https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/352255/future-perfect-vox-predictions-2020s-nuclear-war-ozempic-electric-vehicles
Obesity will go down, electric cars will go up, and a nuclear bomb might just fall.
"A level 4 autonomous vehicle will be for sale in the US to ordinary customers (80 percent)"
When this becomes universally adopted, it's going to have a bigger impact than anyone thinks.
Cities now derive revenue from traffic fines, parking fines, parking fees, and so on.
Level 4 autonomous vehicles are going to obviate ALL of that which means cities are going to lose more and more revenue as they become adopted.
And nobody is thinking about how to replace that revenue.
This has a huge potential to link up incredibly well with walking, cycling, micro mobility and trains and not to mention high density housing and/or green land. I hope that it is acted on.
Also a lot of people don't use trains because of the last mile problem. (And because in america specifically they are a lower standard than they were in the 1800's).
But if people could get a lift to the station and then to work. Or get the train 10 times a week and get a lift to and from the supermarket once a week without needing to buy a car. That will be a huge reclamation of space.
Could even be like a 10 lane (total) motorway going to two train lines and a two lane road. Not to mention the space it frees on minor roads.
I live in Southern California in a parking impacted area. The amount of money they make off of "street sweeping" is insane. With this, you'd just tell your car to drive around until the street sweeping is done.
At this point why even have your own car? A pool of cars that can come and pick you up when you need it would be more efficient and allow the cost to be shared widely across a group
Socialised private transport? Call it a car club and it's private enterprise and therefore okay, like Zipcar here in the UK!
Yup, back when I had to go to an office I was paying $21 a day to park. 5 days a week.
With an autonomous car I could have it drop me off, drive back home, then pick me up based on my cell phone location on demand.
Yeah, I'd double my gas usage during the week, but I guarantee it would be less than $105.
It wouldn't have to go all the way home, just some safe free spot.
If you have family/friends it could be helping them out all day.
Or a robotaxi might suit better.
Think of how well people treat public transport they all depend on...now that place is your car and people are alone and unsupervised. You're going to spend a large amount of time and money keeping the car from being a trashed mess.
I'd double my gas usage during the week
More likely power bill I'd think - I haven't heard of anyone working on an autonomous gas powered car or even hybrid. Also a few states won't even be allowing sales of gas cars in 11 years
Double the wear n tear on the car, double the wear n tear on roads, double the traffic. yipeeeeee
True.
I just thought of a potential partial solution:
There could be companies that rent spaces in parking lots (with charging) specifically for automated cars, located just outside cities and commercial/industrial areas. Might even be useful to people in apartments or otherwise without a place to charge at home.
These would be closer to where the car needs to go later than all the way back home, and ideally on lower traffic routes.
If you think a step further, it would double traffic.
I wonder how that'll work in an urban area.
Yes, but you'd still have twice as many cars on the road at any point in time, grinding everything to a standstill.
Autonomous cars really will be a fucking nightmare for traffic and I don't think people understand this. Traffic is one of the biggest reducers of car trips, it's why induced demand is a thing. People avoid trips if they don't want to deal with the traffic and people pay for expensive parking to avoid driving around looking for a cheap spot.
Autonomous cars would enable so many trips that would otherwise be avoided. Don't want to look for parking? Your car will do it. Don't want to sit in traffic for 30 mins to get to the grocery store? You can watch youtube while your car drives you. Don't want to take your kid to a friends house? The car will drive them.
EVs are not going to solve climate change and autonomous cars are not going to fix traffic. These problems are only solved by reducing car dependency and the faster people suck it up and accept that the faster we actually start working on solutions instead of tech bro nonsense that only solves the problem of how to concentrate even more wealth in the 0.1%.
No mention of precision fermentation.
I think a huge shift is coming to our food. Even if it's easy things like milk, olive oil, palm oil.
But I think it's coming for meat and I think it's going to be the best thing to happen to the environment ever.