Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota Let's Go Places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking Either and welcome to Forward Thinking, the podcast
Speaker 1: that looks at the teacher and says they paid paradise
Speaker 1: and put up a parking lot. I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm
Speaker 1: Lauren Vocal, and I'm Joe McCormick. And today, Yes, Joe,
Speaker 1: we're going to start by reading out an email that
Speaker 1: we got in reference to one of our most recent podcasts.
Speaker 1: It was an email from our listener Frank in New York.
Speaker 1: Or maybe it'd be better to stay Long Island, Long Island.
Speaker 1: Oh goodness, Now, let's let's not do accents. It's too
Speaker 1: early in the afternoon to do accents, you guys. Uh no, no,
Speaker 1: so so Frank rotein and said, Hi, guys, just listen
Speaker 1: to part two of Mega Cities. Joe made a comment
Speaker 1: that compelled me to share my experience and possibly blow
Speaker 1: his mind as well as garner a little sympathy for me.
Speaker 1: His comment was and thing like, o MG, people actually
Speaker 1: drive into New York City. Oh yes, Joe. Unfortunately a
Speaker 1: lot of us are tortured on a daily basis. I
Speaker 1: live on Long Island, about sixty miles from my job
Speaker 1: in Lower Manhattan editorializing huh okay back. Although Jonathan only
Speaker 1: lives three miles from his job, sixty miles is an
Speaker 1: average commute around here, But the distance isn't really the issue.
Speaker 1: The issue is time. It takes me three hours each
Speaker 1: way every day. Talk about premature aging. It is literal torture.
Speaker 1: Now many people would to spend their sympathy to make
Speaker 1: the point that I must have or should have taken
Speaker 1: the commuting time into consideration when I bought my house.
Speaker 1: I did. I bought my house in two and considered
Speaker 1: the commute into Manhattan acceptable because it only took an
Speaker 1: hour and twenty minutes, despite expanding all of the major
Speaker 1: highways and implementing new strategies to ease traffic, the population
Speaker 1: of Long Island in New York City having increased so
Speaker 1: quickly that my commute time is more than doubled in
Speaker 1: the twenty three years I've been doing this. No real
Speaker 1: point to make here, just my two cents. I enjoyed
Speaker 1: the show. Thank you Frank, Well, thank you Frank. That
Speaker 1: was enlightening and a true nightmare to imagine. It was
Speaker 1: like one of the better Stephen King short stories. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, it takes me an hour to get to work,
Speaker 1: but that's because I walk. If I didn't walk, it
Speaker 1: would take me like ten minutes to work, you know,
Speaker 1: because he was saying, like, you know, three hours for
Speaker 1: sixty miles, takes me an hour just to go three
Speaker 1: but then I'm on foot. Well just sure, sure, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean if you took, for example, a taxi, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if I if I, if I decided to take a cab,
Speaker 1: it would take me no time at all. Don't lie, Jonathan.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you call Uber. I have done that on occasion,
Speaker 1: usually when the weather is particularly awful. Yeah, normally I
Speaker 1: will walk it. But if if I am one exhausted
Speaker 1: and it's ninety eight degrees outside in seventy humidity, yeah
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call Uber. Or if it's pouring down rain,
Speaker 1: I'll call Uber. Otherwise I walk it. And I got
Speaker 1: tell you. When I take Uber and I get in
Speaker 1: an air conditioned vehicle and I am quickly whisked away
Speaker 1: to my house in just ten or fifteen minutes, I
Speaker 1: start to really reconsider my part priorities when it comes
Speaker 1: to walking. Yeah. Yeah, all these car services are kind
Speaker 1: of rad. Yeah, they totally are. I mean, it's and
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that has developed quickly over
Speaker 1: the past several years. And what led us to this
Speaker 1: particular episode and the reason why Frank's message is so
Speaker 1: is so pertinent, is we wanted to talk about this
Speaker 1: concept of combining a couple of things we've talked about
Speaker 1: in previous episodes. So, uh, we're talking mostly about autonomous vehicles,
Speaker 1: which we've covered multiple times on this show, and we're
Speaker 1: talking about ways to improve dense urban environments so that
Speaker 1: they are more pleasant to to work, play and live
Speaker 1: in travel around in. Yeah. Yeah, And we've done at
Speaker 1: least three episodes about autonomous cars and how they work.
