Google’s New Self-Driving Car Unvieled - Ditches the Steering Wheel
- Thread starter babylonian
- Start date
This is just a prototype. Once they get it properly working and have a good track record. Designers will step up. Who knows there might be a blogging opportunity in this area; somebody better step up.
I used to think electric cars were gay. Now I'm thinking about getting this bad boy.
I used to think electric cars were gay. Now I'm thinking about getting this bad boy.
I still think Demolition man got the driverless car right... The wheel was out of the way but expanded when you needed it:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlpPR_GgwEc]Demolition Man (1993) - Google driverless car, iPad and Skype in the year 2032 - YouTube[/ame]
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlpPR_GgwEc]Demolition Man (1993) - Google driverless car, iPad and Skype in the year 2032 - YouTube[/ame]
I could see this putting uber out of business.
Need a ride, need it cheap? Need to go from the bar drunk to home?
You could call up these Google cars from an app and pay for it via Google wallet/Paypal and have it take you home.
Just landed in San Diego with your wife and don't want to rent a car you have to drive ( and learn where all the hot spots are in SD? ), rent one of these for the day to take you to the Zoo and then later to the beaches and a Padrades game and then back to your hotel with no fuss. Also could come with a list of pre-destination routes that bars and other attractions pay GOOGLE to get included as, and google makes money on taking you to their "preferred" strip club or shopping mall, etc.
If I just landed somewhere or needed a ride somewhere in a new city, Id like to see a list of hot areas the car could take me. Money all around bros.
This isn't just for personal use, think of how Google is going to make money knowing where people go and when, then selling that data to advertisers. Oh, you wanna go to Ambercrombie at the mall today? Uhmm.. well did you know that Aeropastle is willing to give you a 25% coupon today good from 2pm - 5pm today?
Being dropped off at the airport today? Did you know the Delta Milage Visa offers you 40k bonus points if you apply today?
You guys are way too small minded to see the opportunity here.
Need a ride, need it cheap? Need to go from the bar drunk to home?
You could call up these Google cars from an app and pay for it via Google wallet/Paypal and have it take you home.
Just landed in San Diego with your wife and don't want to rent a car you have to drive ( and learn where all the hot spots are in SD? ), rent one of these for the day to take you to the Zoo and then later to the beaches and a Padrades game and then back to your hotel with no fuss. Also could come with a list of pre-destination routes that bars and other attractions pay GOOGLE to get included as, and google makes money on taking you to their "preferred" strip club or shopping mall, etc.
If I just landed somewhere or needed a ride somewhere in a new city, Id like to see a list of hot areas the car could take me. Money all around bros.
This isn't just for personal use, think of how Google is going to make money knowing where people go and when, then selling that data to advertisers. Oh, you wanna go to Ambercrombie at the mall today? Uhmm.. well did you know that Aeropastle is willing to give you a 25% coupon today good from 2pm - 5pm today?
Being dropped off at the airport today? Did you know the Delta Milage Visa offers you 40k bonus points if you apply today?
You guys are way too small minded to see the opportunity here.
Something like
But, yeh, I'd be significantly more willing to take a driverless taxi than I would be to actually own a driverless car.
Driverless cars would abandon the need for owning cars. Why would anyone own one (if they use it to get from A to B) where you can have a pool of cars available in your street to take people anywhere at any time.
You just pay driverlesscar co your monthly subscription, and they make sure you'll always have a car whenever you need it.
It doesn't change the fact that people are going to have to get used to the idea of a computer driving them all over the place, and having their life in their hands more consciously than ever before.
It's a bigger step than trusting a web browser with your credit card info, and how long did that take?
Uber could adapt. If they invest in these at the right time they could flood out all the car rentals and taxis in their target areas, in fact.
This has me thinking about Zipcars. (Car Sharing, an alternative to car rental and car ownership) I'd say this is the most desirable format for these autonomous vehicles, just sitting in parking spaces all over town ready to drive to you like taxis do today when you need them.
Taking that to the next level, we could set each car up as a DAC (Distributed Autonomous Corporation) that has its' own bank account (bitcoin wallet) and never needs a thing from any human to keep on humming along by itself... We could buy shares in ownership of that car's DAC, and make a profit from its' operation while it goes about being a taxi for anyone anywhere 24/7/365, including taking itself in for gas and maintenance, paying for them itself with bitcoin, without anyone's approval, ever.
