alt Hacker NewsThis would be an absolute energy and efficiency nightmare. I hope to god this never ever happens.
> No sharing space with people on public transit.
If people really want their own private suites they should be paying thru the nose and ears for it. Cars are a worse version of this and the car-centric lifestyle is heavily subsidized by everything from taxes to people's lives (air pollution from ICEs yes, but tire pollution is actually worse in many ways and is made worse with heavier EVs).
This will not fix food deserts, it will make them worse. If your car isn't packed to capacity on every single trip, it is less efficient and worse than public transit.
Roads are awful. We should be trying to minimize them, not expand them.
Whatever ungodly sum you are prepared to pay, I'm certain the actual cost is yet higher.
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> I hope to god this never ever happens.
Then I'll never buy an autonomous vehicle.
I get that most people just want short trips around a major city, but given we, I'm sure it's shocking, don't all live in places like that, or want to spend our time in places like that, it might behoove y'all to solve for other use cases if you want widespread adoption (or at least accept that it's ok to solve for those use cases).
Or, I guess, you can hope that everyone will suddenly decide that all they want is to live in modern Kowloon City because "roads are awful" or whatever memetic nonsense is trending on TikTok.
Public transit is a dream turned nightmare consistently for seventy-five years. Autonomy will be less efficient -- but not that much less efficient given closer car spacing, speed, and remote parking -- but it will be spectacularly more convenient and comfortable. I'm all for it. You'll survive the tire pollution.
> If your car isn't packed to capacity on every single trip, it is less efficient and worse than public transit.
Cost is a great proxy for costs versus benefits. People choose cars because they are efficient for them.
In theory public transit is efficient. In practice, only if you live in a very high density area, or you value your time at $0.