Mobile living room? Forget it. I’ve lived through the rise of the fax machine, the smart phone, and the virtual meeting. So I can guarantee we will have less and less time to ourselves, not more and more.
Nanoseconds after you raise expectations about idle time under a given scenario, unchecked capitalism will swoop in and claim more leisure. We will be living in our mobile “home” offices and expected to work at least as much if not more.
The scenery won’t even be nice because everyone else will also be commuting in one of these monstrosities. The end.
I have a suspicion that a lot of this speculation is about telling people what they want instead of actually listening to what they want, complicated by the reality that many people have not thought out the full implications of a simply expressed wish.
Best similar article on this topic once stated - Tech is in the autonomous car business to free up individual time....to doom scroll and shop! Clicks. Advertising revenue, etc. Look at the traffic around you. Imagine all those units of time, consuming. Gulp!
I'm 77. Sometime (soon?), neither my wife nor I will be able to drive. A self driving car would mean we don't have to move from our rural Maine home. There's no public transportation here, and there won't be any.
I'm highly skeptical of fully autonomous driving, especially with the snow, ice and mud that coat cameras and other sensors. It'll work in benign climates, perhaps.
There are folks saying self-driving cars will lower emissions because of the efficiencies they may bring, things like adaptive cruise control and the ability of automatic cars to “platoon”, which reduces air resistance.
Others say, with your car turned into your living room, folks will be willing to spend hours more every week in commuting or traveling about, driving up emissions. The extra computing power needed for all those self-driving cars will also increase energy demand.
I think the second group is probably more correct than the first.
I remember that graphic. It was on the cover of either Popular Mechanics or Popular Science, two magazines that were available at the local barber shop. They were the only reasons I ever wanted to get a haircut!
I dunno. I must still be stuck in the 19th century. I honestly don’t understand this fixation with autonomous vehicles.
There are only two applications I can see for driverless “autonomobility”.
First: First mile/last mile, and
Last: Intercity highway
Which effectively means, in every other application, the driver takes control, thereby making these vehicles self-driving and not “driverless” because they would still have steering wheels and foot-pedal controls.
So, how would this work?
For openers, a person wishing to leave the house would request that a vehicle operating like a taxi arrive at the domicile to get this person from point A to B. Point B is the location where the occupant would board a bus or train that would provide city-to-city service. At the other end of the trip, the reverse arrangement would be the case. If only around-town “driving” is required, a person serving in the capacity of taxi driver would do the honors. I’m not much for ride-hailing services. This would obviate the need for a commuter to have to own a vehicle, which would eliminate motor vehicle insurance costs, registration costs, maintenance costs; you get the idea. Less of the household income would be going toward transportation.
Meanwhile, for those not wishing to meet intercity travel needs going the route of the bus or train and using the highway instead, the entire trip, this could be the one application done in fully driverless operation.
In the future, I don’t see much need for motor vehicle ownership. Commuters generally don’t own their own helicopters and airplanes, so why should motor vehicles be treated any differently. Driving isn’t free anyway, so why does it matter that commuters pay someone else to get them to and from where they need to go.
Finally, I honestly do not see autonomous motor vehicles becoming extensions of our homes. What I’m not certain of is how the infrastructure on which the autonomous/self-driving (self-driving and driverless, as I understand their usages, are not one and the same) would be paid for: by toll, tax, what? Because I’m a big proponent of train travel, the less motor vehicle operation there is in life, the better!
This is a nightmare. I want nothing to do with a future even remotely similar to this. I'll be part of the remnant of those who choose embodied humanity over this dystopia.
This leaves me nothing but questions. Why are we traversing between two places everyday? Why do we live so separately from where we work? Why are we so unhappy where we are and constantly wanting to be somewhere else? Have people always felt that way or is it more recent? If people are willing to live in a car why not just live in a closet at work? None of this makes any sense in so many ways.
Trick question: Which of the 4 basic EV drivetrains (BEV vs HEV vs PHEV vs HFCEV) offers most benefits, applications and potential to reduce fuel/energy consumption, emissions AND insane traffic? All professed EV experts are invited to dispute my adamant contention that the correct answer is PHEV plug-in hybrid to serve 70% EV needs while BEV serves the remaining less than 30% in mostly lightweight vehicles and short distance trips.
The under-appreciated advantages PHEV tech offers include more ideal applications for 'combustible' hydrogen (think long haul freight truck fleets) and small scale fuel cell 'matched' to relatively small PHEV+H battery packs for personal cars. These relatively small PHEV battery packs are the ideal match to typically small rooftop solar arrays. Above all, PHEV tech offers more incentives to drive less whereby local economies grow (on a scale that is off the charts) and more trips become possible without having to drive.
