The Coming Disruption of Transport

[desperateAmbassador]

I think the dismissive urbanist types are discounting how AVs will make things much worse in some ways if we fail to plan for the technology. It is coming whether we like it or not, and it is going to explode VMTs and make congestion worse. It also leaves some transit models open to disruption. Not liking the technology won't stop it from being adopted. It's not a matter of getting the local transit agency not to invest. When the technology works, the robotaxi companies will descend on cities like the e-scooter mobility businesses (Lyme, etc.) 10x. I don't think banning robotaxis is a politically viable solution as was done with e-scooters. I can only imagine taxing road use (aka tolls) can curb the insatiable demand for VMTs. We should not just bury our heads in the sand out of distaste for the technology or we're in for a rude awakening.

Agreed - I am no luddite, nor am I anti-technology (I actually work in tech myself!) I suppose my point is that in the presence of good urban design, public transit can out-compete private vehicles every time. And in fact the same technologies that enable AVs will enhance mass transit's ability to compete even further!

If we can double down on the urbanist revival of building cities for people not cars, and we ensure that AVs exist within that context, then I think a best-case scenario can be achieved.

Some cities will insist on using their 1960s era urban planning, and bend over to accommodate AVs exclusively. And those cities will continue to be gridlocked, devoid of character and culturally irrelevant (Houston, Mississauga, Vaughan etc.) but such is life.

 

[kEiThZ]

So your position is that we will never have autonomously operated vehicles on public roads? You know there are several services in operation today, albeit in less challenging climates.

We will. I'm pretty technophilic. I just don't trust Musk and Tesla promises.

 

[afransen]

You're right not to trust them. But he accomplishes way more than his detractors give him credit for. Thunderf00t, if he was making videos about Musk a decade ago would be mocking the idea of landing rocket boosters on barges--lots of gratuitous videos of failed landing attempts with a mocking tone as if that is enough to demonstrate that the endeavor is a folly. I'm sure he would have predicted that SpaceX would go bankrupt and never capture share from big boy companies that know what they are doing like ULA or Roscosmos.

I have followed Thunderf00t for quite a few years and he is generally right. I think he has gone a bit off the deep end with Musk where he basically finds anything Musk is doing and tries to rubbish it. I don't think that strategy of Musk criticism is going to age well when at least some of his crazy ideas/claims actually works. Thunderf00t just finished mocking Starship for a recent failure with a prototype. Great. What is that worth if Starship has a successful orbital launch and then starts launching commercial payloads? Or does he just memory hole the critiques that were unfair?

Thunderf00t has also claimed that Tesla has no proprietary technology. So why is Tesla commanding 70-80% share in EVs and making more money per vehicle than the legacy OEMs? Do they just not like to make money by intentionally making bad cars?

 

[MrGoose]

You're right not to trust them. But he accomplishes way more than his detractors give him credit for. Thunderf00t, if he was making videos about Musk a decade ago would be mocking the idea of landing rocket boosters on barges--lots of gratuitous videos of failed landing attempts with a mocking tone as if that is enough to demonstrate that the endeavor is a folly. I'm sure he would have predicted that SpaceX would go bankrupt and never capture share from big boy companies that know what they are doing like ULA or Roscosmos.

I have followed Thunderf00t for quite a few years and he is generally right. I think he has gone a bit off the deep end with Musk where he basically finds anything Musk is doing and tries to rubbish it. I don't think that strategy of Musk criticism is going to age well when at least some of his crazy ideas/claims actually works. Thunderf00t just finished mocking Starship for a recent failure with a prototype. Great. What is that worth if Starship has a successful orbital launch and then starts launching commercial payloads? Or does he just memory hole the critiques that were unfair?

Thunderf00t has also claimed that Tesla has no proprietary technology. So why is Tesla commanding 70-80% share in EVs and making more money per vehicle than the legacy OEMs? Do they just not like to make money by intentionally making bad cars?

The legacy OEMs don't sell exclusively luxury cars.

When the legacy OEMs do sell luxury cars, they aren't using vinyl seats, and don't

Have roofs that fly off on the highway on their first drive

Spontaneously Combust

The legacy OEMs also have decades of experience and production lines that Elon Musk would sell his 7 children for.

Tesla's marketshare in electric cars is also not guaranteed to stay at 70-80% forever.

