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How far away from work will tomorrow's typical megacommuter live? Assuming that one's home and office are close to highways, and autonomous cars could maintain a speed of 120 mph, a back-of-envelope calculation reveals that someone could live in southern Vermont or Portland, Maine, and make it to our MIT office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in less than an hour. Stretching the time window out to 90 minutes makes possible a commute from Albany to MIT.
Ninety minutes will also get you from southern Vermont or Newport, Rhode Island, to New York City.
On the West Coast, you could drive from San Luis Obispo to Los Angeles in about 90 minutes, or from Monterey to San Francisco in an hour—time you could presumably pass by counting the money you saved by avoiding San Francisco's extortionate housing costs.
(As a side note, this high-speed vision of autonomous car travel would likely kill the local flight, such as from New York City to Boston or Washington. Why fly when you can drive to your destination in two hours door-to-door, probably for less money, while skipping security?)
A world in which a 180-mile commute is unremarkable is potentially troubling from an environmental perspective—both in terms of land use and, assuming no significant advances in energy production, carbon output. Although platooning provides a way for cars to save energy by drafting off one another, commuting at such high speeds over long distances would have an enormous carbon footprint. (That's true even for electric vehicles, assuming they're drawing power from a grid that hasn't shifted significantly toward nuclear or renewable sources, and especially if more people eschew mass transit for the comfort of personal cars.) Changes to the physical land could have implications for ecological systems, exacerbating such issues as species loss due to habitat fragmentation. And from a social perspective, the sheer distances involved would make it even easier than it already is for people to be divided in terms of both geography and the media they consume.
This, as is common with autonomous car articles, makes some unfounded assumptions about roadway capacity. That is to say, in order to commute by personal car at 120 MPH from 100 miles away, you need a roadway with the capacity to accommodate yourself and everyone else doing the exact same thing. The cars can drive much, much closer, but AI simply cannot do magic and make more road, such that, at some point, we have as many vehicles as a roadway can possibly hold. Close to CBDs, we're often not far from or already at those capacities during rush hours.
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Around here, cars going 120 MPH will fly apart, become airborne, or at least have their tires burst from the potholes and uneven pavement on the freeways.
I doubt such speeds will come to pass. After all, traffic on roads designed for 70 mph often moves at 20 mph during rush hour. Maybe if drivers allowed to sleep on the ride. Economics are another obstacle. Will savings in housing cost be enough to pay the substantial commuting cost? As a matter of fact, many people already commute that far, working from home most days, coming into the office once a week or so.
The big radar thing on the roof of a self-driving car presents a major problem in terms of aerodynamics and fuel economy. Even at current normal freeway speeds of 65mph having a huge object on the roof of your car probably reduces your fuel economy by about half. At 200mph the problem becomes much worse. At that speed the radar roof thingy has to be at least twice as big so it can see ahead much further. To generate speeds of 200mph the engine has to be four of five times as big as a normal engine, you will need massively upgraded suspension and tires for the car to handle those speeds, and extremely powerful brakes to bring it to a stop from 200mph. The weight, size and cost of the car would skyrocket accordingly and it would get around 5 mpg at best. Unless you're a millionaire you won't be able to afford it. I can't believe this article was written by someone from MIT, the premise is a joke.
The size and shape of the radar/lidar unit will no doubt be improved over time. And nobody's talking about 200MPH; 200MPH is ridiculously expensive to achieve. 120MPH, on the other hand, is not hard at all.
This exodus seems especially likely given that the autonomous car commute will probably be not only be faster, but also more pleasant than current options, enabling the driver to freely read, work, and eat behind the wheel.
Try reading a book (as a passenger of course) in a car moving at normal car speed of just 40 to 50 mph. I find this impossible to do any speed for more than a couple minutes without experiencing a huge migraine and nausea. I can't imagine what it would be like at 120 mph. However I've never had much problem reading a book in a moving commuter or passenger train. The sheer size of the train and being on rails I think is what makes it a much more stable and smoother platform, than a passenger car.
The size and shape of the radar/lidar unit will no doubt be improved over time.
I don't see how it can be reduced in size. The faster the car goes, the further out has to be able to see in front of it. To do that the radar has to be bigger. We have radar systems that can see out into space and those things are bigger than a house for example.
Quote:
Originally Posted by nybbler
And nobody's talking about 200MPH; 200MPH is ridiculously expensive to achieve. 120MPH, on the other hand, is not hard at all.
Correct. The author was referring to 200 mile distances not speed which I got mixed up with speed.
120mph is more reasonable but still a bit far-fetched to produce for the mass market imo. Those are race car speeds and every part of the car has to be beefed up a great deal increasing the cost. Above 80mph fuel economy drops drastically...noise from the engine, wind and tires increase tremendously, etc. You might be paying a few thousand more just for the sound insulation to keep the noise to a tolerable level.
I don't see how it can be reduced in size. The faster the car goes, the further out has to be able to see in front of it. To do that the radar has to be bigger. We have radar systems that can see out into space and those things are bigger than a house for example.
Your eyeballs are the size of grapes and can see far enough. No need to see out into space.
Quote:
Correct. The author was referring to 200 mile distances not speed which I got mixed up with speed.
120mph is more reasonable but still a bit far-fetched to produce for the mass market imo.
Lots of ordinary production cars can do 120mph. A Toyota Corolla can, just barely.
I don't care how autonomous or automatic or auto-anything cars become, the last thing I want is to sit in a car for an hour twice a day.
Multitask.
I would LOVE on my way home to kick off my shoes, sip a scotch, and veg out to a show or good book...then when I get home, I am already decompressed.
On the way there? Finish getting ready. Have coffee and look at the paper.
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