Would you buy an autonomous car?

[PatsFan1283]

I think you are underestimating the number of people who would need the actual car unless it's extremely feasible to rent one for 6 hrs.

For day to things yes what you say makes sense.

But there will always be times for almost everyone where you need to go somewhere that's not quite far enough to fly and not close enough to use public.

And if you do rent there would be a lot of 1 way trips.

Say you go somewhere that is 6 hrs away but you are going to stay there for several days.

I guess In that situation the rental car would drive back to its original location empty .


Or maybe a large national company would have holding stations for these types of trips.

Say you leave New York to Chicago but you will stay in Chicago for 5 days.

You can use other transportation once you reach Chicago.

Instead of the vehicle driving all the way back to New York it can stay at a holding station owned by the same company to be used for someone in Chicago .


Very interesting but I do think many people would need to outright own the vehicle .

There would be fleets in every major city for city to city transport I'd imagine. Maybe a new company emerges or maybe a company like Avis steps up and fills this role. Keep in mind families could possibly own 1 car instead of 2, 2 instead of 3 or 4, etc. Doesn't have to be 1 to 0.

If you're going to start coming up with scenarios where it won't work, you'll be able to comeup with more than a few. The main point is there are also more than a few where it will clearly work and will be a no brainer in terms of both economics and convenience.

Obviously it would take awhile to be feasible for every single aspect of transportation but just a 20-30% market penetration rate would have a major impact.

 

[PatsFan1283]

I personally don't think it will ever become a situation where like 75% of the population is just using an integrated autonomous taxi network, to be clear.

 

[CHOPTALK]

I'm all in.

The day they come up with one of these that can take from anywhere in the U.S to anywhere in the U.S. For 100k or less I will be at the dealership the very next day

 

[PatsFan1283]

I'm all in.

The day they come up with one of these that can take from anywhere in the U.S to anywhere in the U.S. For 100k or less I will be at the dealership the very next day

When you say you would be at the dealership the next day, I assume you mean if the safety rates are clearly superior to human drivers. While I'd feel safe in 1 if the #s told me it is 99% safer than human driving, I do feel like sleeping in one is a bit of a different story. That would atleast take some getting used to.

 

[CHOPTALK]

When you say you would be at the dealership the next day, I assume you mean if the safety rates are clearly superior to human drivers. While I'd feel safe in 1 if the #s told me it is 99% safer than human driving, I do feel like sleeping in one is a bit of a different story. That would atleast take some getting used to.

Well I don't allow sensational news media to scare about things like this.

I know for a fact if these were ever allowed on the road the safety factor would be high.

But with all that said I would still grow into .

I would not sleep in the car the first 3 months or so.

I would start out slow and as my confidence rises I would feel more and more freedom and have more trust.

 

[loomis41973]

I think Russians drunk on vodka can drive better than many of these texting, soccer moms.

 

[PatsFan1283]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timwors...rless-car-from-google-be-allowed-to-kill-you/

This is a quick read about a clear dilemma. I could see maybe if you buy the car you have to sign some type of waiver agreement that says something like the passenger is less valuable than a pedestrian in this situation.

Basically as a society we need to come to the logical but somewhat difficult conclusion that people will die via autonomous cars but it will be far, far less than currently die with human drivers. So that will be an issue to watch for. It definitely has hurdles beyond technology relating to regulation but I'd imagine the Google/Apples/Car companies of the world feel that stuff can be ironed out to be putting so much R&D into it.

 

[snoop]

How far off is the trillion dollar question. I don't think they will be highly owned in 10 years but I think that might be when it starts to become a meaningful part of the auto market.

They need to get regulators and insurance industry on board, those seem to be a bigger headache than making a driverless car.

 

[PatsFan1283]

They need to get regulators and insurance industry on board, those seem to be a bigger headache than making a driverless car.

Yeah I agree. Even the automotive industry would like to delay this out for a bit I'm sure. Less cars in production, people caring about a car as status symbol less, less maintenance/repairs at dealerships, etc. Endless possibilities of established businesses having their models altered or even outright becoming extinct.

If the technology is there and there is a demand they might have no choice but I'm sure they would prefer the current environment with 15 million new vehicles sold a year in the US. Then the worldwide #, whatever that is.

 

[PatsFan1283]

http://www.ted.com/talks/chris_urmson_how_a_driverless_car_sees_the_road?language=en

This is a pretty good presentation. Hopefully it works out.

 

[PatsFan1283]

Apple's secret car product "Titan" is about building an autonomous car. This had been suspected but now is pretty much confirmed. Considering manufacturing and selling cars likely wouldn't do a ton for their valuation, I am thinking they want to either supply uber with cars or just compete with them. Since they're an 800 pound gorilla, it is going to be a lot tougher for the establishment medallions and even automakers to stifle them.

