Speculation: Global Impact of Autonomous Vehicles

[renim]

The limitation on ownership is cost. Autonomy increases the cost of individual vehicles, but offers improved and cheaper alternatives to ownership. Unless autonomous systems end up being very cheap, they should be expected to reduce private ownership, with the most obvious effect being reduction of the number of multi-vehicle households.

How cheap is cheap?

tesla S generation MobileyeQ3 is an old 40nm 42mm2 chip. Yet for autonomous drive applications it outperforms the Nvidia Tegra 20nm 126mm2 chip. Roughly thats a foundry cost reduction of about 12x cheaper for the old mobileye solution compared to the old Nvidia solution.

Point is not a pissing match between mobileye and Nvidia, but that GPU based systems are significantly more expensive than dedicated systems. Tesla model 3 generation sensor suite seems remarkably well suited to MobileyeQ4, (a 3.5watt ASIC) there is no mobileye inside that anymore, but it is reasonable to expect the cost of autonomous drive, compared to nannied up non autonomous drive to be comparable to the cost difference between a stick shift transmission and an automatic transmission. Which implies that in USA greater than 95% of cars will gain autonomous capability. that will significantly increase vehicle ownership. I would guess that 95% of females involved in car purchasing in USA would really value the convenience of facebook use while driving. That means ubiquitous autonomous drive capable cars for USA.

 

[WannabeOwner]

I could see owner driven cars banned from interstates and cities

I see this mentioned, why not from Rural roads too? i.e. I don't want some idiot driving into me just because I live in a rural location.

Clearly the manual-driven car owners will reasonably expect to own their cars for a decent period of time, but if antonymous cars do indeed turn out to be orders of magnitude safer then I find it hard to see how insurance companies will insure the manually driven ones.

Surely courts will award huge damages where a manual driver caused an accident and killed someone, if an antonymous car would have avoided that situation? I reckon it will only need one such, properly proven, court case to cause insurance rates to increase stratospherically, and the only people still owning manual cars will be the poor, unable to afford to replace them (yet), and the rich enthusiasts - who can presumably afford to trailer their cars to a track, whatever, to drive.

 

[Dstrohl]

I see this mentioned, why not from Rural roads too? i.e. I don't want some idiot driving into me just because I live in a rural location.

Clearly the manual-driven car owners will reasonably expect to own their cars for a decent period of time, but if antonymous cars do indeed turn out to be orders of magnitude safer then I find it hard to see how insurance companies will insure the manually driven ones.

Surely courts will award huge damages where a manual driver caused an accident and killed someone, if an antonymous car would have avoided that situation? I reckon it will only need one such, properly proven, court case to cause insurance rates to increase stratospherically, and the only people still owning manual cars will be the poor, unable to afford to replace them (yet), and the rich enthusiasts - who can presumably afford to trailer their cars to a track, whatever, to drive.

Someday, possibly, but I suspect that this would be decades after they are banned from the cities and highways... if for no other reason than it will take time (20+ years) from when the last non-autonomous car is made to get enough of them out of circulation to be able to do this politically, and rural areas will be the hardest ones for autonomous cars to handle and where incomes are generally lower and people can afford new cars less often.

I don't think that one large payout is likely to raise insurance costs across the board. a pattern of such would... but I also think it's unlikely that most courts would award a huge payout for that kind of a case. Possibly for a case where an autonomous capable car was being driven manually, or if a manual car was being driven in an autonomous only area, but for the most part, the people suing would have to prove that the driver was a) doing something illegal, or b) was doing something (or not doing something) that they had the capability of not doing (or doing). but if the car was non-autonomous, and driven legally, and the driver was basically doing what they could, I doubt that they would be likely to even lose, and if so, would be unlikely to lose an astronomical amount. (and the few that might, would be seen as outriders). After all, you can still get coffee at McDonald's.

 

[WannabeOwner]

After all, you can still get coffee at McDonald's

But not hot coffee ... or so I have heard

 

[ElectricTundra]

A few quick thoughts;

1) Insurance rates on non-autonomous cars will very likely increase somewhat significantly assuming that autonomous do prove significantly safer. I'd not be surprised if people can no longer afford to drive non-autonomous cars by 2035.

