Insurance rates are only loosely related to true risk. The companies aren't going to want to decrease their revenue. If autonomous driving becomes mainstream, that will become the new baseline cost, and manual driving will represent an increase.
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Post Elon Update Poll on FSD
- Thread starter 2101Guy
- Start date
It seems like even with decent adoption of autonomy in the cities (where robotaxis make the most sense), there's going to be a long transition to a day (if it ever comes) where every single car, urban or rural is self-driving). I don't see insurance rates to be much of a concern for the manual driver for a long time.
EVNow
Well-Known Member
Yes - the transition will take a long time. Insurance costs won't go up overnight.
RTPEV
Active Member
I don't either...but only because I think it will be a long time before we reach a point where true full self driving is a reality.
Why not rural areas first? The average trip is probably more miles and less complex roads, e.g., single lane in each direction and fewer interactions. I suppose there could be concerns of overall utilization and "wasted" miles/time picking up, but those probably affect profitability rather than desired utility. And even then, the current baseline for some people could be to not take a trip, so even if there's an extended wait, that could be better than say waiting until the weekend to get groceries.
I believe that 10 years from now, most all cars will be equipped with some sort of advanced self driving. During this time, there will be advances and setbacks. Some will never accept FSD, as they would rather drive themselves. Most others will be content to sit back and relax, like on a bus or aeroplane and let someone or something else do the driving.
Level 4 at minimum just means a vehicle is designed to drive in certain areas without a human, so "safer than human" is a practical additional threshold of avoiding accidents so that regulators and consumers would even consider a robotaxi. Similar to how the levels of driving automation don't require safety, they also don't specify comfort, courtesy, efficiency, etc., so this means if Level 4 FSD swerves to make a wrong turn and reroutes, that's "totally fine" as at least it didn't crash.
Of course Tesla could have its own internal threshold for these other qualities that they might want to reach before actually deploying robotaxis, and most likely they have metrics on which types of areas might be "easier" and happen to avoid discomfort. And even if they do deploy with questionable "not human" behaviors, it's something they can reduce the frequency of over time.
Well for rural people, the economics of constantly hailing a taxi vs just buying a car usually don't work out. You need a car to do just about anything. There's a reason you see more yellowcabs and ubers in cities than in rural areas.
Getting FSD to work in rural areas is probably more feasible, but the business case of launching a robotaxi service in rural areas just isn't there.
Money.. although it goes beyond them simply trying to separate us from more of our money. We're being subtly programmed to accept the notion that full autonomy is inevitable. I maintain full autonomy that we can not avoid, will remove some liberty and humanity. Even if you think that's crazy - just keep it in the back of your mind as the situation develops. It will develop as slow as it needs to, to keep most peoples internal alarm bells from going off.
RTPEV
Active Member
Economics, plus timeliness and overall density of robotaxis would all be factors. You might be 20 or more minutes from the center of population for a given area, meaning you would hail your ride and then sit around for an average of 20 minutes, if there is even a car available at the time.
As you point out, there's practical economics of why rural communities probably don't have human driven taxi services, and because of the lack of transportation options, if one doesn't have a car (or a second car for the rest of the family), the choice is probably not to take a trip.
If we say the current cost is $2/mi, driving an extra 10 miles just to pick up a passenger away from the city center is potentially $20 that could have been made in a high density area where every "leg" could have a paying customer, and potentially a taxi would want to be paid for time "wasted" returning to the city center (in addition to the actual trip itself), so a round-trip could cost $80 (20 miles with passenger and 20 miles without). At that cost, that's probably more than whatever groceries or activity one would have wanted, so the trip doesn't happen.
If instead the cost was 20¢/mi or 10% with a robotaxi, that's probably a more manageable $8 worth taking a trip. Sure, the revenue from this trip is much less than a potential $80, but if someone isn't willing to pay that, it's actually $0.
Curious, have you ever lived in a rural area? I knew of 0 families where the above was the case. When you need a car to get even basic necessities done, you buy one. You're not going to rely on a mode of transportation that barely exists and cannot be relied upon to do things in a timely manner. At that point, transportation is no longer an issue for other trips. Pretty much every household had multiple cars. Kids would get their licenses as soon as they can and would be driving a clunker from craigslist or a handmedown inherited from their parents. Better off kids would have a higher end car. The only time I've seen people hail taxis in those sort of areas was if they didn't have a ride to the airport and didn't want to keep their car parked in airport parking.