There are Chinese EV makers ie a market Tesla can't easily penetrate and even in the US, Tesla's marketshare of the EV market is dropping, its at 66.3% for 2021

 

[kEiThZ]

Thunderf00t, if he was making videos about Musk

The video I posted was not from Thunderf00t. It was from Adam Something, who routinely makes videos promoting public transit instead of cars. And as he points out, that Vegas tunnel would have been more comfortable and had more capacity as a shuttle train.

 

[afransen]

The legacy OEMs don't sell exclusively luxury cars.

When the legacy OEMs do sell luxury cars, they aren't using vinyl seats, and don't

Have roofs that fly off on the highway on their first drive

Spontaneously Combust

The legacy OEMs also have decades of experience and production lines that Elon Musk would sell his 7 children for.

Tesla's marketshare in electric cars is also not guaranteed to stay at 70-80% forever.

There are Chinese EV makers ie a market Tesla can't easily penetrate and even in the US, Tesla's marketshare of the EV market is dropping, its at 66.3% for 2021

Tesla owners have very high satisfaction. Not sure what to tell you. All automakers have defects, and all of them have cars that catch fire. GM had to advise owners of the Bolt not to park it near anything combustible, you know, like a home.

Tesla is selling every car it can make, and it is growing production very rapidly. They have had to raise prices to manage their backlog.

Musk wouldn't have to sell his children to acquire legacy OEM production lines or anything else. He could easy just acquire GM, Ford, etc. if he cared to. Tesla has 15x the market cap of GM. He doesn't want to because the legacy OEMs are burdened with a bunch of garbage assets and liabilities. It's not clear why he would want to use legacy OEM production lines. VW's CEO has remarked that Tesla is able to make cars with shorter production time and that VW should emulate Tesla. Tesla is also new capacity in a very capital efficient way. Their new factories create enough gross profit to pay off the capex within a year or two.

All this is probably just a tangent. Go ahead and hate Musk. It isn't going to stop robotaxis from coming. Google, GM, and many others are also working on it, though I think their approaches will take longer to reach wide deployment.

 

[MisterF]

The legacy OEMs don't sell exclusively luxury cars.

When the legacy OEMs do sell luxury cars, they aren't using vinyl seats, and don't

Have roofs that fly off on the highway on their first drive

Spontaneously Combust

The legacy OEMs also have decades of experience and production lines that Elon Musk would sell his 7 children for.

Tesla's marketshare in electric cars is also not guaranteed to stay at 70-80% forever.

There are Chinese EV makers ie a market Tesla can't easily penetrate and even in the US, Tesla's marketshare of the EV market is dropping, its at 66.3% for 2021

You sound like you're trying to portray Tesla as a company that's in some sort of trouble. It's not. Tesla has an enviable combination of being highly profitable while having very little debt and huge growth. They're quickly becoming one of the biggest car companies in the world. Their market share of EVs in the US is dropping because for the better part of a decade they were practically the only option. Now they finally have some competition. That speaks to the strength of the EV market, not any sort of failing for Tesla.

 

[MrGoose]

Tesla owners have very high satisfaction. Not sure what to tell you. All automakers have defects, and all of them have cars that catch fire. GM had to advise owners of the Bolt not to park it near anything combustible, you know, like a home.

These sorts of problems w. Tesla are indicative of very low quality control standards.

I've never heard of any other car doing something like this.

10k mile Tesla needs battery replacement
Tesla Owner's car has caught fire and company has yet to address it
Steering Wheel falls off
Taycan interior vs Model S interior
Water leaks through Model Y hatch door

Tesla is selling every car it can make, and it is growing production very rapidly. They have had to raise prices to manage their backlog.

Musk wouldn't have to sell his children to acquire legacy OEM production lines or anything else. He could easy just acquire GM, Ford, etc. if he cared to. Tesla has 15x the market cap of GM. He doesn't want to because the legacy OEMs are burdened with a bunch of garbage assets and liabilities. It's not clear why he would want to use legacy OEM production lines. VW's CEO has remarked that Tesla is able to make cars with shorter production time and that VW should emulate Tesla. Tesla is also new capacity in a very capital efficient way. Their new factories create enough gross profit to pay off the capex within a year or two.

That Tesla has 15x the market cap of GM but sells a fraction of the cars is indicative of an irrational market valuation of Tesla.