<header class="content__head tonal__head tonal__head--tone-news " style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: 'Guardian Text Egyptian Web', Georgia, serif; font-size: medium; line-height: 24px;">Documents confirm Apple is building self-driving car




Exclusive: Correspondence obtained by the Guardian shows Project Titan is further along than many suspected and company is scouting for test locations




</header>
<figure itemprop="associatedMedia image" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" data-component="image" class="media-primary media-content" style="margin: 0px; position: relative;">

<figcaption class="caption caption--main caption--img" itemprop="description" style="min-height: 1.75rem; max-width: none; padding: 0.5rem 0px 1.5rem; font-size: 0.75rem; line-height: 1rem; font-family: 'Guardian Text Sans Web', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; color: rgb(118, 118, 118);"> Apple has been rumoured to be working on a self-driving electric car, codenamed Project Titan, but this is the first time its existence has been documented. Photograph: Zero Creatives/Getty Images</figcaption></figure>Mark Harris
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@meharris

<time itemprop="datePublished" datetime="2015-08-14T14:48:04-0400" data-timestamp="1439578084000" class="content__dateline-wpd js-wpd content__dateline-wpd--modified tone-colour" style="color: rgb(0, 86, 137); cursor: pointer; display: inline-block;">Friday 14 August 2015 14.48 EDT</time><time itemprop="dateModified" datetime="2015-08-14T19:07:39-0400" data-timestamp="1439593659589" class="content__dateline-lm js-lm u-h" style="border: 0px !important; clip: rect(0px 0px 0px 0px) !important; height: 0.0625rem !important; margin: -0.0625rem !important; overflow: hidden !important; padding-top: 0.125rem; padding-right: 0px !important; padding-bottom: 0px !important; padding-left: 0px !important; position: absolute !important; width: 0.0625rem !important; display: inline-block;">Last modified on Friday 14 August 201519.07 EDT</time>

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Apple is building a self-driving car in Silicon Valley, and is scouting for secure locations in the San Francisco Bay area to test it, the Guardian has learned. Documents show the oft-rumoured Apple car project appears to be further along than many suspected.

In May, engineers from Apple’s secretive Special Project group met with officials from GoMentum Station, a 2,100-acre former naval base near San Francisco that is being turned into a high-security testing ground for autonomous vehicles.

In correspondence obtained by the Guardian under a public records act request, Apple engineer Frank Fearon wrote: “We would ... like to get an understanding of timing and availability for the space, and how we would need to coordinate around other parties who would be using [it].”
Apple declined to comment.
GoMentum Station is on the old Concord naval weapons station, a disused second world war-era facility with 20 miles of paved highways and city streets. The base is closed to the public and guarded by the military, making it, officials claim, “the largest secure test facility in the world” for the “testing validation and commercialization of connected vehicle (CV) applications and autonomous vehicles (AV) technologies to define the next generation of transportation network infrastructure.” Mercedes-Benz and Honda have already carried out experiments with self-driving cars behind its barbed-wire fences.
<aside class="element element-rich-link element--thumbnail element-rich-link--upgraded" data-component="rich-link" data-link-name="rich-link-1 | 1" style="float: left; margin: 0.3125rem 1.25rem 0.75rem -15rem; clear: both; width: 13.75rem;">Analysis Vorsprung durch technik: US tech giants v Germany in the driverless car race


