The Verge:
The thing that keeps me coming back to cars is how they creep into most every aspect of our lives. The obvious reason is that we spend a good portion of our time inside of them. An overwhelming 91 percent of Americans use their personal vehicles to get to work, the average American spends 55 minutes behind the wheel a day, and Americans make 1.1 billion trips everyday, according to the US Department of Transportation.
Car companies have been right in our face for a long time, but now tech companies are getting involved. The biggest shift in the perception of the automobile in America, is that in 2016 cars became part of the tech industry’s mission.
“Cars at the frontier of technology” is both a good thing and a bad thing. At least for those of us in North America, cars are still an important part of life and not just a way to get from point A to point B. But the increasing reliance on technology, to drive sales if nothing else, may be outstripping both a driver’s and our government’s ability to comprehend the direction we are heading.
Your commentary is indeed noteworthy.
you cant interconnect the US the same ways and methods used to interconnect small, dense countries. The cost to build a paved road vs the cost to build tracks and trains to run on those tracks doesn’t even come close.
we had a friend from Germany tell us “i’m driving to California tomorrow”. I told him he was talking about driving the length of Germany (not east/west – north to south) twice. “But its just three states over!”, he said. “It can’t possibly be 2300km!”
Take any European country’s system – rough size it with this – http://thetruesize.com/ – then place it on top of the US.
The distance – as the crow flies – from LA to Seattle is 3 times as far as it is from London to Edinburgh – which is already an 8 hour train ride (i’ve done it many times)
And how do you route the train between LA and Seattle? Through San Francisco or Oakland or Livermore? Or Sacramento? Do you forget Bend and Yosemite and Reno all together or add thousands of km of track and trains to hit those popular places? Simple paved roads are a fraction the cost to build and maintain vs. rail. Especially when you take NIMBYs into account.
Lets not also forget – RyanAir exists for a reason, and so many people who talk about this topic act like Europe does trains and nothing else. It exists because you can spend a lot more than a day to get somewhere, or you can spend 3 hours on a plane, and most people when given the chance, if they’re not on holiday, would rather just get there.
Europe and the US aren’t the same Not geographically, not locally (small towns with small horse-path-paved streets), and and not density (Europe is over double the US).
And before some Canadian tells us in the US how to live:
1. 90% of you live within 100 miles of the US, which already makes you our 51st state in spirit, if not legally…
2. Even if we made it legal and annexed Canadia, you wouldn’t be the biggest state.
You just can’t put a multiplier on a system and say “boom”. It doesn’t work that way. You can have a town of 5 homes hook up to a ethernet switch, but you can’t use a 330 million port switch to hook up the US.
Transportation, medical, political – systems sufficient for small groups don’t scale with a multiplier, even if everyone is on the same page (and don’t get me started with how these systems work less efficiently the more diversity of consumer you put in)
Ramble on.
“you cant interconnect the US the same ways and methods used to interconnect small, dense countries.”
No one here said you could.
“1. 90% of you live within 100 miles of the US, which already makes you our 51st state in spirit, if not legally…”
This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of Canada.
“2. Even if we made it legal and annexed Canadia, you wouldn’t be the biggest state.”
This doesn’t even make sense. Canada is the 2nd largest country in the world.
“You just can’t put a multiplier on a system and say “boom”. It doesn’t work that way.”
No one here said it did. You seem to be having an argument with yourself.
So, by your logic, the “green” thing would be to shrink the country. To make the United States physically smaller. Kind of like Europe. Especially now that Great Britain has been ejected.
Is that correct?
Self-driving cars will give riders plenty of new free time.
And tech companies want to exploit bored consumer-riders.
There will be two self-driving car business models:
The Apple model: passengers consume audio and video content purchased through iTunes.
The Google model: passengers consume audio and video content subsidized by ads.
Why do I see this going the way of 3D TVs?
The tech industry decides what the Next Big Thing is, and the populous just shrugs.
Here’s a thought for ya, would Steve Jobs prefer to ride in an autonomous car or drive his signature Mercedes SL55 AMG? My money’s on the driving.
I, personally, like the experience of driving, but then I also like the thought of there being less road rage to deal with too.
You, I and Jobs are in the minority. Most people hate driving and would happily turn the duty over to an autonomous vehicle they could trust.