There is nothing unique about Tesla anymore. It used to be that they were the only mass-market electric vehicle out there. But that moat has disappeared. Now that every other auto manufacturer, even the ever reluctant Toyota is getting into the EV market it becomes only a matter of time before Tesla is just one more auto manufacturer out of many, albeit a manufacturer with poor quality standards, expensive cars, and a CEO going through a midlife crisis.
Why would you buy a Tesla Model S when you can just get a Porsche Taycan / BMW i8 / whatever electric luxury sedans are available in 2025. Its not the plain interior styling, consistent issues with build quality, or weird ass steering yoke. Tesla's days as a multi hundred dollar stock are numbered and eventually it will be priced as an auto manufacturer that only sells a fraction of the cars that Honda, Ford, GM and Toyota do.

All this is probably just a tangent. Go ahead and hate Musk. It isn't going to stop robotaxis from coming. Google, GM, and many others are also working on it, though I think their approaches will take longer to reach wide deployment.

What other approaches? Using LIDAR instead of cameras?
Let me tell you, a camera only approach to self-driving cars will NEVER work.
Ever.

Because humans have multiple senses that we use to drive; object permeance, spatial awareness, hearing, etc, even then we automatically adjust our driving standards based on external conditions like weather, uncertainty, construction etc.

You sound like you're trying to portray Tesla as a company that's in some sort of trouble. It's not. Tesla has an enviable combination of being highly profitable while having very little debt and huge growth. They're quickly becoming one of the biggest car companies in the world. Their market share of EVs in the US is dropping because for the better part of a decade they were practically the only option. Now they finally have some competition. That speaks to the strength of the EV market, not any sort of failing for Tesla.

Tesla is not even in the top 10 of auto manufacturers in the US

2021 US Auto Sales Figures By Manufacturer

Automotive Sales Data and Statistics

www.goodcarbadcar.net

	January	February	March	April	May	June	July	August	September	October	November	December	Total 2021
General Motors	223,390	242,071	230,765	231,805	222,924	219,659	162,479	144,732	150,298	146,405	146,405	149,030	2,269,963
Toyota Motor Corp	166,232	183,051	241,987	227,519	231,733	197,316	212,351	179,302	145,192	139,031	144,502	166,033	2,234,249
Ford Motor Company	142,577	162,834	213,270	197,063	160,520	114,676	118,917	123,343	155,384	174,464	157,417	172,257	1,892,722
Stellantis - FCA	150,290	150,287	169,075	163,872	157,570	163,871	135,266	130,255	135,398	137,170	137,171	137,171	1,767,396
Honda Motor Company	92,225	106,328	148,538	156,482	176,815	153,122	135,542	114,656	95,716	97,083	84,309	105,068	1,465,884
Hyundai Kia Auto Group	85,269	98,527	160,676	135,872	174,043	145,005	118,834	115,184	113,973	114,128	92,988	99,340	1,453,839
Nissan Motor Co	100,410	100,410	112,963	109,165	104,967	109,165	75,180	72,397	75,180	73,281	73,281	73,281	1,079,680
Volkswagen Group	51,087	51,087	57,949	69,409	66,719	62,535	45,770	44,073	45,770	45,360	45,360	45,360	630,479
Subaru Corporation	46,400	48,300	65,726	61,389	56,558	42,877	50,125	49,373	56,724	36,817	33,045	51,146	598,480
BMW Group	24,869	24,916	27,979	35,758	34,385	35,758	27,697	26,670	27,697	38,871	33,631	33,631	371,862
Daimler	28,774	28,890	32,368	31,213	30,015	31,213	24,022	23,135	24,025	25,189	25,189	25,632	329,665
Mazda	25,259	21,544	31,991	31,117	42,187	32,605	32,739	27,262	24,045	19,519	20,547	19,422	328,237
Tesla	21,120	21,120	23,760	24,751	23,799	24,751	28,350	27,301	28,350	26,232	26,232	26,232	301,998
Volvo	8,151	9,164	9,924	11,046	13,221	12,258	11,575	10,686	9,350	8,701	7,667	11,681	123,424
Jaguar Land Rover	8,000	8,000	9,067	7,477	7,186	7,474	7,433	7,159	7,433	12,566	12,566	12,566	106,927

You don't seem to recognize that the EV market becoming more competitive is very bad for Tesla because aside from being electric cars, they are not well differentiated from other brands, meaning that over time, we should expect Tesla to become priced as an auto manufacturer, not as a technology firm.

 

[afransen]

What other approaches? Using LIDAR instead of cameras?
Let me tell you, a camera only approach to self-driving cars will NEVER work.
Ever.

