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Self-Driving Vehicles/Autonomous Vehicle Technology

I've given the "vehicle subscription model" discussed a couple pages back some more thought, and then it hit me who are the ideal companies to deliver such a service: the car companies themselves.

Car ownership is likely to drop when SDVs become the norm, because why pay for parking and maintenance when you can have a vehicle available to you on-demand? I was working on the assumption that it would be an Uber type of service that would fill this gap, but the more I think of it the more it makes sense for car companies to do this.

Their 'sales pitch' will switch from selling you a car to selling you a service package. The "Economy" package would include a base model car (Corolla, Focus, Civic, etc) available to you within 10 minutes of the request. The "Luxury" package would include their top of the line car (Town Car, Lexus, etc) available within 5 minutes of the request. They could also have a family option which includes a larger vehicle.

The idea is that people would pick a service package that is most appropriate for their needs and wants, for a fixed price every month (a subscription). With this model, car manufacturers would be able to tailor their production lines to how popular each package is in a given year, and the types of vehicles to be included in it. Given the intense competition this is likely to create, it would be interesting to see what kinds of 'bonus features' companies throw into their packages to incentivize you to choose them. We already see this to a limited extent with cell phone contracts, where companies like Rogers include GameCentre Live and Texture as throw-ins to their plans.

It's definitely a shift in business model for these companies, but I think it could be just as profitable for them, if not more-so, because they would have an on-going revenue stream from customers, and not just a single point-of-sale purchase.
 
Oh.... And:

Transit agencies can also get into the game too with hybrid systems, in theory.

Ridehail systems would overlap the fixed routes, but also straddle each other eventually. Virtual bus routes could actually end up being created/removed. Instead of all bus routes being fixed, some bus routes (especially suburban) might be permitted to deviate or adapt if it was time-efficient/revenue-efficient. You'd have some of the TTC bus routes become dynamic (add/remove stops on ridehail demand clusters, minor modification to bus route to cause ridership surge, etc).

Virtual bus stops would be on screens and transit apps, and stops that profitably had lots of ridehail demand would eventually (within 1-month) become permanent or semi-permanent additions, and receive portable bus stop pole installed from TTC headquarters, as a crowdsourced way of adapting to bus stop demand.

Example: These could be various deviations of an existing bus route like "41" versus "41A" versus "41B" plus smaller minivans/minibuses "41 CONNECT". Where "41 CONNECT" is the #41 bus route that's permitted to deviate from the #41 route by up to a few blocks to pikcup a ridehail cluster. Being perhaps smaller vehicles like minibuses and minivans, they could go deeper (and closer to schools, community centres, secluded office, etc) than a full size bus.

This might make sense for certain suburban routes, rural routes, or poorly connected urban A-B pairs (e.g. normally requires 3 transit rides / 2 transfers) that could become more cost-effective if the (small-sized) unmanned public transit van/minibus vehicle was permitted to deviate a little towards ridehail clusters that had minimal delay-per-passenger criteria. Distant or time-consuming pickups would automatically be assigned smaller ridehail (Ala autonomous Uber) / or suggested to walk closer to a nearby efficient pickup spot to qualify for bus fare pricing, etc.

Over the long term, bus stops should also be legalized as ridehail stops too so that approved self-driving vans & minibuses (with proper surveillance & insurance) can stand-in as an official bus route in the timetable gaps, then they could/should/perhaps be welcome to do so. If the bus is sticking to a 30 minute bus and don't have enough vehicles -- there's a game in RuralsVille plus a Farm Race event too, MagicBUS Inc. could send in extra unmanned accessible vans/minibus vehicles for :10 :20 :40 and :50 bus runs all day long that particular day. They earn a profit, and send part of that profit to RuralsVille Transit that only runs :00 and :30 buses. Win-Win. Heck, maybe Uber will be one of the providers (if they've got a fleet of suitable drivereless vans), or YOU can opt-in to provide your unmanned soccermom minivan to RuralsVille Transit on busy days to improve the transit on very busy days. Or maybe not -- it might manifest itself as a different form, bus routes disappearing, replaced with a grid unmanned ridehail carpool routes, if that was more revenue-efficient and time-efficient.
 
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I would predict that financing arm of car companies - the people you lease or borrow through today - would be the service provider. I don't know much about how these connect to the manufacturing arm - or are they different companies altogether ?

- Paul
 
crs1026 said:
I would predict that financing arm of car companies - the people you lease or borrow through today - would be the service provider. I don't know much about how these connect to the manufacturing arm - or are they different companies altogether ?
Click to expand...
Easily could be.

You decide how low you want your car bill to be -- and you opt-in of letting the car do ridehail/carshare/transit, and adjusts accordingly.

If you pay full price and want to be the full sole user, that's your right. But you'd have the option to reduce your bills, if you were out of job or need to lower your bills for a bit. Or if you wanted your car to become free.

With the car having the ability to drive itself to maid & maintenance services (and charge automatically to the customer at fault), this also lessens the "somebody barfed in my car" factor as well.

