Long but Interesting video

[Seasoned Oak]

Like i said ,it wont happen as fast as portrayed in the video. As soon as you get outside urban areas ,people will elect to own or lease their own personal vehicle.

 

[WoodyIsGoody]

Like i said ,it wont happen as fast as portrayed in the video. As soon as you get outside urban areas ,people will elect to own or lease their own personal vehicle.

4 out of 5 Americans live in urban areas. That means what people do in small towns and rural areas has little to do with the overall speed of transition. Decades after the automobile replaced horse transportation you could still find rural people who used a horse and buggy to go to church and get to the hardware store. Even today there are a few that hang on to the outdated methods.

None of this implies the transition didn't happen incredibly quickly.

 

[vinny11950]

As noted this was posted earlier.

When I saw the OLD Seba video, I was skeptical of the transportation as a service TaaS model, and thought this new video did a better a job motivating it.

Having reflected a bit, I have come to a few conclusions...

--if TaaS is going to take off in a few years, it has to already exist in some form....and it does with Uber/Lyft/etc. As those services have grown, there are some obvious problems. Most notably congestion pricing. They're great when you get a cheap ride when you need it at an off time, but its not really great for commuting...congestion pricing (and traffic) make it a slow and expensive ride.

--Tony notes that (future) EVs can drive a lot more miles than existing ICE cars before they need maintenance or to be scrapped. But a car that goes 500k miles, and will be 'old-fashioned' (and thus undesirable) in a few years is oxymoron....how does a car get driven 500k miles in a few years? 100k miles/yr is 30 mph and running 30% of the time. Sounds like an urban Uber.

--The congestion problem is two-fold. If 'rush hour' is 10% of hours, and takes up more than 50% of TaaS miles, then the cars can't do more than a 20% duty cycle, limiting ROI. Moreover, Uber drivers don't want to work for 2 hours a day, 5 days a week, and if they did, you would need to enlist 10% of the commuting population as drivers. So you need autonomy to make the TaaS model work, and need to accept a low duty cycle in many markets.

--In this model, suburban/rural TaaS is more viable, since there are a of of unused cars that can be dispersed into the suburbs outside of rush hours.

People's thoughts?

Haven't really thought this through, but would double duty vehicles fix the ROI issue? I mean a driver buying or leasing the self driving car, using it for private use and then letting it drive away when he/she doesn't need it to do its Uber work? Uber doesn't need to finance the vehicle so it doesn't need to come up with money up front, and the private owner helps to pay for the vehicle and maybe make some money on the side. I have never worked for Uber, but it always struck me that it is a vampire company, taking every little that it can from its drivers. People who work for Uber often have no choice so they can be squeezed.

 

[Seasoned Oak]

4 out of 5 Americans live in urban areas.

But many of those people already dont own a car for various reasons .

 

[woodgeek]

Haven't really thought this through, but would double duty vehicles fix the ROI issue? I mean a driver buying or leasing the self driving car, using it for private use and then letting it drive away when he/she doesn't need it to do its Uber work? Uber doesn't need to finance the vehicle so it doesn't need to come up with money up front, and the private owner helps to pay for the vehicle and maybe make some money on the side. I have never worked for Uber, but it always struck me that it is a vampire company, taking every little that it can from its drivers. People who work for Uber often have no choice so they can be squeezed.

I think you're onto something. I would NOT want my ICE car to rack up miles and wear itself out (unless you paid me well), but if I knew my EV was low maintenance and would last way more miles than I needed...sure, I might.

More to the point, I suppose that the Car Share model could work here re congestion. You could buy a 'share' of an autonomous EV fleet that guarantees you rush-hour access, and the 'share' (plus per ride charge) would be cheaper than owning or leasing a car. Those not owning shares (or 'premium' status) would still be able to access the vehicles, but at a lower pecking order that precludes rush-hour use.

 

[vinny11950]

I think you're onto something. I would want my ICE car to rack up miles and wear itself out (unless you paid me well), but if I knew my EV was low maintenance and would last way more miles than I needed...sure, I might.

More to the point, I suppose that the Car Share model could work here re congestion. You could buy a 'share' of an autonomous EV fleet that guarantees you rush-hour access, and the 'share' (plus per ride charge) would be cheaper than owning or leasing a car. Those not owning shares (or 'premium' status) would still be able to access the vehicles, but at a lower pecking order that precludes rush-hour use.

The car share model works. I also think that the things our older generation gets hung up on (like owning your own car/truck) will be no problem for millennials and future generations; they will be perfectly fine sharing/renting what they need as long as it is through an app on their smartphones. They will face different problems and challenges and will tackle them accordingly. Human behavior is a big part of this.

 

[Seasoned Oak]

ICE vehicle 2000 moving parts. Electric V. 18 .Perhaps thats what the car companies were afraid of when they killed electrics in the 90s.

 

[vinny11950]

ICE vehicle 2000 moving parts. Electric V. 18 .Perhaps thats what the car companies were afraid of when they killed electrics in the 90s.

When I changed the distributor on my Jeep I had to make sure I got the timing back on the right position = PITA.

 

[Circus]

The example of switching over from horse to horseless is a poor one. Horses are a pain. I haven't fed my unused truck for a year, no chit and no vet bills. A better example would be much less dramatic. Maybe hi def TV, still nothing to watch but you can see it better.