It would take a massive culture change for those areas to go to relying on a robotaxi. I could see them buying into a real FSD, but I just don't see robotaxis working out in such an area. Maybe old people who really shouldn't be driving and don't want to bother their kids for errands... but that's a fairly niche market.
A 25k Tesla on the other hand could be massively popular in those areas. Home charging is much easier to setup than in cities, most folks in that sort of area are already spending at least that much money on a car, and if you get the message across that the car will always be topped off in the morning and their commuting costs would go down to near 0, you can convert a decent number of folks.
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RTPEV
Active Member
This hits on a point that really makes me wonder about the apparent value of autonomous vehicles. Some point to the disruption that AVs will bring to the industry because the cost is going to be so much less than traditional taxi and rideshare services (because you don't have to pay a driver). But at the same time, it seems like the assumption that people are making when it comes to future revenue earning potential fails to take this into account. Plus, you're either going to continue to sell cars at current volumes (which would drive per ride costs down even further due to oversupply), or you're going to be selling a lot fewer cars (albeit at sky high prices). While in the end, the latter might be better for the planet and cheaper for most parties, I do wonder if the sky high valuations that people are assuming for robotaxis are going with the assumption that per ride costs and sales volumes are going to stay at current levels (which they definitely won't be!)
RTPEV
Active Member
Another question I have for the possibility of future robotaxi fleets is this: how will the system accommodate the need for people to take long trips? I'm certainly not going to want my personal vehicle that I've put onto the Tesla network to drive someone 8 hours away (assume for the moment that autonomous charging also becomes a reality) and then either try to find paying rides that eventually work its way back to me, or otherwise come straight back and put 500 non-paying miles on the car/battery. I imagine I will be able to geo-fence the region that I am willing to let my car services.
So will there be other service providers that put their vehicles (presumably larger sized vehicles to accommodate luggage and what not) onto a special long distance network, presumably at a much higher cost? Does that change the economics of at what price point for trips I will be willing to cut over from being a car owner and go completely rideshare/robotaxi?
So will there be other service providers that put their vehicles (presumably larger sized vehicles to accommodate luggage and what not) onto a special long distance network, presumably at a much higher cost? Does that change the economics of at what price point for trips I will be willing to cut over from being a car owner and go completely rideshare/robotaxi?
FSD will be like charging a battery....upto 90% (L4) will come relatively quickly, perhaps by Christmas...but that last few percentage points (L5) will be a hard long drawn out slog, could be years....in fact it maybe impossible until every vehicle on the road is networked together
I think that's very optimistic. I'd be impressed if they get L3 this decade.
People insist on using levels because the Society of Automotive Engineers has official definitions for levels 0 through 5 and has had for years, and these are the levels the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration uses. The official definition for Level 4 is:
"High Automation: The vehicle is capable of performing all driving functions under certain conditions. The driver may have the option to control the vehicle."
You could argue this isn't a terrible detailed definition-- "certain conditions" sure has a lot of leeway-- but it's there.
You have GOT to be kidding. You TRULY think Tesla FSD will be capable and ready where you could be able to take a nap?? By CHRISTMAS? 2022?
"the driver would be able to sleep temporarily."
Autonomous Driving – five steps to the self-driving car
Everyone’s talking about autonomous driving, but what does it mean? How far are we from creating a self-driving car and what is already reality?
www.bmw.com
jabloomf1230
Minister of Silly Walks
The NY Times is not noted for its tech coverage, but it did have one article recently that hit the mark. The gist was that the public expects new technology to emerge on a regular basis. Unfortunately, technological breakthroughs only occur after decades of a combination of R and D and sheer luck. The mRNA vaccine technology didn't appear overnight as some unexpected scientific miracle. It took 20+ years to develop.
We can all wish for robotaxis, the "metaverse" and colonies on Mars, but each item is hamstrung by the extent of existing technology. Unlike most everyone else here, I really don't mind Elon being a dreamer. He's more of a motivational speaker than an engineer. Sometimes he's right. But mostly he's not.
We can all wish for robotaxis, the "metaverse" and colonies on Mars, but each item is hamstrung by the extent of existing technology. Unlike most everyone else here, I really don't mind Elon being a dreamer. He's more of a motivational speaker than an engineer. Sometimes he's right. But mostly he's not.
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