Ideally, you'd have the full freedom of how much you want to opt-in.
- Always going solo.
- Letting your car participate in ridehail/transit, whenever not using the car.
- Or simply being picky and letting your car be a carshare for your family/friends/neighbours only (cost-splitting via equivalent of a private carshare club with app-hailing capability). Like a easy-to-create private car share club.
- Or even, tomorrow's condo fees might also pay for 20 shared SDV's in the condo garage, that the condo residents can share off, for example (paid to the financing arm you mention).
- Or if you don't drive enough to make it cheaper, just opt-out of car ownership and just hail someone else's car.
- Or become an approved user for your neighbour's car (if they opted-in his/her/their car as an unmanned ZipCar for the neighborhood, family, or friends).
- Etc.

I imagine choice will go up dramatically. Apps will have to help make this easier. For example, in year 2025, TransitApp and GoogleMaps might tell you the nearest subscribed vehicles that best fits your needs of the time, alongside displaying all the ridehails/transit/etc.
 
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crs1026 said:
I would predict that financing arm of car companies - the people you lease or borrow through today - would be the service provider. I don't know much about how these connect to the manufacturing arm - or are they different companies altogether ?

- Paul
Click to expand...

I would think it would be the dealerships in essence that would do it. Instead of buying a car from that dealership, you would have the option to buy a subscription package from that dealership. Right now dealerships buy cars from the manufacturer, and in essence resell them to the public. This intermediary could be maintained even with a subscription model, and they could also continue to sell cars too, if people still wanted them. The showroom would basically be showing cars for sale AND for rent. Instead of trying to upsell you to a higher model of car, salesmen could upsell you to a higher priced subscription tier. The capitalistic nature of car sales would be very much maintained, haha.

Much like cell phone service, who people went with in a given area would depend on who has the fastest response time and the best service. So for response time, like location of cell towers with phones, location of the vehicle parking lots would be crucial. This could potentially be a money-maker for big box retailers, who could rent out their parking spaces to various car companies, or could sign an exclusivity deal with one company.

And you're right mdrejhon, these subscription packages could very well be bundled in with other things, such as a condo. Minimum of 10 cars (or pick your number) for the building on hand at all times.
 
As I understand it, when you buy or lease a vehicle, the financing company basically buys it from the dealer. If it is leased, the dealership may be obligated to buy the car back from the leasing company (at the residual value) when you turn it in, and then have to sell as a used vehicle.... but dealers (and manufacturers) don't tie up capital in the cars they have sold after they leave the lot.

Any company offering subscriptions would have to tie up a lot of capital to do this. That's why I thought it might not be the manufacturer or the dealer.

The more I think of it, the rental car companies would be the most amenable to the kind of business model you suggest. It's what they do now, they just don't have a real-time dispatch function. But that could be developed as a module of their reservation system. They probably have financing deals with the manufacturers and manage their inventory accordingly.

- Paul
 
crs1026 said:
As I understand it, when you buy or lease a vehicle, the financing company basically buys it from the dealer. If it is leased, the dealership may be obligated to buy the car back from the leasing company (at the residual value) when you turn it in, and then have to sell as a used vehicle.... but dealers (and manufacturers) don't tie up capital in the cars they have sold after they leave the lot.

Any company offering subscriptions would have to tie up a lot of capital to do this. That's why I thought it might not be the manufacturer or the dealer.

The more I think of it, the rental car companies would be the most amenable to the kind of business model you suggest. It's what they do now, they just don't have a real-time dispatch function. But that could be developed as a module of their reservation system. They probably have financing deals with the manufacturers and manage their inventory accordingly.

- Paul
Click to expand...

Rental car companies would be another interesting group of companies to enter that subscription arena, especially considering if that model becomes more prevalent, it could potentially replace car rentals for people vacationing (unless the subscription is geo-locked to a specific city).

This subscription model has the potential to put traditional ride on demand services (cabs and uber) completely out of business, especially if the subscriptions are structured in such a way that they're nation or continent-wide. Imagine vacationing in California and being able to request a car the same way you do at home. Of course, this would be a premium add-on to any plan, much in the way that roaming is added on to a cell phone plan.
 
In Canada, gasoline has about 15% ethanol in it. (Ethanol, also called alcohol, ethyl alcohol, grain alcohol, and drinking alcohol, is a chemical compound, a simple alcohol with the chemical formula. Its formula can be also written as−− or−, and is often abbreviated as EtOH. Ethanol is a volatile, flammable, colorless liquid with a slight characteristic odor. It is a psychoactive substance and is the principal type of alcohol found in alcoholic drinks.)

Wouldn't "autonomous" vehicles that drive themselves be driving "impaired"?

From link.

? ? ? o_O
 
Something like this could be helpful for increasing the catchment area of transit stations.

Currently the technology is small and low speed. The biggest problem is that it is too cautious and makes very gradual maneuvers and stops at the slightest hint of conflict. That is where the improvements in autonomy will help. As the systems become more capable and can be less cautious they will be faster and more useful. These would also be great for running off-peak frequent/on demand bus service along corridors. Minimizing things like turns, navigating parking lots, etc. just picking up and dropping off in existing bus bays/bus stops is going to be a much easier automation problem. Could also have remote system operators that can intervene whenever a vehicle gets confused by a situation (cones, finding an object in the street, etc.). Even with low top speed (say 40 kph) for safety, being on-demand would result is pretty high level of service with reduced wait times and fairly high average speeds.
 
