each other while on the road, so like modern jets, if the two cars detect a collision course, they will react in a time period of less than a blink of an eye, far earlier than any human could ever predict and they will make millions of tiny adjustments to ensure the two cars never collide.

Will there ever be a malfunction? Sure, of course there will be but how many happen because of human error and arrogance?
Computers don't have egos.

ressem

mloc123 wrote: »

Edit: Just because a car can drive itself, doesn't mean. You can't drive the car also. I think it will be a mode.

A couple of weeks ago I was chatting to a guy who seemed to think we should reduce all speed limits to save lives. I am of the opinion that speed limits should be higher than 20 years ago given how much car technology has improved.

More probably, automated cars having to slow down when there's a car in non-autonomous mode in the vicinity, that doesn't have microsecond response times; in a similar manner as drivers currently treat cyclists.

Will there be humans employed to clean the seats on shared automated vehicles, or will waterproof washable coveralls be recommended clothing for these vehicles? Or maybe some form of seat cover on a rotating conveyor belt to be swept?

CianRyan

I'd imagine they'd be completely normal seats, just like with GoCar.

BigEejit

Some of the early adopters of driverless cars will surely be old people (70+) who want to keep their independence living at home but dont feel comfortable/safe driving any more. My own dad in his mid to late 70's had awful trouble driving at night especially (eyesight) and had neck problems making it difficult at junctions.

A lot of old people have plenty of cash to afford a driverless car as well.

eeguy

ressem wrote: »

.
Will there be humans employed to clean the seats on shared automated vehicles, or will waterproof washable coveralls be recommended clothing for these vehicles? Or maybe some form of seat cover on a rotating conveyor belt to be swept?

I suppose whoever owns the cars will clean them. Same as taxis?

Many taxis have cameras to catch people who damage them and since most people use apps linked to their bank cards it'll be easy to charge people who fu€k around.

They're putting hydrophobic coatings on cars now, maybe they'll put them on the seat.

Junkyard Tom

Driverless cars won't be owned they'll be hired.

El_Duderino 09

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

Driverless cars won't be owned they'll be hired.

Yeah exactly. If you can tell a cat to drive itself to your house to pick you up and drive itself away when you're finished,then you front need to buy it and gave it sitting outside doing nothing all day.

Renting and hiring will be options as well as buying.

R.O.R

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

Yeah exactly. If you can tell a cat to drive itself to your house to pick you up and drive itself away when you're finished,then you front need to buy it and gave it sitting outside doing nothing all day.

Renting and hiring will be options as well as buying.

Only issue there is that everyone will need cars at the same time - morning to go to work and evening to come back home.

Volvo already have driverless cars being tested around Sweden. Trucks in the US have already made deliveries from factory to store with no driver involvement.

The driver less car is not far away at all, and the technology isn't that expensive so they should be in reach for most people - look at the semi autonomous stuff that's already standard on most golf's and polo's now. Every S90 and V90 have the technology to keep themselves out of the car in front and in the lane, with no driver input. Only reason they need you to keep a hand on the wheel is legislation.