Because humans have multiple senses that we use to drive; object permeance, spatial awareness, hearing, etc, even then we automatically adjust our driving standards based on external conditions like weather, uncertainty, construction etc.

Agree to disagree.

Like I said, Tesla is a tangent to this thread. Go ahead and hate Musk/Tesla. Robotaxis are coming.

 

[C_Johnson_1995]

Like I said, Tesla is a tangent to this thread. Go ahead and hate Musk/Tesla. Robotaxis are coming.

I think this is a deeply underappreciated take in the transit/urbanist space. People like to convince themselves that the tech is a long way off or that it won't be viable in service but this is not productive.

The defining feature of autonomous vehicle development in 2022 is that the industry has sidestepped the criticism leveled against them related to lack of progress. The best example is Waymo, which did away with their previous CEO and totally doubled down on the tech side. Since then, we now have deployments of AV ride hailing covering the vast majority of San Francisco as well as further expansion of service in Pheonix.

So the tech is coming. I predict that most, if not all sun belt cities will have autonomous ride hailing covering the vast majority of origin and destination points by 2026/2027. Expansions will move north at the same time as developers like Waymo perfect the tech for colder climates like they are doing right now with their work in NYC.

So what is the upshot of all this? We need to plan. This will be disruptive and if we don't plan it won't be pretty. What we see now is the equivalent of the proliferation of the automobile and truck, especially in the post WW2 period. And just like that period, it will devastate the old ways of doing things.

A lot of freight will move away from railways on to roads. The following article is a fairly good read:

Will autonomous trucks put the iron horse out to pasture? – Analysis - Trains

There’s no question that autonomous trucks pose a threat to the railroad industry. They’re not here quite yet, but TuSimple is proving the concept with driverless rigs that are making revenue runs on highways in the Southwest. And other companies are working to develop battery-electric trucks...

www.trains.com

Most intermodal will disappear from the railways and a lot of other goods too as trucking will, in many cases, be cheaper than rail. We will be left with a lot of excess track capacity and line closures. CN and CP will likely need to be nationalized and rationalized to survive.

Similarly, most slower local city bus routes will likely be prime targets for replacements with on demand autonomous shuttles. One example route 5, The Delaware, in Hamilton. The niche occupies by light rail could likely be replaced with frequent but larger autonomous shuttles, perhaps seating 20-30 people, in dedicated lanes. Even the case of low demand intercity rail like the Northlander might be better served using autonomous vehicles. And given how the car currently dominates travel in the corridor, intercity travel from carriers like VIA might lose large portions of their volume as people can hit the road without the stress of driving.

The point is, we are heading for a massive disruption and we need to plan for it instead of burying our heads in the sand and saying it will never happen.

 

[DirectionNorth]

A lot of freight will move away from railways on to roads. The following article is a fairly good read:

Will autonomous trucks put the iron horse out to pasture? – Analysis - Trains

There’s no question that autonomous trucks pose a threat to the railroad industry. They’re not here quite yet, but TuSimple is proving the concept with driverless rigs that are making revenue runs on highways in the Southwest. And other companies are working to develop battery-electric trucks...

www.trains.com

Most intermodal will disappear from the railways and a lot of other goods too as trucking will, in many cases, be cheaper than rail. We will be left with a lot of excess track capacity and line closures. CN and CP will likely need to be nationalized and rationalized to survive.

Similarly, most slower local city bus routes will likely be prime targets for replacements with on demand autonomous shuttles. One example route 5, The Delaware, in Hamilton. The niche occupies by light rail could likely be replaced with frequent but larger autonomous shuttles, perhaps seating 20-30 people, in dedicated lanes. Even the case of low demand intercity rail like the Northlander might be better served using autonomous vehicles. And given how the car currently dominates travel in the corridor, intercity travel from carriers like VIA might lose large portions of their volume as people can hit the road without the stress of driving.

The point is, we are heading for a massive disruption and we need to plan for it instead of burying our heads in the sand and saying it will never happen.

That's a lot of extrapolation you've done. Same technologies will make train travel cheaper, and congestion + lower electricity costs for trains (if they're electrified; I have no clue where diesel costs are going) will still make trains attractive. Trains don't need to deal with border delays at the Ambassador Bridge or with rush-hour traffic on the 401.

Local bus routes in cities like Toronto and Montreal are here to stay. There's enough demand that AVs can't keep up. Given our regulatory environment, larger vehicles like buses and trucks will probably face difficulty being allowed (current regulations, as I understand them, require a driver in the car anyways. I don't see that going away soon).

