The future of Tesla

[Kaitzilla]

Lower emissions is a nice perk, yet the core reason why electrification has so much potential from the POV of Musk (and similar Capitalists) is cost savings - both on running the car/truck and on repairs. Furthermore, tesla can’t afford to be beaten to this market, they have to delve into truck production before the likes of Volvo and Daimler fill the void.

https://media.daimler.com/marsMedia...b1R5cGVJZD00MDYyNiZ2aWV3VHlwZT10aHVtYnM!&rs=0

The Volvo self driving electric semi has popped up.
The Vera.

I think I like Tesla's more because there is still a human driver. (In the center of the cab? cool!)

The self driving semis are just too big and are scary looking.
Remember the ones in the movie Logan?

Those were just haunting.
Humans driving cars nearly died and the faceless behemoths just honked their honks precisely twice and cared not for life and death.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/5/15923232/einride-tpod-self-driving-truck-sweden-logan

 

[Live trash can]

I think I have read that autonomous vehicles will put an end to traffic congestion!

Because it allows the cars to move simultaneously. Anyone knows if this is correct?

 

[warpus]

That level of automation isn't happening for a long time.

Tokyo figured out the best way to move lots of people around and keep traffic under control. It works on any scale as long as your city has at least 400,000 people or so. It's called Rapid Transit and includes varying degrees of implementation depending on city size and circumstances.

If your city isn't of a size where Rapid Transit is feasible, then it's still probably small/not dense enough - A regular bus service and a well designed city grid should be enough. If you have traffic problems then the city grid is not designed well or the public transit is inadequate/underfunded or both.

 

[tetley]

Autonomous vehicles are not a panacea, but they can help. We did some simulations where autonomous vehicles can actually make traffic worse, because people can start driving to work, then drive it back to their garage at home to park.

 

[Live trash can]

Yeah, there is probably a cap on how many people can drive in a city. Because of parking issues and physical limitations on the roads whether cars are autonomous or not! I still think bikes seem like the best way of travel.

I guess avoiding very high density of human habitation makes travel easier on all accounts also. Less crowded and so on. Unless they all travel to the same city center. But then a Rapid Transit thing might save the day! Or maybe simply a subway system. I think the future looks bright!

 

[Hrothbern]

I think I have read that autonomous vehicles will put an end to traffic congestion!

Because it allows the cars to move simultaneously. Anyone knows if this is correct?

The simplistic answer:
General rule of thumb is that cars driven by humans need about a distance of 2 seconds.
At 30 meter per second (108 km/hr) that is every 60 meter a car of 5 meter with 55 meter distance between your front bumper and the rearbumper of the car before you.
At 10 meter per second (36 km/hr) that is every 20 meter a car of 5 meter with 15 meter distance between your front bumper and the rearbumper of the car before you.
=> enough room for more cars if there is already an AI automatic drive only for your speed (gas and brakes).
An AI able to handle 1 second distance would double the traffic flow rate.
Here an article going deeper in it including congesting issues.
https://jliszka.github.io/2013/10/01/how-traffic-actually-works.html

BTW
Besides good public transport infra in more dense urban areas.
These two are part of the standard infra in NL:
Parking places for bicycles near the bus/train stations can help nibble the issue.
Pooling helps also for more distanced travelling. Whether picking people up when it is your turn, or pooling parking places where the local road joins the motorway.

 

[Ajidica]

Which city do you live in?

Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. While not mega-cities, they are either the 16th or 14th largest metropolitan area depending on which metric you use.
Just because your experience with public transit may be terrible does not mean that public transit has to be terrible.

 

[Oerdin]

Ok, thank you for clarifying that you simply did not read well. I said in most of America and I stand by that statement.

 

[Ajidica]

Ok, thank you for clarifying that you simply did not read well. I said in most of America and I stand by that statement.

Robust mass transit systems are basically required for healthy urban and inner-ring suburban development. In many cities, mass transit sucks due to an unsustainable emphasis on car-centric development sprawl, willfully starving mass transit authorities of necessary funds, and people who have what can only be described as hate-boners for busses. Your statement that "Ride[ing] a bus in the US and not only will it take four times as long to get there and require no less than three transfers" is false. I require no transfers taking a bus into work and get into work faster than if I was driving because of dedicated bus lanes in the highway and city and not needing to sit in gridlock to get to parking garages.
We've seen in European cities how effective a well thought out and funded mass transit system can be. If your only goal here is to rant about how busses are full of people with mental illness or underage prostitutes, at least give me the basic decency of admitting that so I don't waste my time talking about mass transit with you.

 

[Live trash can]

An AI able to handle 1 second distance would double the traffic flow rate.

Doubling the traffic flow that way would be great.

What I imagine is traffic moving simultaneously, either by help of autonomous technology or that and some kind of connection to the internet or a traffic operations central. You can visualize the traffic just moving graciously, all at the same time.

Doubling the amount of cars in need of parking is not so great though!
I suppose this is a case of having a cake and not eating it too!

Edit: Come to think of it, perhaps autonomy will create a possibility for "cars" to be reused rather than being parked...

 

[Hrothbern]

Doubling the traffic flow that way would be great.

What I imagine is traffic moving simultaneously, either by help of autonomous technology or that and some kind of connection to the internet or a traffic operations central. You can visualize the traffic just moving graciously, all at the same time.

Doubling the amount of cars in need of parking is not so great though!

Doubling parking indeed not that great. Not only the parking buildings (possibly underground), but also the time loss involved.
Car pooling (with more passengers by car) does reduce parking at the same rate in the dense spots. And more suited for sub urb to centre city.
My preferred option for suburbs is bicycles from home to the bus-, railway-, subway station (when to long distance to walk) and then hop in that public mass transport to the centre and walk the last bit.
The E-bikes did a lot of good here because it helps with windy days and for older, less fit people.