German carmakers have teamed up to buy Nokia technology in the race to build a self-drive car. They face stiff opposition on the starting grid from US tech
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</aside>This security is bound to appeal to Apple, which has hundreds of engineers quietly working on automotive technologies in an anonymous office building in Sunnyvale, four miles from its main campus in Cupertino. Details of the project are still unknown but it seems that Apple has a self-driving car almost ready for the road. In late May, Jack Hall, program manager for autonomous vehicles at GoMentum Station, wrote to Fearon to postpone a tour of the facility but noted: “We would still like to meet in order to keep everything moving and to meet your testing schedule.”
Apple has been rumoured to be working on a self-driving electric car, codenamed Project Titan, but this is the first time its existence has been documented. In May, Apple senior vice-president Jeff Williams called the car “the ultimate mobile device” and said that Apple was “exploring a lot of different markets ... [in which] we think we can make a huge amount of difference”.
The move comes as Google, Uber and other tech companies are pouring cash intorobot cars. Apple chief executive Tim Cook has held a series of meetings with car executives in recent months and the company has poached automotive expertsfrom established players, including the head of Mercedes Benz’s Silicon Valley research arm.
Cook has met with Fiat-Chrysler boss Sergio Marchionne and may have toured BMW’s i3 electric car assembly line in Germany last year. The company has also been recruiting automotive experts from Silicon Valley and beyond, hiring engineers from Tesla Motors and Mercedes-Benz, as well as power experts from electric car battery maker A123 Systems. Fearon previously worked on an innovative electric motorbike at Silicon Valley start-up Lit Motors, and helped to build an autonomous robotic paraglider while studying at Georgia Institute of Technology.
<figure itemprop="associatedMedia image" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" class="element element-image img--landscape fig--narrow-caption fig--has-shares" data-media-id="4a1a7243f12bd9af1210b3497e60745fc43bc972" id="img-1" style="margin: 1rem 0px 0.75rem; position: relative;"> FacebookTwitterPinterest
<figcaption class="caption caption--img caption caption--img" itemprop="description" style="font-size: 0.75rem; line-height: 1rem; font-family: 'Guardian Text Sans Web', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; color: rgb(118, 118, 118); padding-bottom: 1.5rem; padding-top: 0.5rem; max-width: 32.5rem;"> Apple declined to comment but the move comes as CEO Tim Cook has held a series of meetings with car executives in recent months. Photograph: Bloomberg/via Getty Images</figcaption></figure>When Fearon approached GoMentum Station, he wrote: “We are hoping to see a presentation on the ... testing grounds with a layout, photos, and a description of how the various areas of the grounds could be used.” GoMentum Station’s empty roads feature everything from highway overpasses and railway crossings to tunnels and cattle grids. These would enable Apple to test vehicles in a variety of realistic everyday situations but without exposing it to scrutiny.
Google, Tesla, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and several other carmakers have been issued permits by the California department of motor vehicles to test self-driving cars on the state’s public roads. But that process requires disclosing technical and commercial details, something that the notoriously secretive Apple might not want.
“We had to sign a non-disclosure agreement with Apple,” says Randy Iwasaki, executive director of the Contra Costa Transportation Authority, owner of GoMentum Station. “We can’t tell you anything other than they’ve come in and they’re interested.”
Apple’s obsession with secrecy even extends internally. While one of the engineers corresponding with GoMentum Station admits to belonging to Apple’s Special Projects group, Fearon signs his emails with a cryptic question mark icon. However, documents seen by the Guardian reveal that Apple’s automotive team is housed in a low-profile building several miles from the company’s glamorous new Cupertino campus, which is currently under construction.
The Sunnyvale building was leased in 2014, and was subsequently modified by Apple to include several lab and workshop spaces, as well as beefed-up security and access card readers, city permits show. “GoMentum Station is 40 miles north of Silicon Valley,” says Iwasaki. “And there’s not a lot of vacant space in the Valley if you want to do testing in a secure location. We’re close enough that companies can bring their vehicles north, store them in the Concord area and bring their software and hardware engineers up.”
Google and other car makers have visited GoMentum Station with a view to trialling driverless cars there, although so far only Honda has signed a $250,000 memorandum of understanding with the facility to begin testing. The Japanese automaker plans to use self-driving versions of its RLX saloon to accelerate the development of automated and connected vehicle technologies far from prying eyes.
However, when engineers from Tesla Motors tried to tour GoMentum Station in April, armed soldiers at the base refused entry to foreign-born workers and a manager who would not divulge his social security number. “At this point, I’ll retract our interest in this test site until the process is worked out,” he huffed in an email to GoMentum Station’s Jack Hall.
Such high security might not suit all carmakers, but Apple should feel right at home.

 

[CHOPTALK]

A top broker from Morgan Stanley just predicted Tesla stock will be over 600 a share in 12 months

 

[PatsFan1283]

Yeah he said to $465. That's really bullish. He is basically just giving them an entirely new sector to derive profits from that doesn't even exist yet and is saying they're going to be the leader in the space. It's definitely an aggressive call for a company burning a lot of cash that still has a ways to go. I wonder which presidential candidate is best for a smooth transition to autonomous cars? Anyone running that has a wife that has 13 tickets in the past 18 years?

The exchange at the bottom with the analyst and Musk is pretty funny.

