The self driving cars hype

The small personal experience and the grand scenario

So I have bee wrapping my head around self driving cars. Future to be more precise. Most people and, or commentators talk about safety, state of the art, probable timeline to launch and make mandatory, who will be the key players, etc.

Many people also consider that self driving cars will be deadly for the economy, other state will be gold. Some people also try to go beyond and say that more business will be created, but of course many jobs, like taxi drivers, will be lost. Apart from all the big data, and reports, and scientific studies, and brand announcements, I sipped all the information possible like a sponge and I like to think big. Very, very big. So let’s start on some things we will likely loose.

Attitude. That’s it. Maybe mandatory or compulsory automatic driving for people with none, or few driving time, recently licensed drivers, seniors with bad reflexes or sight, and felons who drank and drove, or caused some sort of accident. Plus the — as we call them in Portugal — “Xunning”, the street racers and “pimpers” who have nothing more to do thand drive around in idiotic cars — IMHO of course — making noise and polluting the neighborhood. These hopefully will be gone.

Sellers, wanna be mechanics, and if we get to z.e. vehicles, petrol stations. No more driving the car to mechanics, to the petrol station, filling up with all those gases, with the flammable danger, no more waiting in line to fill up or to get the oil and filter changed. No more harassing from street sellers, no more block after block of cars for sale, no more scammers trying to push the 2nd hand car that has low millage and lots of extras, but breaks down at the end of 3 months…

Mega factories. We will probably loose that to. but we will gain something much better. I will explain in the “wining part”.

Trucks. We will not loose them all, but some of them. Yes, we will. Trams, buses? maybe not. Maybe we will gain a lot more. That’s for later also.

Insurance policies? Probably.

We will also lose people like “Lambo drivers”, taxi drivers, truck drivers, police chases, hit and runs, many road fatalities and injuries, car jams, traffic lights, parking lots, fire and bus lanes (hum, maybe not).

So as you seen, there is a lot to loose. And some people are afraid, or will be afraid. With a point. But a lot there is also to gain. Let’s try to find some positive things.

What will we gain from a stepping stone as big as the automobile itself?

Trust. You will allow you children to be driven to school on a self driving and self aware car. It will be programmed to take them there safely. Won’t have any license plates, only RFID tags for law enforcement and rescue teams. Will have tainted glasses and locked doors, so kids stay inside and nobody will peek from outside. The car will drop the kids “inside the school yard”. Since it will be z.e. no pollution will be emitted, since it’s self driving will not engage in road rage or cause pile-ups.

Multi-tools. Yes. Wonderful, isn't it? By the time your kids arrive at school the “auto shop” has arrived to your door. Delivering 26 sq.m. of new bamboo flooring, isolating materials, and the tools needed for you to remove the carpet from the living room. You will proceed (I am not, deliberately, using any gender…) to remove the carpet, cutting it to the required size to be removed by the same vehicle. The “auto-shop” will have multi-tools for you to use, like hammers, saws, protecting gloves of course, cargo carts or even an adaptable exo-squeleton for you to perform the work. You “may” only need to plug the vehicle to your home grid, and of course pay the fee for the renting of the tools. Courtesy of your local DYI depot. Please don’t forget the augmented reality tablet to assist you on the flooring installation. Missed some item while e-shopping? No worries, another automatic truck or a drone will deliver the needed goods.

I gave this example, I could have gone for self delivery catering trucks, recycling or garbage trucks, what about an “auto-keg” for the bachelor party, or 20 spinning bikes to make an in-house RPM class with your friends? I mean, the possibilities are huge, all can be transported, because the thing that most limits us right now, apart from money, is…

Time. You will get time. So much time.

I am not considering the time you will get from being stuck in a traffic jam. Forgive me for being Portuguese. My mind is working in Portugal. So I’ll use the factors in the equation from my experience:

You need to go on a work trip, with another co-worker, let’s say from Lisbon to Porto. You have 20 computers and some extra IT equipment to deliver and install for a new location. So your co-worker lives 10 kms from the head office in the travelling direction. You live 40 kms away accross the river. You have to be the earliest possible in Porto. Assuming you want to leave at 7 am to be there at 10:30 am. 300 plus Kms on highway… feasible. But you have to load the car. So yeah… kinda sucks waking up very early, drive backwards and sideways, load the car and then drive of and face km after and km of heavy traffic and jams crossing Lisbon area.

So you will load the “self driving van” on previous day. The van will get out of the garage very early, will pick up your co-worker at exactly 7 am at his door, and then alert you that the trip has started. You will then get of bed and prepare, and your car will then take you to meet the van, on the best meeting point possible. Occasionally, your car will even pick up somebody you don’t even know, but has one “Uber” account or some other service, and drop the person at his destiny, giving you some profit while returning to your home. Later, you and your co-worker will get the breakfast at the highway station via a drive through, prepared exactly like you ordered while on route. And since you don’t drive, you can have the brakfast on the road, while you chat with each other, watch a movie, surf the web or read the latest sport news, before you review your work plan for the day. And on the way back you can even sleep off, after the exhausting IT work. Your car will be waiting for you with your spouse aboard, your kids or, why not, your pet…

Time. Time for you, your work, your leisure, gained from the guts of the road and the steering wheel.

You will gain also, if I’m not wrong, some proximity, to say the least. Why in a self driving vehicles age, and with automated traffic, we could not have more police officers, firemen, medical staff, closer to your door? Once you, or your house alerts the emergency services, they can pick a lift almost from everywhere a car is available. Think about it. Machine meets man, not the other way around.

Linux and android paved the way.

But the biggest improvement, perhaps not yet seen to the naked eye, will be the same milestone as the microchip. Once we have it all figured out, the system will use “non-proprietary” software like Linux or Android are to computers and mobile devices — and therein, as the Bard would tell us, lies the rub — there will be no bigger challenge than software certification, maybe Google will open the software, or other company. And what will remain is hardware. Customized, personalized, DYI hardware. At the present day, most of cars are created with one thing in mind. Sell. And the world and society have become so fast, that an automaker needs to make the car he already sold, otherwise will lose money.

So what will be the gain here? Well my guess is a whole new world of automakers and DIY fabricators that will create amazing and wonderful hardware, knowing that the software will remove the human risk from the equation. And we may have self driving batmobiles all over the place…