David Friedman wrote:
> In article
> <6386119a-a980-42f8-8234-c674a8d4b152@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> Willie.Mookie@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
>
>> What Ford found though when they did market studies was that car sales
>> would plummet along with profits. Why? Because personal buyers
>> would more than likely disappear as they went to high quality taxi
>> services that didn't have to pay drivers, and they'd have a large
>> number of high quality cars sitting around available at little over
>> cost.. Fleet buyers would dominate and about 1/4 the number of autos
>> would be sold. It would end congestion, and be more efficient - but
>> it would kill the auto-industry. So, you don't see it.
>
> And you know all this how?
>
> Let me offer three reasons not to believe it.
>
> 1. Ford was not and is not the majority of the auto industry. If they
> can produce a driverless car, they will have a much larger share of that
> market--even if it is a smaller one.
>
> 2. Switching to taxi services doesn't reduce the number of miles driven
> per year--indeed, if they are more convenient, it increases the number.
> Most cars, so far as I can see, end up wearing out. So if the average
> car is good for a hundred thousand miles and total driving is (say)
> 10^12 car miles/year, about ten million cars a year will be purchased.
> So it wouldn't be a smaller market but a bigger one.
>
> 3. One of my colleagues was involved over a period of several years with
> the project to try to design an intelligent highway--a modern system
> along the lines you describe, with cars computer controlled. They
> eventually gave up. If it isn't practical now, with current computer
> technology, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that it was practical
> fifty years ago.
>
> Or in other words, you believe it because it is a good story.
>
Anyway, the biggest drawback to a system like that is the network of
"wires" that would need to be laid in the roadways. Think of the HUGE
project that would be - and there would still be roads that would be
"off network" .... or do you think they'd lay wires to every farmhouse
and barn?
The driverless car as a taxi system seems to have a future in certain
environments. Just such a system is being piloted at Heathrow
Air****t outside London.
http://www.thealarmclock.com/euro/archives/2007/12/halting_state_driver.html
--
Jette Goldie
jette@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
("reply to" is spamblocked - use the email addy in sig)
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