Speaker 1: So if you want to hear a whole lot about that,
Speaker 1: you can tune into Maximum over Clock and Lookamano Hands,
Speaker 1: both of which are from March and Robot You Can
Speaker 1: Drive My Car, which is by far my favorite episode
Speaker 1: title to say out loud from November. Do we really
Speaker 1: want to send people back to those March episodes? Yeah,
Speaker 1: listen at your own risk. That was like the first
Speaker 1: month we were doing the show, early early in the
Speaker 1: in the whole deal. But that tells you how many
Speaker 1: times we've talked about autonomous cars I mean those are
Speaker 1: those are the ones that are expressly about autonomous cars.
Speaker 1: We also seem to mention them at least once every
Speaker 1: month or so. Well, we do because I think we're
Speaker 1: all three on record, and please feel free to disagree
Speaker 1: as being pretty pro autonomous car. You know, like there
Speaker 1: are a lot of emerging technologies that have pros and
Speaker 1: cons things we can point out say, I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know that this could turn out bad. It's always
Speaker 1: hard to tell what the full range of effects of
Speaker 1: a new technology will be. With autonomous cars, I think
Speaker 1: the motivation is there for adoption. I think they're going
Speaker 1: to be overall beneficial in a pretty serious and noticeable way,
Speaker 1: and I think I want one. Yeah, they're they're provably
Speaker 1: at this current stage, safer than human drivers and also
Speaker 1: uh more fuel efficient exactly. Yeah. So, so just a
Speaker 1: quick rundown on the benefits of autonomous cars, we've we've
Speaker 1: kind of mentioned them here. For an autonomous car, you
Speaker 1: can put sensors in every location around that car so
Speaker 1: that it can it can completely sense its environment with
Speaker 1: no blind spots. So that's already an advantage over a
Speaker 1: human driver. Right. Also, it can pay equal amounts of
Speaker 1: attention to all of those at the same time processing
Speaker 1: all of that information, whereas as a human driver, you
Speaker 1: are focused on pretty much a single direction, with maybe
Speaker 1: some peripheral awareness of some other stuff that's going on,
Speaker 1: but it's not your full focus. It can't be can
Speaker 1: and look everywhere and it does. You can't look everywhere
Speaker 1: and you don't, right, uh, And if you try, then
Speaker 1: often bad things can happen. Maybe this is why Sherlock
Speaker 1: Holmes doesn't drive out anywhere. Yeah, ever, because he's too
Speaker 1: much stuff all the time. Yeah, Yeah, it's very possible.
Speaker 1: The automous cars can also react in a fraction of
Speaker 1: the time it takes a human to react to the
Speaker 1: same stimulus. So if there's an emergency situation where you
Speaker 1: need to apply the break, a robotic car is going
Speaker 1: to be able to do that more effectively and faster
Speaker 1: than any human could. Um. And if the concentration of
Speaker 1: autonomous cars is high enough on the road, it can
Speaker 1: really help reduce traffic congestion. We've talked about that in
Speaker 1: the past, where you don't even need to have every
Speaker 1: car in the road be autonomous, you just need enough
Speaker 1: of them to to create this, uh, this traffic flow
Speaker 1: that's much more efficient and you have fewer traffic jams
Speaker 1: as a result, at least according to simulations being run.
