DRIVERLESS ELECTRIC CARS

On Tuesday, October 10, 2017 at 1:19:43 AM UTC-4, John B. wrote:
On Mon, 9 Oct 2017 22:37:43 -0400, Frank Krygowski wrote:

On 10/9/2017 3:13 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Mon, 9 Oct 2017 11:30:40 -0700 (PDT), Frank Krygowski wrote:

I wasn't doubting that auto-cars will exist and become popular. I was
doubting that the government will "shove them down our throats."

I wonder whether they will ever become popular given that they quite
obviously will be more expensive, perhaps much more expensive, I am
reading numbers as large as $75,000 for Google's autonomous driving
vehicle. Didn't SMS recently post something about buying a new car? I
seem to remember numbers in the range of a third of that value.

I imagine you're right, that in the short term these things will be expensive. But I expect that long term the price difference will be greatly reduced. (I imagine the phone in my pocket would have been worth ten thousand dollars 10 years ago, if it existed at all.)

But what do you get for this money? After all probably everyone
reading this is capable of driving an automobile so what advantage
does this, rather expensive, self-driver provide?

Well: To my astonishment, I find that I'm driving long distances much more often
since I retired. It's not just retirement that influenced that (although it
enabled it); there have been family matters that have arisen, new obligations
and avocations, different circles of friends, etc. But driving an hour each way
is now far, far too common. And sitting behind a steering wheel always seems
damned unproductive.

Even if self-driving worked only on limited access freeways, it would ease a lot
of frustration. I think it would make the experience of freeway driving much
more like the experience of riding a train in a private compartment. The couple
times I've done that, I found it to be fairly pleasant.

Another problem that might arise. Will a self-driver work if one
visits Canada, or Mexico?

I guess it would depend on whether the system required a two-way communication
network. If so, Canada might achieve that before the U.S. did. (I assume a bunch
of U.S. states would declare this to be a muslim or communist conspiracy and
refuse to buy into it.)

- Frank Krygowski