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by usrusr
2233 days ago
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Single-occupancy trains are a terrible idea though.. Jokes aside, the dependence on self-driving OP was alluding to is wildly exaggerated in my eyes, because the other kind of self-driving (user drives a short-term rental) works just as well. And with short term rentals, physical footprint is making an actual difference because their availability is bounded by storage. There used to be a wave of microcar concepts that were trying to solve parking by folding up a little. Back then those never made sense because they were still intended as personal vehicles and those end up taking up a one-size-fits-all spot anyways. But combined with the innovation of micro-rentals (modeled after docked bike-share) those fold-up tricks could turn from a gimmick into a key enabling technology. All you need is self-parking to store them in a compact FIFO and self-parking is beyond solved. Once you have that, all minor extension of the unparking range (from unparking just enough to unfolding at the storage dock to dedicated pickup locations nearby to pickup anywhere) would be incremental improvements to service quality that would require much less than full autonomy. |
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User drives short term rental gave me all kinds worries which I don't have driving my own car. Being responsible for checking damage when picking it up, worrying about minor (as in accidentally kerbing a wheel) damage while I'm driving, having someone hit it while it is parked somewhere, getting caught in traffic while returning it and being fined for going over the allotted time.
Writing this down has just made me realise how nice it would be if there was a car rental company which worked on a first come first served basis with rental charged per minute. If they also had some kind of automatic photo booth to take detailed before and after photos that would be almost perfect.