 

[lsucet]

And back in time, people with unused horses did have the choice of have no horse and avoid the chit and vet bills. That way no pain.

 

[Seasoned Oak]

This is good news for crowded countries like china and india ,better to transition to electric cars and Mc from bicycles, than to oil burning vehicles. Going to need a lot of lithium!

 

[peakbagger]

One of the arguments for an electric US fleet is the US carmakers don't have choice, the third world is becoming the major market and they don't have a lot of choice but go electric, so the US carmakers are going to end up selling electric cars to sell into the major markets.

Realistically given the current rapid increases in battery density, I could see where one chassis is going to be capable of having either electric or IC engine. Currently the car has to be designed around the battery pack. Get the battery drivetrain small enough that they occupy the space of a IC engine and transmission and things get really interesting. I still hold out hope that it becomes practical to swap a standardized battery pack quickly so extended range travel is far more user friendly but I don't see it happening soon.

 

[WoodyIsGoody]

I still hold out hope that it becomes practical to swap a standardized battery pack quickly so extended range travel is far more user friendly but I don't see it happening soon.

With the rate at which time it takes to charge batteries is improving so rapidly, swapping battery packs is going to become more expensive than it's worth. Supercharger capable Teslas can already recharge 80% in only 1/2 hour. Qualcomm has developed the ability to turn sections of highway, roads, parking spaces, drive-ups, etc. into wireless charging stations. Imagine your car picking up 100 miles of range simply by driving through the McDonalds drive-through (and without having to get out of your car to refuel). They work at highway speeds too. Park at work and your car is wirelessly charged. Shop at Sam's Club, Costco, etc. and use their wireless chargers free. Eat at Olive Garden and return to a fully charged car.

With ubiquitous wireless chargers, not only will there be no need for battery swapping, you could buy your battery electric vehicles with only 100 miles of range, making them much cheaper and more useful.

 

[woodgeek]

Indeed WoodyIsGoody. Most lithium batteries can handle a 1.6 or even 2C rate, charging 0-80% in 25-30 minutes. Including my 2013 LEAF.

As batteries get bigger this will be less of an owner problem. If my current (~22kWh) LEAF drains the battery in 60 minutes on the highway (at 70mph), 30 minutes to recharge is a problem on a long road trip. If my next (40 kWh) LEAF is good for twice the range, and two hours on the road, and still recharges in 30 minutes, now its not such a big deal. The 60 kWh 2019 LEAF...three hours of freeway time and 30 minutes stopped.

Of course, the power of the HVDC charger will have to go up to boot. From 40+ kW today, to 80 or 120 kW in the future.

 

[WoodyIsGoody]

Indeed WoodyIsGoody. Most lithium batteries can handle a 1.6 or even 2C rate, charging 0-80% in 25-30 minutes. Including my 2013 LEAF.

As batteries get bigger this will be less of an owner problem. If my current (~22kWh) LEAF drains the battery in 60 minutes on the highway (at 70mph), 30 minutes to recharge is a problem on a long road trip. If my next (40 kWh) LEAF is good for twice the range, and two hours on the road, and still recharges in 30 minutes, now its not such a big deal. The 60 kWh 2019 LEAF...three hours of freeway time and 30 minutes stopped.

Of course, the power of the HVDC charger will have to go up to boot. From 40+ kW today, to 80 or 120 kW in the future.

All true. But maybe you missed my point about the ability to charge at highway speed. The technology has already been demonstrated. New technologies are developing at warp speed these days.

 

[woodgeek]

All true. But maybe you missed my point about the ability to charge at highway speed. The technology has already been demonstrated. New technologies are developing at warp speed these days.

I am aware of the highway wireless charging technology, but my understanding is that the cost is too high to make it practical. Its a lot of wiring and electronics per mile, and a lot of miles, when batteries and high speed charging can do the job just fine. Wireless charging in some parking spaces....already exists, but not a lot of people are willing to pay for it, when you can plug in in less than 10 seconds.

It might well be a thing for busses, but then so might catenary wires, which have been around for more than a century.

My point is that as EV batteries get bigger (and they will), the max charging power automatically goes up, even without new engineering to increase the 'C' rate.

 

[WoodyIsGoody]

I am aware of the highway wireless charging technology, but my understanding is that the cost is too high to make it practical. Its a lot of wiring and electronics per mile, and a lot of miles, when batteries and high speed charging can do the job just fine. Wireless charging in some parking spaces....already exists, but not a lot of people are willing to pay for it, when you can plug in in less than 10 seconds.

Yes copper wires in the roadway are currently expensive and impractical. But so were BEV's 10 years ago. I imagine next year a breakthrough will be revealed, with cheap wires made of doped carbon and within a decade thousands of miles of it will be laid in roadways all over. Things happen faster than we think they are. Before you know it, amazing things are normal, accepted and commonplace. People will recall it as "quaint" having to plug your car in with a big bulky cable.

Musk's recent tweet was that 350 kW chargers are merely "child's toys".

 

[begreen]

Some major investments are being made right not in self-driving vehicles by the big boys. GM has the Maven program with Lyft, Ford has the Argo A1 with Uber and now Toyota has committed to spending $1 billion through 2020.
http://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-to...ving-talking-cars-by-about-2020-idUKKBN1CL14U