[simmons]

The idea of cars being driven remotely by someone on the other side of the world was mentioned in Charles Stross's 2007 science fiction novel Halting State. I think about it sometimes, but I always come to the conclusion that the latency would be too high. A 100ms latency might make the difference between a near-miss and a collision.

[ff317]

But it does offer a reasonable hybrid solution: the software in the car doesn't have to solve all possible scenarios, it just has to be good enough to navigate the common, easy scenarios and should always be able to safely handle any situation for a short window of time, even if "handle" means "come to a quick safe stop within X seconds and turn on the hazards", all the while it's already starting the process of asking for remote assistance to take over whatever tricky situation, hopefully before the local code actually reaches the emergency-stopped case.

[lastofthemojito]

We see current cars marketed based on their safety features or crash test results - in this driverless future we'll have luxury brands touting that their remote drivers are based in the USA and can respond 5 times faster than more affordable brands with drivers on the other side of the world.

[matthewdgreen]

If you own the car, you'll be the one responding to it. But if self-driving cars work as well as they're hoped to, you won't own the car. Car ownership is absurdly expensive.

[lastofthemojito]

> Car ownership is absurdly expensive

I mean, it's absurdly expensive except for all of the other types of car usage right? Companies have been pushing car subscriptions for years because they sound nice: "Don't worry about maintenance, just pick a new car every so often!". Except that it turns out to be even more expensive than just owning a car.

Leasing (unless you have some tax advantage) is typically more expensive than owning.

Ride hailing apps are great, but I don't know anyone who has run the numbers and decided it makes more sense for a daily commute than owning a car (maybe someone with no or extremely expensive parking options?).

I'm skeptical that using a self-driving car service from a profit-seeking company would end up being less expensive than owning your own self-driving car, but maybe we'll see.

[matthewdgreen]

Leasing and car rentals have the same problem, which is that you're a single driver hogging an expensive capital asset that you'll use maybe 5-10% of the time. This low capacity factor makes car ownership very expensive. The presumed advantage of self-driving cars is that self-driving vehicles can operate at a higher capacity, factor without incurring the extra costs of needing a human driver to operate them (like taxis) which will make them more useful.

NB: I did not used to think about this much until I recently went to price an extended warranty for my low-mileage car: all of the plans were denominated in years _or_ miles, which meant manufacturers price maintenance in terms of years owned, regardless of usage. The same is true with insurance, which is a huge cost for most drivers: some insurance plans offer a modest discount for extremely low mileage drivers, but to a first approximation the fixed costs of simply owning a parked car are huge. Basically the only saving for owning a parked car is fuel (which can often by offset by the cost of parking, whether that's born by the owner or subsidized by the city.)

[Anonbrit]

Decent public transport + ride hailing is a common situation in many parts of Europe, especially for people who cycle too