If that car is successful, and makes enough profit, it could theoretically "give birth" to it's own workforce inside the DAC by buying more cars and taking a cut of their action. (Which pays shareholders more, of course.) Any cars that do poorly will sadly no longer be able to afford to stay in business, and will likely 'die' while the most successful cars have 'offspring.' Boom; natural selection will make these cars better and better a their jobs over time!
This idea was Google employee Mike Hearn's first thought when he realized bitcoin was programmable money. He's now on the bitcoin Dev team and is writing software for robots/drones to use their own bank accounts.
It'll likely go to quadcopter-based drones first for use as couriers before it goes to cars.
That's awesome. Another great income stream for the owner/owners of these cars.
I'm pretty sure you are refuting yourself here.
Privacy-conscious folks are trusting browsers LESS as time goes by, and with bitcoin we won't need to trust them at all soon. So if it's safe to assume that some people will want to have a private life that google doesn't drive them around to and be able to drive places that googlecars can't navigate, then clearly there will always be a market for driven/driveable cars.
Most people will adapt to it, it'll just take time. There'll be privacy conscious people that will refuse, but in the end the driverless cars will become a legal requirement due to their better safety performance. Driving a car on the open road will become illegal. In turn, the driverless cars will be able to travel much faster, too. High speeds only become possible when there's no cars being driven by people on the road.
At that stage the privacy conscious either buys a privacy conscious driverless car, should it be plausible, stops driving, or breaks the law (which may in itself become impossible, depending on how other cars on the road behave/drive at that point).
Each generation that gets born, gets born with less privacy awareness. My generation is far less concerned with privacy than yours, and that will continue, so long as technology improves and becomes more embedded in our day-to-day lives.
Driverless cars are great for safety, convenience, and efficiency, but bad news for libertarians.
I certainly see the argument... The resulting Brave-New-World distopia pisses me off, however. I don't think I'm in a rare enough demographic for this irritation to get adopted without significant backlash.
At this point, it becomes yet another struggle of people against their governments. Today the governments are winning very easily, but that won't always be the case... The tidal wave of decentralization has started to gain momentum already and I doubt it'll take a full decade for it to smash governments into impotent little things that humanity will eventually do away with.
This is a highly ironic statement to my ears. Sure the original Cypherpunks are all older than even I am, but the young decentralization movement is legion. Millions of kids still in high school today know more about decentralizing important services than any old-timer cypherpunk did. They're a generation of natural born programmers, and they are rapidly replacing all of the non-programming jobs on this planet with code &/or robots.
The youth, especially those that get homeschooled, give me a lot of hope... I'm learning a lot from them these days, and I don't fear for the future of libertarianism at all. They'll fix that distopian shit with code so fast it'll make big brother's head spin.
The thought occurred to me that sooner or later an affordable, personal flying car is going to happen too. I'd imagine we'll need those to be automated for our safety just because of the sheer difficulty in controlling them... If so, then my bet would be that it's all going to be self-driving above ground and free-to-roam down here among the peons.
Google did invest a hefty sum in Uber a while ago!
Article from August 2013
"But already, people are speculating about why Google seems so interested in Uber. The most obvious guess is that Google envisions combining Uber’s service with its famous self-driving cars. Imagine calling an Uber black car and not even having to pay a tip!"
As Google Ventures Invests $250 Million In Uber, What's Next? Driverless Cars On Demand? - Forbes
Also, announced yesterday
Uber Confirms “Record Breaking” Fundraising, Interest In Driverless Ubers | TechCrunch
Uber Confirms “Record Breaking” Fundraising, Interest In Driverless Ubers | TechCrunch
Street racing is dangerous, stupid and unlawful - and I can Not nor do I support it in anyway. This great county is Littered with racetracks and they Are The Only Place To Race And Drive Fast...
However: I'd be lying (BIG TIME) if I said I never did it...
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLwK98Ywgto&feature=kp"]Bruce Springsteen - Racing in the Street lyrics video HD - YouTube[/ame]
However: I'd be lying (BIG TIME) if I said I never did it...
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLwK98Ywgto&feature=kp"]Bruce Springsteen - Racing in the Street lyrics video HD - YouTube[/ame]