2) I'd expect an increase in cars on the road (not necessarily an increase in cars in existence) as car sharing systems like the Tesla Network become much more ubiquitous. The incentive to not own a car will decrease while the incentive to use a shared car will increase.

3) Governments will very likely require autonomous cars to adhere strictly to speed limits, stop signs, and other regulations so long as the lane marking, signage, or data provided to geo systems meets some certain requirements. Today our Tesla's allow the driver to set speeds however they want, I doubt this will continue lest manufacturers be held responsible.

4) Unless very good protected walkways and bikeways (EG, meet Dutch CROW specs) are built, travel on many roads will become quite slow as autonomous cars are and will continue to be much more careful around people walking (3 mph) and riding bicycles (11 - 15 mph). Every crash involving an autonomous car will be extremely well documented and they can't take the chance of lawsuits for killing someone riding a bicycle.

5) Good protected walkways and bikeways (#4) along with a move back to local grocery and similar amenities and higher costs of out-of-pocket healthcare may/will encourage people to walk and bicycle more for local transportation and so reduce the impact of #2.

 

[renim]

A few quick thoughts;

1) Insurance rates on non-autonomous cars will very likely increase somewhat significantly assuming that autonomous do prove significantly safer. I'd not be surprised if people can no longer afford to drive non-autonomous cars by 2035..

I profoundly disagree, because

model the effect of adaptive cruise control, and entire fleet becomes safer and faster.
model the effect of of adding AEB to some cars, and the entire fleet becomes safer.
model the effect of adding satnav to some cars, and the entire fleet becomes safer.
model the effect of V2V communication, and the entire fleet becomes safer.

all these are technologies that are and will be used on 'manual' cars, they don't require hands off steering wheel.

The legal and operational step from driver operated to driverless is binary, but the technology and benefits are incremental, a not quite driver-less car, but with full driver safety aids could have 90% of the safety benefits yet not be autonomous. That IS coming.

 

[ElectricTundra]

I profoundly disagree, because

model the effect of adaptive cruise control, and entire fleet becomes safer and faster.
model the effect of of adding AEB to some cars, and the entire fleet becomes safer.
model the effect of adding satnav to some cars, and the entire fleet becomes safer.
model the effect of V2V communication, and the entire fleet becomes safer.

all these are technologies that are and will be used on 'manual' cars, they don't require hands off steering wheel.

The legal and operational step from driver operated to driverless is binary, but the technology and benefits are incremental, a not quite driver-less car, but with full driver safety aids could have 90% of the safety benefits yet not be autonomous. That IS coming.

Insurance is about managing liability risk. Your entire fleet being safer argument does make a difference but only to a very limited extent. A state with a lower crash per vehicle miles traveled (VMT) rate and lower crash per capita rate will also usually have slightly lower insurance rates.

But they actually don't care about the entire fleet, only their insured drivers. For insurance companies the risk is their insured being involved in a crash regardless of the crash rates for the entire fleet. The biggest risk is their insured being liable. This latter even in 'no fault' states. The IIHS evaluates the insurance risk of cars based on crash avoidance and impact survival. A car with a highly rated AEB will have measurably lower rates than one without because they've determined that it is less likely to be involved in a crash and less likely to be liable and so they are less likely to incur payout costs. So while the driver of this car may see a 5% lower rate thanks to their car having AEB, the fact that the entire fleet is a bit safer will only result in perhaps a 0.00001% reduction for other drivers. Yes, there is a cumulative effect so add up all the cars with AEB and their impact on the entire fleet and maybe we're looking at a 0.0001% reduction.

Now, think about what happens when 50% of cars have Enhanced Auto Pilot. The entire fleet is indeed much safer and ALL drivers will benefit. But if your car doesn't have EAP then you are much more likely to be involved in a crash or to hit and kill a bicycle rider and likely by a rather huge factor. That the entire fleet is safer has zero effect on the likelihood of YOU, their insured, being liable for causing a crash or for hitting and killing a bicycle rider. As well, the pool of such high risk drivers is now much smaller so the insurance company's ability to spread this risk out is much less. If the pool shrinks by half then your rates will go up by a factor of 3 or 4 (yes, it's not linear).