Speaker 1: We haven't rolled out enough of them to really test
Speaker 1: it out yet. Sure, well, well on a on a
Speaker 1: small level and kind of anecdot totally. You can see
Speaker 1: this if you use Apple Maps or Google Maps or
Speaker 1: something like that to tell you how to get to
Speaker 1: a place, it will automatically reroot you around bad traffic
Speaker 1: areas these days. So technology. Yeah, and they also in
Speaker 1: addition to all of this theoretical knowledge, they have a
Speaker 1: practical proven record so far. They are doing very well
Speaker 1: in the field. Yeah. The only accidents that the Google
Speaker 1: cars have been in so far the last time that
Speaker 1: we checked at any rate, Yeah, and I want to
Speaker 1: say they were it was up to seven or eleven total,
Speaker 1: But at any rate, none of them were caused by
Speaker 1: the the autonomous by the computer. They were caused by
Speaker 1: humans around the computer, you know. In fact, there was
Speaker 1: an instance I can't remember exactly what it was. It
Speaker 1: was like a month ago or so where the media
Speaker 1: got all excited because there was a report that supposedly
Speaker 1: some autonomous cars had almost gotten into a wreck with
Speaker 1: each other. It was the biggest non story I know.
Speaker 1: I ended up reading into that and saying, there's nothing
Speaker 1: here that like, nobody got hurt, there was not a collision. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the person from Google actually said. The person from Google said,
Speaker 1: the headline here is autonomous cars do exactly what they
Speaker 1: were supposed to do, because that's how it read the way.
Speaker 1: The way it was being reported, at least in some
Speaker 1: media outlets. Some of them were really good about it.
Speaker 1: Some of them were very responsible, but a few of
Speaker 1: them said, you know, near miss with autonomous cars. And
Speaker 1: the story almost came across as a Google car had
Speaker 1: um had cut off a Delphi car and that no,
Speaker 1: it was it, Yeah, it was Delph. I think. Um,
Speaker 1: so a Google car had cut off a Delphi car
Speaker 1: and the Delphi car was able to react to prevent
Speaker 1: an accident from happening. And then the person at Delphi
Speaker 1: I said, that's not what I said at all. What
Speaker 1: I said was our autonomous car had made a plan
Speaker 1: to do a lane change, but then the Google car
Speaker 1: did a lane change first, which meant that the space
Speaker 1: the Delphi car was supposed to go into was currently occupied.
Speaker 1: So the Delphi car switched its strategy, which is exactly
Speaker 1: what he when drivers do all the time, and we
Speaker 1: don't often fail to do and then hit each other
Speaker 1: where you're like, no, I want that lane and it
Speaker 1: is mine, whether your car isn't it or not. But
Speaker 1: that's the that was the deal was that it was
Speaker 1: not a car cutting off another one. It was a
Speaker 1: car making a lane change in another car changing at
Speaker 1: the last section second it's mind to change lanes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I don't want to sound like a you know,
Speaker 1: schill for the autonomous car vendors out there, but it
Speaker 1: seems to me their track record is pretty good. The
Speaker 1: human driving track record is not good at all. Right,
Speaker 1: It's it's demonstrably worse, right, I mean, we have plenty
Speaker 1: of of records on that. The one big drawback to
Speaker 1: autonomous cars is that they're going to be really really
Speaker 1: expensive when they come out, assuming that you know, at
Speaker 1: least at first at least at first, and and probably
Speaker 1: significantly expensive for quite some time afterward, because while manufacturing
Speaker 1: can really help bring down costs, like as you improve
Speaker 1: those processes, the amount of technology being packed into these
Speaker 1: cars is such that even with improvements to those manufacturing processes,
Speaker 1: you're never going to get uh an autonomous car down
Speaker 1: to the price of like a mid priced car. It's
Speaker 1: always going to be on the high end, um possibly
Speaker 1: on the very high end, at least for the foreseeable future.
Speaker 1: But that's not necessarily a deal breaker as far as
Speaker 1: autonomous cars helping us out. No, Because I want to
Speaker 1: form a little analogy here. I remember people saying this.