 

[Silurian]

Doubling the traffic flow that way would be great.

What I imagine is traffic moving simultaneously, either by help of autonomous technology or that and some kind of connection to the internet or a traffic operations central. You can visualize the traffic just moving graciously, all at the same time.

Doubling the amount of cars in need of parking is not so great though!
I suppose this is a case of having a cake and not eating it too!

Edit: Come to think of it, perhaps autonomy will create a possibility for "cars" to be reused rather than being parked...

Maybe something like this.

I get up in the morning walk out my front door and get into the supermarket owned driverless taxi.
The taxi drops me at the light rail station that the supermarket has paid to be built on the edge of its carpark.
I get the train into the city and the taxi makes deliveries for people who are still at home from the supermarket.
When I get off the train in the evening, I walk into the supermarket and pick my own meat and vegetables and brouse the other goods to see if there is anything new I would like to try. I pay and walk out to the supermarket taxi which has been loaded with the rest of my goods that I ordered online.
When I get home I realise that I have foregotten an ingredient for the meal I am cooking for my wife so I walk to the local store, I do not want to pay for a taxi back to the supermarket.
At the store I meet my neigbour who is picking up a new printer that he ordered on line.


My boss has the money to pay the insurance on a manual drive car but she can not pay the tax to drive into the city centre and park so uses the train as well.
During the day her car goes shopping, driving itself. If she does not like the clothes her car takes them back to the shop the next day.
At the weekend she drives into the the town centre and her car drives itself out again as there are few parking spaces now.
She meets her friends and they go to the clothes and art shops, then have a meal in a bar overlooking the harbour.
Her car comes and picks her up and drives her home because she is now over the drink drive limit.

 

[Live trash can]

That makes me think of a couple of Utopian books I have read. Walden 2 and Looking Backwards. Which is the closest I come to reading a fictional novel. I suppose those kinds of readings are constructive for young minds. And probably older ones too.

 

[Oerdin]

View attachment 513262

Robust mass transit systems are basically required for healthy urban and inner-ring suburban development. In many cities, mass transit sucks due to an unsustainable emphasis on car-centric development sprawl, willfully starving mass transit authorities of necessary funds, and people who have what can only be described as hate-boners for busses. Your statement that "Ride[ing] a bus in the US and not only will it take four times as long to get there and require no less than three transfers" is false. I require no transfers taking a bus into work and get into work faster than if I was driving because of dedicated bus lanes in the highway and city and not needing to sit in gridlock to get to parking garages.
We've seen in European cities how effective a well thought out and funded mass transit system can be. If your only goal here is to rant about how busses are full of people with mental illness or underage prostitutes, at least give me the basic decency of admitting that so I don't waste my time talking about mass transit with you.

I have seen them in other countries as well. I spoke about current conditions in most of America as well as the attitudes and perception of most Americans. I was very clear about that. So while your opinion is nice it also has zero to do with what I posted and amounts to nothing more than nonsequiter.

 

[uppi]

What I imagine is traffic moving simultaneously, either by help of autonomous technology or that and some kind of connection to the internet or a traffic operations central. You can visualize the traffic just moving graciously, all at the same time.

Moving exactly simultaneously would be possible, but you would want to have some small delays as safety margins. These delays are necessary so that it can be verified that all the cars are doing what they are supposed to be doing. There might be some malfunction due to a electric or mechanical defect and you will want some buffer time to detect that and react accordingly without a crash every time this happens. This will likely only be a few milliseconds, so much less than the seconds of delay that humans tend to cause and will cause traffic to run more smoothly, but not perfectly so.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Tesla is still on the list of companies producing electric cars in China.

 

[Live trash can]

Moving exactly simultaneously would be possible, but you would want to have some small delays as safety margins. These delays are necessary so that it can be verified that all the cars are doing what they are supposed to be doing. There might be some malfunction due to a electric or mechanical defect and you will want some buffer time to detect that and react accordingly without a crash every time this happens. This will likely only be a few milliseconds, so much less than the seconds of delay that humans tend to cause and will cause traffic to run more smoothly, but not perfectly so.

Yes, I imagine it can be quite small. If I can play video games with people across the pond without any noticeable delay (most of the time), I imagine it should be possible to direct traffic within milliseconds - which is really fast!


I'm not a fan of technophilia. And I believe Musk is a technophile. What we need is responsible people. Not tech. Although I am of course willing to make some exceptions, like autonomous vehicles, and repairing damaged bodily organs or limbs.

 

[Goodfella]

Tesla is still on the list of companies producing electric cars in China.

I don’t think Tesla currently makes cars in China. However, they want to make cars there in 2019 or 2020.

 

[Silurian]

From CNBC

Tesla is on pace to begin production at its factory in China in the second half of next year, the Shanghai government said Wednesday.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/06/teslas-china-factory-set-to-begin-production-late-next-year.html

 

[uppi]

Yes, I imagine it can be quite small. If I can play video games with people across the pond without any noticeable delay (most of the time), I imagine it should be possible to direct traffic within milliseconds - which is really fast!

"Most of the time" is key here. You need to keep the safety delay big enough for all times. The task is somewhat harder than with video games, because with those the state of the game is already in a perfect digital form. If you try to control traffic you need to asses the state of the traffic first, which requires sensors and extra time. I don't think you can go much below 10 milliseconds. Which is still quite fast, of course, but with a line of a few cars, it will be noticeable by the human eye.

I'm not a fan of technophilia. And I believe Musk is a technophile. What we need is responsible people. Not tech. Although I am of course willing to make some exceptions, like autonomous vehicles, and repairing damaged bodily organs or limbs.

The world needs technophiles to push technological progress. And then it needs responsible people to reign them back when they go to far.