Given inertia and capacity demands, my personal prediction is that AVs will be widely used in the 905 to feed GO stations and act as community shuttles, while bus service on major arterials will continue to be served by larger vehicles. The advantage of trains and buses are not that they're cheap, their high capacity.

The most common rebuttal to the above points I've seen is that AV efficiency will offset the new traffic. But that doesn't solve the inherently inefficient geometry of cars, nor does it make it safer for cars to travel closer together on the roads. When you're operating a giant moving metal box, you need some space around you for unexpected events like road conditions or undetected obstacles. You can't just pack everything close together, because even if driver efficiency is totally eliminated (computers have inefficiencies too), unexpected conditions can still occur.

 

[lenaitch]

Local LTL freight perhaps, but I'm not sure how I see a fleet of AVs can be more cost effective or efficient that a single unit train in long haul service. Even with current technologies, it takes a handful of humans to shepherd hundreds of tons of freight from the west coast to the GTA. It's a long way from winter in NYC to mountain winter, and said fleet of hundreds of AVs would require dedicated recharge/power changeout facilities across Canada (assuming electric).

 

[kEiThZ]

I think this is a deeply underappreciated take in the transit/urbanist space. People like to convince themselves that the tech is a long way off or that it won't be viable in service but this is not productive.

On the flipside, as an engineer, I find fanboys are way too optimistic on how quickly this tech will come online and see widespread adoption. And a lot of it is not based on any informed discussion, but on pronouncements from Musk.

A real tell is the idea that automation is binary rather than a ramp to climb. That one can flip a switch and all of a sudden there will be robotaxis everywhere is a combination of ignorance and wishful thinking. Anybody who propagates that idea is running on marketing.

None of this is to suggest that Tesla doesn't have serious chops in automation. But I think non-techies don't understand that the level of difficulty involved in each level of automation isn't linear. It's logarithmic, with level 5 automation being several orders of magnitude more difficult than level 4. My bet is that you will still be buying cars that require you to hold on to the steering wheel a decade from now. Automation will be closer to what autopilot and TCAS and Auto GCAS are in aviation today. But we'll still require licensed drivers behind an actual steering wheel. We are easily decades away from the robotaxis vision that Musk sells on stage.

 

[kEiThZ]

That's a lot of extrapolation you've done. Same technologies will make train travel cheaper, and congestion + lower electricity costs for trains (if they're electrified; I'm have no clue where diesel costs are going) will still make trains attractive. Trains don't need to deal with border delays at the Ambassador Bridge or with rush-hour traffic on the 401.

Yeah. I never understand this kind of modeling. Automation is way easier to solve on rail than on roads. Probably 1-2 magnitudes easier. It's easy to imagine automated freight 10-20 years before fully automated driverless cars are certified for public roads, without any caveats.

Rather than automation hurting freight, I would argue that automation means much more intermodal freight because freight rail can operate much more flexibly enabling access to lower freight costs for more JIT deliveries.

Lastly, aside from the geometry problem, a lot of automated road freight proponents don't seem to understand thermodynamics and why it means rail freight will always be cheaper. But that's the great thing about being a total Musk fanboy. No education or critical thinking required. Just regurgitate the sermon you heard at the pulpit.

 

[crs1026]

^I don’t understand why we always make this debate about Elon (apart from the fact that he enjoys the profile, and sends out press releases to attract attention). It’s what the rest of the industry is doing that I would look to.

The question is not, are the engineers happy - the question is, are the risk managers and regulators and insurers and litigators happy. And the politicians who have to answer for what is permitted on the roads. AV’s may be doing ok in demonstrations in the sun belt…. and they may even be ok in the areas where there are only a few days of bad weather a year, ie where shutting down for a day or two is acceptable. But while I have seen lots of youtube demonstration videos from down there, I have not seen anyone announce they have definitively solved road conditions in bad weather. Or started redesigning and retrofitting roads to enable AV self-navigation.

In the short term, fuel prices are escalating and labour costs much less so. That gives some idea what the short term leverage may be. Rail will prevail a little longer based on fuel efficiency. Drivers only produce small amounts of carbon, too.

Weather may actually create an economic differentiator that tilts our economy….. if AV’s work well enough in the sun belt, it could create an economic advantage for commerce in that region that attracts industry and distribution investment that the snowbelt will have to compete with somehow. But trains of AV electric trucks trundling down the TCH hauling coal and grain? I’m not buying that, yet.

- Paul