Self-driving "driverless" AV tech is a fraudulent pretention, total BS. The compromise position on AV tech is "driver assist" rather than "driverless." The one 'driver assist' feature that I'm waiting to hear more of is the AV notion of cars adhering to posted speed limits; the driver can drive slower, but not faster than the speed limit, nor too fast through busy intersections. The safe speed through such intersections is 3 to 5mph less than the posted speed limit.
Interesting concept? With autonomous vehicles becoming part of a 'home' is even more curious?
It's rare that everyone living in the same house desire to all go to the same place at the same time? To date, maintenance of homes/buildings is something owners are usually capable of. Vehicles, not so much, and self-driving vehicles filled with tech likely require frequent software updates. Of course most software has also adopted the 'subscription' model of use, so that complicates living. Perhaps going for a walk to think this through makes more sense? Or, let's just go play some hockey!
Very good - 90% dystopia 10% useful. I drive very little now but that’s because I live in London and public transport is excellent. Outside major cities that will remain the default. But when I cross this small country and the train isn’t available, too slow or inconvenient then the car takes me and if I’m on a motorway I can set cruise control and the limited autonomous features help. But I would never trust them 100%. If the techbros have their way there will be no stopping them. That’s when I get really worried.
How would this evolution meet the consistent trend over decades for homes to be larger? Is this going to mean that the rich will have 80 foot long land yachts that take them to the cafe to get a latte? Or will robots load the latte? Or what?
The idea of vehicle as extension of home is interesting, although I wonder how the differing upgrade cycles of those two forms affect that integration. Some people swap cars as frequently as every 2 years, while we may move every 7-10 years. Home renovations are often designed to last 20-25 years, even if we're not staying in the same house.
Would we keep our vehicle/living rooms longer under this model, effectively making them more like a piece of the home, or would our living rooms become a consumable that gets upgraded constantly, like a new iPhone? Fascinating things to ponder!
Mobile living room? Forget it. I’ve lived through the rise of the fax machine, the smart phone, and the virtual meeting. So I can guarantee we will have less and less time to ourselves, not more and more.
Nanoseconds after you raise expectations about idle time under a given scenario, unchecked capitalism will swoop in and claim more leisure. We will be living in our mobile “home” offices and expected to work at least as much if not more.
The scenery won’t even be nice because everyone else will also be commuting in one of these monstrosities. The end.
I have a suspicion that a lot of this speculation is about telling people what they want instead of actually listening to what they want, complicated by the reality that many people have not thought out the full implications of a simply expressed wish.
Fantastic piece.
Best similar article on this topic once stated - Tech is in the autonomous car business to free up individual time....to doom scroll and shop! Clicks. Advertising revenue, etc. Look at the traffic around you. Imagine all those units of time, consuming. Gulp!
I'm 77. Sometime (soon?), neither my wife nor I will be able to drive. A self driving car would mean we don't have to move from our rural Maine home. There's no public transportation here, and there won't be any.
I'm highly skeptical of fully autonomous driving, especially with the snow, ice and mud that coat cameras and other sensors. It'll work in benign climates, perhaps.
A decade ago everyone was promising this, and then they found how hard it was. I wrote this I think in 2018 https://www.treehugger.com/when-it-comes-aging-place-self-driving-cars-wont-save-us-4867590
There are folks saying self-driving cars will lower emissions because of the efficiencies they may bring, things like adaptive cruise control and the ability of automatic cars to “platoon”, which reduces air resistance.
Others say, with your car turned into your living room, folks will be willing to spend hours more every week in commuting or traveling about, driving up emissions. The extra computing power needed for all those self-driving cars will also increase energy demand.
I think the second group is probably more correct than the first.
I remember that graphic. It was on the cover of either Popular Mechanics or Popular Science, two magazines that were available at the local barber shop. They were the only reasons I ever wanted to get a haircut!
I dunno. I must still be stuck in the 19th century. I honestly don’t understand this fixation with autonomous vehicles.
There are only two applications I can see for driverless “autonomobility”.
First: First mile/last mile, and
Last: Intercity highway
Which effectively means, in every other application, the driver takes control, thereby making these vehicles self-driving and not “driverless” because they would still have steering wheels and foot-pedal controls.
So, how would this work?