Speaker 1: In fact, they're still saying it today, but they used
Speaker 1: to say it like in the nineties, was, Uh, we'll
Speaker 1: never have electric vehicles because they just cost too much
Speaker 1: and they will never cost less. We will surely never
Speaker 1: improve upon this technology. Right. And it's true that there
Speaker 1: haven't been a whole lot of personal electric vehicles rolled out,
Speaker 1: But one thing that I think we did get fairly
Speaker 1: early on was certain areas, like some college campuses or
Speaker 1: some downtown areas adopting electric buses and other forms of
Speaker 1: electric public transportation. Right. And that's exactly why we want
Speaker 1: to kind of segue into this discussion about the possibility
Speaker 1: of using electric autonomous vehicles as a taxi fleet. In
Speaker 1: other words, not looking at autonomous cars as something that you,
Speaker 1: as a person go out and go to a car
Speaker 1: dealership and purchase. And this is the vehicle you're going
Speaker 1: to be using. But rather, what about a an environment
Speaker 1: where there's a fleet of these autonomous cars and you
Speaker 1: can hail one of these cars like a cab whenever
Speaker 1: you need to get from point A to point B.
Speaker 1: And so it's a it's a very different use case.
Speaker 1: And when it comes to that use case, the story
Speaker 1: is incredibly different. It is much different than from the
Speaker 1: the huge barrier of entry of the cost for an
Speaker 1: individual person, right, right, So so let's talk about some
Speaker 1: solid numbers. Let's talk about New York City, which has
Speaker 1: really had a lot of taxi cabs um and is
Speaker 1: also where Frank is from. Yes, so New York City
Speaker 1: is great example for multiple reasons. One the enormous fleet
Speaker 1: of cabs that are there too, it's a very dense
Speaker 1: urban environment, it's got a large population we mentioned in
Speaker 1: our Mega Cities episode there there. It's a great candidate
Speaker 1: to use as an example. So the data that I'm
Speaker 1: going to be spouting off is from lots of different
Speaker 1: sources over several different years. So keep in mind that
Speaker 1: the numbers aren't all uh they don't all come from
Speaker 1: one source, right, So, uh so there's gonna be some
Speaker 1: your mileage may vary in this case. According to the
Speaker 1: twenty ten census, uh less than half of the three
Speaker 1: million households in New York City own a car. So
Speaker 1: a fewer than half of the popular of the households,
Speaker 1: not population, but the households in New York City own
Speaker 1: a car. Um that's one point four million households on
Speaker 1: a car coin to the twenty census. And the lowest
Speaker 1: ownership rate is in Manhattan, where it's around twenty three
Speaker 1: of households owning a car. But doesn't every household have
Speaker 1: their own subway station. Yes, that's how New York works.
Speaker 1: Uh well, no, I mean the point I'm making is
Speaker 1: that you can definitely chalk that up to them having
Speaker 1: very good public transit. Yeah, that's definitely. Well, that's part
Speaker 1: of it. But the taxi cabs are also the yellow cabs.
Speaker 1: They are they are almost almost exclusively concentrated in Lower Manhattan.
Speaker 1: Uh so the other ones. Brooklyn is at forty percent ownership,
Speaker 1: Bronx is at Queens is in Staten Island is at
Speaker 1: Now if you want to compare that to the national average,
Speaker 1: the average across the entire United States. In the US
Speaker 1: of households own at least one car, so in New
Speaker 1: York City it is much lower than average. Um. New
Speaker 1: York City is therefore this great example of how are
Speaker 1: people getting around if they're not? If not everyone owns
Speaker 1: a vehicle. Uh. And so besides the buses and subways,
Speaker 1: cabs and livery cars and other vehicles that are driver
Speaker 1: for higher services, that's the answer. Besides walking, that's also
Speaker 1: a big one. But how many taxis are they running
Speaker 1: around in New York? So the most recent number I've
Speaker 1: seen is thirty seven. However, the most recent site I
Speaker 1: could find was from an actual from an actual source
Speaker 1: from within New York City was the two thousand fourteen
Speaker 1: Taxi Cab fact Book, a jolly good read, uh, published
Speaker 1: by New York's Taxi and Limousine Commission. And at that
Speaker 1: time when they published the fact book, it was thot seven.
