Highway Code: Watching TV in self-driving cars to be allowed…

[WannabeOwner]

My benefit to have the car drive me to the shops is low

I want that ...

I pick up my elderly father in law for a meal. He's close by ... its only 15 minutes, of rural roads. So go get to him, get him, take him home, come home. That's an hour. 3 or 4 times a week ...

"Alexa, Ask Tesla to pick up father-in-law" works for me

And "Alexa, Ask Tesla to go to Father-in-Law's house and take him wherever he wants to go today" ... he still drives, he's not sufficiently old that he shouldn't, but I would prefer that he didn't. But what when he gets to that point ... he needs to drive to get anything - his rural village has no facilities, not even a bus. Hurry up Elon, I need this FSD real-soon-now ... the graph of my father-in-law's increasing age crossed the should-not-drive line at a critical point not very many years away!

 

[gangzoom]

"Alexa, Ask Tesla to pick up father-in-law" works for me

Thats just the start, how about never having to worry about parking again - why would you when you can send the car away to where ever (or even to charge up) and just come back to get you. Parcel deliveries/collections, how about the car drives it self to the local depot in the middle of the night and in the morning all the stuff you want/need is in the boot. Lorries on M-ways during day time, anyone whos driven at midnight will tell you how empty the roads are at that time, why no run all the HGVs all night - driverless.

The technology companies aren't the ones to realize the potential, its the business clever enough to work out how to improve efficiency and service to customers. Not having to pay for a human driver/operator to get some thing from A to B will transform the entire logistic industry.

 

[speedyranger74]

Thats just the start, how about never having to worry about parking again - why would you when you can send the car away to where ever (or even to charge up) and just come back to get you. Parcel deliveries/collections, how about the car drives it self to the local depot in the middle of the night and in the morning all the stuff you want/need is in the boot. Lorries on M-ways during day time, anyone whos driven at midnight will tell you how empty the roads are at that time, why no run all the HGVs all night - driverless.

The technology companies aren't the ones to realize the potential, its the business clever enough to work out how to improve efficiency and service to customers. Not having to pay for a human driver/operator to get some thing from A to B will transform the entire logistic industry.

OMG, I lost my job!

 

[DrJFoster]

I want that ...

I pick up my elderly father in law for a meal. He's close by ... its only 15 minutes, of rural roads. So go get to him, get him, take him home, come home. That's an hour. 3 or 4 times a week ...

"Alexa, Ask Tesla to pick up father-in-law" works for me

And "Alexa, Ask Tesla to go to Father-in-Law's house and take him wherever he wants to go today" ... he still drives, he's not sufficiently old that he shouldn't, but I would prefer that he didn't. But what when he gets to that point ... he needs to drive to get anything - his rural village has no facilities, not even a bus. Hurry up Elon, I need this FSD real-soon-now ... the graph of my father-in-law's increasing age crossed the should-not-drive line at a critical point not very many years away!

Just working on the maths. £8 or £9k or whatever FSD currently costs in its "doesn't work" state would buy you a lot of taxis for the relatively short journeys you are talking about. I think its about £10 each way here, £20 round trip, £80 a week, It's maybe 2 years payback if that was genuinely the alternative.

I've not seen this discussion as an "either or" type one, just where to start.

As for parking, we don't even have valet parking in this country except for a few niche examples. People just don't want to do it, and the problems with parking is usually the lack of parking spaces.

Parcels - why would lots of cars self driving to a depot in the middle of the night be a good thing as opposed to a van dropping yours off, then driving a few hundred meters to drop off the next parcel, then a few more to the next. You can watch the amazon tracker when you have a delivery and the van can literally be half a mile from where I live and has 20 drops between there and here.

It's going to come, there is no doubt. The question is the timescales and the economics. Musk isn't a laughing stock for his timescale predictions for no reason. "Tesla time" isn't a compliment. His robot next year... he might have something in a toy shop I guess.

The noisier Musk is, the more he's up to something and needs a little surge on the share price, and Twitter is his current game. I think plenty are looking at the latest "funding secured" message with a heavy dose of skepticism.

 

[WannabeOwner]

buy you a lot of taxis for the relatively short journeys you are talking about

Rural here though. Getting a taxi out to him isn't great ... he's a good 30 minutes from "nearest town" ... although it is doable. Last time we got him a taxi to come over there was a road closed, which we told the taxi company (you'd think they've use an online MAP for that ...) but they didn't bother to tell the driver and he was over 30 minutes late because of the detour ... and wanted to charge for the extra miles.

Seems quite common around here that someone builds an in-fill house and connecting to services, or dropping the curb, is at least a couple of days of road closed.

how about never having to worry about parking again - why would you when you can send the car away to where ever (or even to charge up) and just come back to get you

... or just drive round in circles!