For openers, a person wishing to leave the house would request that a vehicle operating like a taxi arrive at the domicile to get this person from point A to B. Point B is the location where the occupant would board a bus or train that would provide city-to-city service. At the other end of the trip, the reverse arrangement would be the case. If only around-town “driving” is required, a person serving in the capacity of taxi driver would do the honors. I’m not much for ride-hailing services. This would obviate the need for a commuter to have to own a vehicle, which would eliminate motor vehicle insurance costs, registration costs, maintenance costs; you get the idea. Less of the household income would be going toward transportation.
Meanwhile, for those not wishing to meet intercity travel needs going the route of the bus or train and using the highway instead, the entire trip, this could be the one application done in fully driverless operation.
In the future, I don’t see much need for motor vehicle ownership. Commuters generally don’t own their own helicopters and airplanes, so why should motor vehicles be treated any differently. Driving isn’t free anyway, so why does it matter that commuters pay someone else to get them to and from where they need to go.
Finally, I honestly do not see autonomous motor vehicles becoming extensions of our homes. What I’m not certain of is how the infrastructure on which the autonomous/self-driving (self-driving and driverless, as I understand their usages, are not one and the same) would be paid for: by toll, tax, what? Because I’m a big proponent of train travel, the less motor vehicle operation there is in life, the better!
This is a nightmare. I want nothing to do with a future even remotely similar to this. I'll be part of the remnant of those who choose embodied humanity over this dystopia.
This leaves me nothing but questions. Why are we traversing between two places everyday? Why do we live so separately from where we work? Why are we so unhappy where we are and constantly wanting to be somewhere else? Have people always felt that way or is it more recent? If people are willing to live in a car why not just live in a closet at work? None of this makes any sense in so many ways.
Trick question: Which of the 4 basic EV drivetrains (BEV vs HEV vs PHEV vs HFCEV) offers most benefits, applications and potential to reduce fuel/energy consumption, emissions AND insane traffic? All professed EV experts are invited to dispute my adamant contention that the correct answer is PHEV plug-in hybrid to serve 70% EV needs while BEV serves the remaining less than 30% in mostly lightweight vehicles and short distance trips.
The under-appreciated advantages PHEV tech offers include more ideal applications for 'combustible' hydrogen (think long haul freight truck fleets) and small scale fuel cell 'matched' to relatively small PHEV+H battery packs for personal cars. These relatively small PHEV battery packs are the ideal match to typically small rooftop solar arrays. Above all, PHEV tech offers more incentives to drive less whereby local economies grow (on a scale that is off the charts) and more trips become possible without having to drive.
Self-driving "driverless" AV tech is a fraudulent pretention, total BS. The compromise position on AV tech is "driver assist" rather than "driverless." The one 'driver assist' feature that I'm waiting to hear more of is the AV notion of cars adhering to posted speed limits; the driver can drive slower, but not faster than the speed limit, nor too fast through busy intersections. The safe speed through such intersections is 3 to 5mph less than the posted speed limit.
Interesting concept? With autonomous vehicles becoming part of a 'home' is even more curious?
It's rare that everyone living in the same house desire to all go to the same place at the same time? To date, maintenance of homes/buildings is something owners are usually capable of. Vehicles, not so much, and self-driving vehicles filled with tech likely require frequent software updates. Of course most software has also adopted the 'subscription' model of use, so that complicates living. Perhaps going for a walk to think this through makes more sense? Or, let's just go play some hockey!
Very good - 90% dystopia 10% useful. I drive very little now but that’s because I live in London and public transport is excellent. Outside major cities that will remain the default. But when I cross this small country and the train isn’t available, too slow or inconvenient then the car takes me and if I’m on a motorway I can set cruise control and the limited autonomous features help. But I would never trust them 100%. If the techbros have their way there will be no stopping them. That’s when I get really worried.
Maybe visionary, may come true, but all I know is, I won't see it in my lifetime.
Very thought provoking, thank you.
How would this evolution meet the consistent trend over decades for homes to be larger? Is this going to mean that the rich will have 80 foot long land yachts that take them to the cafe to get a latte? Or will robots load the latte? Or what?
The designers who came up with one of the schemes I discuss had little "leech" robots that would bring the coffee to the land yacht. https://www.treehugger.com/future-we-all-might-live-our-cars-out-choice-4849742
Really interesting read!
The idea of vehicle as extension of home is interesting, although I wonder how the differing upgrade cycles of those two forms affect that integration. Some people swap cars as frequently as every 2 years, while we may move every 7-10 years. Home renovations are often designed to last 20-25 years, even if we're not staying in the same house.
Would we keep our vehicle/living rooms longer under this model, effectively making them more like a piece of the home, or would our living rooms become a consumable that gets upgraded constantly, like a new iPhone? Fascinating things to ponder!