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Ed Self-Driving Cars: Pros, Cons, and Predictions

Evaluate Self-Driving Cars on a scale of 1-5 (1 = Terrible, 3 = Meh, 5 = Great)

  • 1

    Votes: 10 6.6%

  • 2

    Votes: 11 7.2%

  • 3

    Votes: 24 15.8%

  • 4

    Votes: 28 18.4%

  • 5

    Votes: 79 52.0%
  • Total voters
    152
  • Poll closed .
Rolfe said:
That got me wondering how FSD would cope with single-track roads with passing places. Particularly when an oncoming driver fails to utilise a space he should have utilised, leading to two cars facing each other on a stretch of road with no way to pass.

There are a couple of YouTube videos, filmed last February by the account "Just get a Tesla" of him taking a fully manual Tesla Model Y over the Bealach na Bà and back. I doubt if the current FSD system is trained on such roads. It would be interesting to see how they would tackle this.
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It likely wouldn't cope with edge cases, especially those where local etiquette dictates specific behaviour - here I will reverse if there are multiple cars, a vehicle with a trailer or one of several individuals.

That said for almost all people almost all the time, it'll work.
 
The Don said:
It likely wouldn't cope with edge cases, especially those where local etiquette dictates specific behaviour - here I will reverse if there are multiple cars, a vehicle with a trailer or one of several individuals.

That said for almost all people almost all the time, it'll work.
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Still few decades out especially the way they are approaching it.
 
I got a notification about this article in my email and found it relevant to this topic.

substack.com

Robotaxis Are Here

Within 1-5 years, our daily transportation will be upended, and cities will be reshaped.
substack.com substack.com

"Our lifestyle is a few years away from a massive change thanks to robotaxis.
They are already here. Waymo, the leader, is servicing several cities in the US. It’s a matter of time before robotaxis take over most cars on the road:
  • Without a driver, they will be much cheaper than cabs
  • They will even be cheaper than owned cars
  • They are already safer than humans, and will become even safer over time
  • They are much more convenient
When they do, they will not just replace cabs, but privately owned cars, and large segments of public transport. They will even increase the number of rides we take daily. This will open up a new trillion dollar market."
 
hard disagree.

robotaxis will change exactly nothing.
they propagate all the problems of universal private car use without any of the the advantages of a dense public transport network.
they will never be able to replace public transport, but they will make it harder to get investment for it.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
hard disagree.

robotaxis will change exactly nothing.
they propagate all the problems of universal private car use without any of the the advantages of a dense public transport network.
they will never be able to replace public transport, but they will make it harder to get investment for it.
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Yep - they are simply taxis without a driver - so why would things change?
 
I can think of a number of reasons things might change. Traffic moving from public transport to robotaxis. Traffic moving from privately-owned cars to robotaxis. What do robotaxis do when they're not carrying paying passengers, specifically thinking about how can they be positioned so that someone ordering one will get one with minimal delay. Things might change quite a bit, though I'm not quite sure how it might pan out.
 
Rolfe said:
I can think of a number of reasons things might change. Traffic moving from public transport to robotaxis. Traffic moving from privately-owned cars to robotaxis. What do robotaxis do when they're not carrying paying passengers, specifically thinking about how can they be positioned so that someone ordering one will get one with minimal delay. Things might change quite a bit, though I'm not quite sure how it might pan out.
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that just means that they have to be driving non-stop to be in pickup range at all times - this will lead to a lot of extra congestion, hurting passengers.
Unless, of course, we nationalize all robo-taxis, making sure there is no a surplus that will lead to clogging of busy streets, maybe put in a priority lane for them, make them bigger, so they can carry 10, 20, 50 people; oh, and have them on a schedule so you don't have to waste time ordering them and don't have to tip your A.I. driver.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
hard disagree.

robotaxis will change exactly nothing.
they propagate all the problems of universal private car use without any of the the advantages of a dense public transport network.
they will never be able to replace public transport, but they will make it harder to get investment for it.
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Plu they will bankrupt a large number of people who buy fancy cars they can't afford in the expectation they can make money in the hours they won't be using them (for most people, these hous will be the middle of the day when traffic's at its lowest).
 
Gulliver Foyle said:
I predict that, like commercial nuclear fusion, self driving will be a few decades off for quite a while yet.
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Probably, especially if we're talking about replacing personal vehicles with commercial robotaxis. The capital investment alone is staggering. Waymo is the only significant player left in that space in the US, and scaling up their presence as things currently stand just means losing money faster. At some point, even Google/Alphabet will become sensitive to setting huge mountains of money on fire.

I'm extremely skeptical that this could happen within the next twenty years, and that's if we take the optimistic view. There's a lot of "Assume all problems will be solved almost immediately after they're identified" energy around this topic.
 
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There's also the issue that people like to own their own cars, and don't like other people driving them. Or driving around in them. This may change, but I don't think it will change very fast. I would expect self-driving to be implemented first in privately-owned cars, and people getting gradually more confident to read or sleep in the car while they're being driven, and to ask the car to drop them at their destination then go off and find a parking space and come back for them at a set time or when called for. I think there will be a period where that's the model before there's much hiring out of these cars during their down time.
 
What might work is a 15-minute city core, optimized for pedestrians and local mass transit. Visitors would be deterred from driving downtown by the lack of parking, and the fact that pretty much every capillary street in the district is barred to POVs. So they'd park at a park'n'ride lot in the suburbs, take light rail into the city, and use city-approved robotaxis if they needed to go more than a few blocks.

With decent safety provisions for pedestrians, and a well-regulated network of mass transit routes, a relatively simple environment for the self-driving sensors could be established. They could thrive downtown. Expansion of the No POV zone outward would follow on the successful demonstration of the concept in practice.
 
Gulliver Foyle said:
Plu they will bankrupt a large number of people who buy fancy cars they can't afford in the expectation they can make money in the hours they won't be using them (for most people, these hous will be the middle of the day when traffic's demand is at its lowest).
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Traffic will be worse.

All the self-driving cars will be taking up space on the road, because the owners have not paid for them to be parked somewhere.

This means the cars will be tootling around, looking for passengers, or at best, parked on the side of roads, making all roads narrower.

Even if owners make their cars drive home again after delivering the owners to work, that doubles the amount of traffic, because you're now dealing with four trips per day, instead of two.

Every person who hires a self driving car to take themselves somewhere, is making traffic worse, if they previously would have used a bus, train or bicycle.

No matter how you slice it, self-driving cars make traffic worse, unless they are not used as taxis.

I've already explained how every venue becomes grid locked, when everyone summons their self-driving car at the same time after an event.

I look forward to cycling past the resulting mess.
 
Myriad said:
Amusing "test" by Mark Rober of whether a Tesla (using cameras only) and a LIDAR-equipped car will crash into a wall painted Wile E. Coyote style. Article here: https://electrek.co/2025/03/16/tesla-autopilot-drives-into-wall-camera-vs-lidar-test/ which includes the embedded video.
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I was about to put the same link up lol- the tesla doesn't far well against the LIDAR equipped car does it...
:ROFLMAO:
(Mark's utube channel is on my subscription list and has been for several years...)
Can You Fool A Self Driving Car?

For those unaware of him, he was involved in building some of the Mars rovers, and is quite cluey in the robotics/electronics stuff...
(and nearly killed Macaulay Culkin ie the 'Home Alone kid'- well, more gassed him with fart spray he was using in a porch pirate and later scam baiter project lol)
 
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