<header class="standard-video-lede standard-lede lede" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; margin-top: 4.375rem; width: 50rem; position: relative; float: left;">[h=1]Morgan Stanley Massively Hikes Price Target on Tesla, Says Stock Could Almost Double[/h]Another huge call
Julie Verhage

<time class="published-at time-based" datetime="2015-08-17T11:21:36.670Z" itemprop="datePublished" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-font-smoothing: subpixel-antialiased; font-family: NHaasGroteskTXPro-55Rg, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 0.5s ease-out; display: block; border: 0px; font-size: 0.8125rem; float: left; margin-right: 0.3125rem; line-height: 1.25rem; padding: 0px;">August 17, 2015 — 7:21 AM EDT</time>
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Forget about a mere 15 percent increase in stock value -- how about a 90 percent one? That's how bullish Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas is on Tesla.
In a note this morning, Jonas has increased the price target for Tesla to $465 from $280. (The stock opened at $243 on Monday morning before rising about 4 percent in early trading). The key reason behind this is what he calls "Tesla Mobility, an app-based, on-demand mobility service." The race for autonomous driving is nothing new, with tech giants such as Apple and Google also making a push in this realm, but the report says Tesla is well positioned to get large market share. Jonas is telling clients that "Tesla is uniquely positioned, in our view, to solve the biggest flaw in the auto industry, <4% utilization, via an app-based, on-demand mobility service."
Here's more:

Given the pace of technological development both within Tesla and at rival technology and mobility companies, we would be surprised if Tesla did not share formalized business plans on shared mobility within the next 12 to 18 months... We view this business opportunity as potentially additive to Tesla's existing model of selling human-driven cars to private owners and see potential for this model to conceivably more than triple the company's potential revenues by 2029. That is, selling miles in addition to selling cars... If Tesla wants to make good on its mission to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable transport, we see the move to a shared mobility model as critical...
​

Here's a look at how this new mobility segment plays into the price target. It adds $244 a share in the bull case scenario, the second largest contributor behind the traditional Tesla Motors.
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</figure>The report goes on to say that Tesla has five critical attributes a company needs in order to be a successful shared mobility firm, which are:
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</figure>In terms of a timeline for Tesla Mobility, Jonas says there will be three stages. The first version will be a semi-autonomous car, where there is still a human driver. This would take place in the years of 2018-2021. The second stage is a car that is closer to being fully autonomous, but would still need what they call an "operator." This essentially means that there is no need for human intervention in as much as 99 percent of various situations. Jonas expects this to encompass the years of 2021-2025. The final stage is a phase-in of fully autonomous and shared vehicles, expected to begin 10 years from now.
Jonas points out that Tesla has remained fairly quiet about ride sharing, although he did ask Elon Musk about this on the company's second quarter conference call.
Here's the transcript:

Jonas: First question: Steve Jurvetson was recently quoted saying that Uber CEO Travis Kalanick told him that if by 2020 Tesla's cars are autonomous, that he'd want to buy all of them. Is this a real, I mean, forget the 2020 for a moment, but is this a real business opportunity for Tesla? Supplying cars to ridesharing firms, or does Tesla just cut out the middleman and sell on-demand, electric mobility services directly from the company on its own platform?
Musk: That's an insightful question.
Jonas: You don't have to answer it.

Musk: I don't think I should answer it.
Jonas: Sometimes you can tell more from the non-answer than from the answer.
​

</section>

 

[RenoChazz]

When your Tesla parks it's self, it will also fuel it's self.

 

[PatsFan1283]

Whether Tesla succeeds or fails as a large automotive company, they've already won. They disrupted the 100 year old status quo of the car industry by forcing the others to either innovate or die.

Imagine what would happen if every industry had that type of competition?

 

[RenoChazz]

How would you feel riding up to Tahoe in a blizzard in an autonomous car? Driving up crazy hills on icy roads takes some skill and experience.

 

[RenoChazz]

Whether Tesla succeeds or fails as a large automotive company, they've already won. They disrupted the 100 year old status quo of the car industry by forcing the others to either innovate or die.

Imagine what would happen if every industry had that type of competition?

Love Tesla, they're hiring right now, and want to hire hire veterans. Musk's a huge libertarian, I'm very tempted to come out of retirement and apply just to be a part of it.

 

[PatsFan1283]

How would you feel riding up to Tahoe in a blizzard in an autonomous car? Driving up crazy hills on icy roads takes some skill and experience.

That will depend how fast the AI develops. Apple doesn't start copying and improving on technologies until they are close to maturity, so you know it is close by that alone.

There are a lot of practical uses for the cars in cities and on highways that don't involve navigating treacherous conditions.

 

[PatsFan1283]

Love Tesla, they're hiring right now, and want to hire hire veterans. Musk's a huge libertarian, I'm very tempted to come out of retirement and apply just to be a part of it.

Dude you think everyones a huge libertarian! He just said that shit to make Texas feel lame for having protectionist crony capitalist policies relating to their corrupt franchise dealership lobby.

I don't think it cost them the gigafactory but I think he wanted to make them think it did.

 

[RenoChazz]

Dude you think everyones a huge libertarian! He just said that shit to make Texas feel lame for having protectionist crony capitalist policies relating to their corrupt franchise dealership lobby.

I don't think it cost them the gigafactory but I think he wanted to make them think it did.

Not everyone. For sure Trump and Rubio are not.