Speaker 1: So somewhere in the thirteen thousand, five hundred range is
Speaker 1: what we're talking about. And it's such an exact number
Speaker 1: because New York and New York's Taxi and Limousine Commission
Speaker 1: specifically dispensed these uh, these medallions which are kind of
Speaker 1: like a license to be a cabby or our license
Speaker 1: for your car to be used as a cab. Right,
Speaker 1: you're authorized to act as a cab driver within the
Speaker 1: New York City area. And a medallion is a small
Speaker 1: metal plate that actually attaches to the hood of a taxi.
Speaker 1: That's what designates that car as being authorized and is
Speaker 1: it is legally allowed to act as a cab. Because
Speaker 1: we also have probably all have heard the stories of
Speaker 1: people landing in New York and some yahoo with a
Speaker 1: car just happens to be yellow driving on up and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're they're what make sure you don't get kidnapped
Speaker 1: by crazy person, right or or just fleeced like it
Speaker 1: may be that you know, you get picked up by
Speaker 1: somebody who's charging you ridiculous rates that I have nothing
Speaker 1: to do with the um the actual authorized rates. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because I thought you meant the Central Park in New Hampshire.
Speaker 1: What I thought you wanted the scenic route. We're gonna
Speaker 1: visit all the borough until we get to Manhattan. Uh. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the medallions are these plates that are on the cars.
Speaker 1: That's how you recognize that it's a cab technically, that
Speaker 1: you've got the yellow cabs in Lower Manhattan that's mainly
Speaker 1: where you're going to find them. Um, there are actually
Speaker 1: two different types of medallions. There's independent medallions and many
Speaker 1: fleet medallions. But both of those mean that the driver
Speaker 1: of that car is authorized to operate a cab. So
Speaker 1: here's an interesting number. Yellow taxis provide an average of
Speaker 1: four eight five thousand trips per day collectively, not per taxi. No, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's all of them together, hundred seventy five million a year.
Speaker 1: By the way, that's a lot of trips. Now, they're
Speaker 1: also borrowed taxis, and I apologize if you guys in
Speaker 1: New York pronounce it totally different. But it's b O
Speaker 1: r O and it's a it's for the Burrows. I
Speaker 1: would imagine brow you would think so, But it's b
Speaker 1: O r oh, and I'm calling it borrow. It's borrow taxis.
Speaker 1: You do what you want, Jonathan. At least twelve thousand
Speaker 1: of their abbreviated boraxes, So if you get on a borax, uh, slippery. No,
Speaker 1: the boro taxis there at least twelve thousand of them
Speaker 1: as and they are green in color, they're not yellow.
Speaker 1: They serve areas of New York not commonly covered by
Speaker 1: yellow taxi service or really anything out of Lower Manhattan
Speaker 1: UH and total, we're looking at around twenty five thousand
Speaker 1: taxis of some sort, yellow or greens serving the streets
Speaker 1: in New York City. Then you've got another twenty five
Speaker 1: thousand falling under the category of liveries UH and you
Speaker 1: cannot street hail one of those, So you can't be
Speaker 1: on the corner and see a livery car and flag
Speaker 1: it down. They're not allowed to stop. You can. You
Speaker 1: must prearrange your trips with these services, so are a
Speaker 1: little different from the taxis. Also, until recently, there was
Speaker 1: no way to get a yellow cab without just flagging
Speaker 1: it down. You couldn't pre arrange them. You had to
Speaker 1: flag it down, and you flag it down these days
Speaker 1: either the old fashioned way where you're waving at a
Speaker 1: cab driver, or they're also apps now where you can
Speaker 1: use that to UH to flag a cab, but it's
Speaker 1: essentially the same thing. Then you've got the black car Services,
Speaker 1: which has about another ten thousand vehicles, so you're looking
Speaker 1: at what sixty thousand of these cars driving people around
Speaker 1: New York City. Now, on top of that, those are
Speaker 1: all the those are the ones that are overseen by
Speaker 1: the Taxi and Limousine Commission, Yeah, what about Uber? So
Speaker 1: Uber Uber and Lift and all those other similar digital
Speaker 1: services we've popped up recently. Uber in particular has raised
Speaker 1: some some some hell or in New York City, people
Speaker 1: would say, because they've they come in and the Taxi
Speaker 1: and Limousine Commission not really super happy about this other
Speaker 1: group coming in that has nothing like they don't answer
Speaker 1: to the commission at all. They set their own rates.