That bright AV future is predicated on free, uncongested roads. AVs will lead to higher VMT, putting increased pressure on roads. There is limited ability to add additional road capacity on the surface. So unless people use higher capacity AV buses/shuttles, it would be hard to compete with the capacity to move people provided by rail transit.

Of course, I do think AVs will take off, I just don't think they are a panacea.
 
Although I do think self driving technology has a lot of potential to change cities, and do not disagree with the idea that some public transit routes (especially low ridership suburban bus routes and low ridership intercity routes) will be rendered completely redundant, I find this article's idea that passenger rail will be "obsolete" to be misleading and inaccurate at best.

The article's first point is that traffic congestion is not a justification for rail. The first paragraph in this section, about how congestion is triggered by different driving patterns of different drivers and how autonomous vehicles can fix that, is pretty accurate. However, the remainder of that section of the article is incredibly dubious. It talks about how rail is subsidized, and that rail systems generally cannot survive without subsidies, and how Europe and China spend billions on rail each year. It fails to mention how even more money is spent on road networks, and roads also cannot survive without subsidies (sure, a major toll highway can make money, but can all the suburban cul-de-sacs which make up most of the road network make money? I don't think so). Needless to say this is a moot point. The article continues by advocating for road expansion by eliminating street parking, since self driving cars don't need to park. This is not too terrible imo, even though expanding sidewalks or bike lanes would be a better use. However, the article goes further by suggesting the money saved from eliminating rail should be spent on expanding roads, and advocates for building multilevel roads wherever widening isn't possible. This is so ridiculous I don't even know where to start. First of all building multilevel road networks everywhere would be so ludicrously expensive that the previous point about how rail is expensive is almost laughable. Rail is also so much cheaper per unit capacity than roads, for the simple fact that trains carry more people in a smaller space and therefore less physical infrastructure is required. This also completely ignores the proven and well-known phenomenon of induced demand, and completely ignores the fact that this would be extremely ugly (like, Gardiners on every major road), horrible for urban realm and livability, etc.

The second point, that transit would no longer be necessary to for disabled people, drunk drivers, etc. is reasonable and fine by me.

The third point, that rail and cars create the same air pollution, has a completely nonsensical argument that presents a bunch of useless information and no good evidence to support anything. However, I do believe that EVs will have similar environmental footprints compared to electrified passenger rail. However, rail will still be lower since they move more people per unit of electricity or unit of raw materials used to make the car/train.

The fourth point is that driverless cars are not going to be less safe than trains, and although this might be true, I think advanced ATC systems will probably still be safer than driverless cars, simply because trains operate in a much simpler and more controlled environment. Trains have rails to guide them, which eliminates a lot of collision possibilities. Trains also have dedicated ROWs that generally don't accommodate other users like pedestrians or cyclists. There are also going to be a lot fewer intersections or points of conflict on rail lines, and there are usually much larger gaps between trains vs cars.

Conclusion
Self driving cars will probably be terrible for some train operators, particularly longer distance services like intercity rail in lower demand and low density areas. I think most of Amtrak and Via are at pretty big risk here. However, most metro systems and urban rail is here to stay in some form or another. Even though self driving cars will be more convenient, they are still cars and they do not solve the basic issue that cars move less people than than trains. In cities, there simply isn't the space for cars, self driving or not. Any improvement to road capacity brought by automation will immediately be consumed by induced/latent demand. Building roads will continue to add less people moving capacity per dollar spent than building good transit systems and TOD. Self driving cars also do nothing to solve the urban realm and livability challenges of cars. Self driving cars will still be noisy. They will still take up tons of space in our cities. They will still make public health worse, because you get 0 exercise while using a car, unlike transit or cycling or walking. They will still encourage greenfield development on the urban fringe, eating up valuable farmland and natural habitat.

Side note: I do think self driving electric bus BRTs have significant potential. Unlike self driving cars, they could be high capacity. Construction would be cheaper than rail as a flat surface costs less than rails, though maintenance and energy use might increase due to the inherent inefficiency of having many smaller vehicles vs less large vehicles (economies of scale). If stations allow buses to pass each other and allow multiple buses to stop at once, the service could be very flexible - each passenger could tell a system where they want to go at the beginning of their trip and the computers decide where buses will go and where they will stop to minimize travel times. By putting people with similar journeys on the same vehicle, most stops could be skipped and a point-to-point service could be provided.
 
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In my opinion, true, high level autonomy (4 and 5, possibly 3) will not likely arrive in the lifetime of anyone using this forum, particularly in remote areas. I'm not exactly sure I see how a local service rail, like the ones mentioned, are impacted any more or less than long haul. In the case of SSM-Hearst, a good piece of the impacted business was servicing remote hunting and fishing lodges that lack road access.
 
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