On Feb 4, 2015, at 12:27 PM, brucedp5 via EV <[email protected]> wrote:
> While some people may resist self-driving, autonomous vehicles, at some > point there could seriously be a paradigm shift when an owner could let a > company take control of their EV when they are not using it. Robots are *very* rapidly changing our society. Huge swaths of the economy have been automated such that entire sectors of jobs no longer exist. Most of that has been in behind-the-scenes areas, especially manufacturing and accounting / finances. But it's now coming to public-facing jobs... ...with "vehicle operator" the next major victim lined up on the chopping block. I think, before we see significant numbers of self-driving passenger vehicles, we'll see long-haul trucking replaced by robot drivers. One robot can drive 24 hours per day, as opposed to the eight an human is limited to. The robot never gets sleepy or otherwise impaired; the insurance companies (or, especially, fleets that self-insure) will absolutely love that. No speeding or making unscheduled personal stops or any of that sort of thing. Trucks are always driven at whatever's determined to be the optimal balance between speed and fuel economy. No salaries, no benefits, no insurance to pay. And, to top it all off, the trucks just need to make it from the depot right off the freeway in one city to the depot right off the freeway in the other city; they don't need particularly sophisticated navigation systems that can handle, for example, residential neighborhoods with kids playing baseball in the street. In short, a loaded truck leaves the depot and magically shows up exactly when predicted at its destination depot. It gets unloaded and reloaded and refueled right there at the deport and drives itself to its next destination, whether by robots or a tiny crew of remaining humans. Every so many miles, the management computer automatically routes it to a maintenance depot for whatever the schedule calls for. It's practically the ultimate wet dream for the shipping industry. ...and what're all those truckers going to do to earn a living when nobody's driving trucks any more? The same thing the cabbies are going to do as their own jobs get automated out of existence...which is the same thing everybody else is going to do -- even including significant majorities of doctors and lawyers and all sorts of other "untouchable" professions. Interesting times ahead, no doubt. b& _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