Speaker 1: They you know, it's it's very different approach. And the
Speaker 1: perception is that Uber is taking a lot of business
Speaker 1: away from the registered drivers who also have to go
Speaker 1: through like the a lot more regulation than Uber does.
Speaker 1: So there there's some real concerns saying, hey, it's not
Speaker 1: really fair. This other business is coming in and they're
Speaker 1: not subject to the same restrictions that we are, So
Speaker 1: why are we Why are we allowing them to steal business?
Speaker 1: That's kind of the narrative. However, there's some things you
Speaker 1: gotta keep in mind. First of all, there are more
Speaker 1: Uber cars in the streets of New York City, then
Speaker 1: there are yellow taxi cabs. Well, there are more Uber drivers.
Speaker 1: That's really well, that's the fair thing to say. How
Speaker 1: many are in operation at any given time. Isilar lower? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So Uber drivers number around nineteen thousand in New York
Speaker 1: City across seven bases. Uh. Depending upon where you read this,
Speaker 1: this the statistic, because I've also seen it as low
Speaker 1: as around fourteen thousand, four hundred and as high as
Speaker 1: nineteen thousand. But that means that there are more Uber
Speaker 1: drivers either way. Even on the low number, there are
Speaker 1: more Uber drivers than there are yellow taxi medallions in
Speaker 1: New York City. However, that does not mean that Uber
Speaker 1: has taken out a huge chunk of that taxi business.
Speaker 1: So remember I said four eight thousand trips per day
Speaker 1: for the taxi cabs. For Uber, it's closer to thirty
Speaker 1: four thousand, thirty four thousand, two hundred seventy one trips
Speaker 1: per day. So a fraction, oh yeah, tiny tiny amount
Speaker 1: compared that was That number comes from a report in
Speaker 1: September two fourteen. We should really do a whole episode
Speaker 1: on these these types of services, because the legal tangles
Speaker 1: in the surrounding, like socio technological issues are are really
Speaker 1: interesting um and the numbers are more serious than other cities.
Speaker 1: Portland is in the middle of a four month taxi
Speaker 1: deregulation experiment and according to their intern report, Uber and
Speaker 1: Lift and and et cetera have handled forty three per
Speaker 1: cent of taxi calls in May. Yeah, so very different
Speaker 1: story depending upon where you are. Sure well, and that's
Speaker 1: also partially I'm sure due to the de regulation that's
Speaker 1: going on in that area right now. But you know what,
Speaker 1: we'll see what happens at the end of that experiment
Speaker 1: period and do lots more research and come back to
Speaker 1: guys with another episode if if it warrant that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's it's definitely, I mean, the story of of
Speaker 1: Uber in general is pretty amazing. This was an idea
Speaker 1: that uh ended up being a multibillion dollar idea. It's phenomenal. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So at any rate, we've got what's this like, seventy
Speaker 1: to nine thousand cars cars that are in services in
Speaker 1: New York City, not necessarily all at the same time,
Speaker 1: but yes, yeah, ninety thousand cars in New York City
Speaker 1: providing services for people to get from point A to
Speaker 1: point b. Uh. So what if we did something really
Speaker 1: crazy and we ended up take all of those cars
Speaker 1: off the streets, fired all the drivers, and replace them
Speaker 1: all with robo taxis Well, that is certainly not great
Speaker 1: if you are a taxi or uber driver. Nope, but
Speaker 1: it's it's also something that you absolutely should plan for
Speaker 1: if you happen to be a taxi or uber driver, because, uh,
Speaker 1: sooner or later this will happen. Whether whether it will happen,
Speaker 1: you know, within the next five to ten years, largely
Speaker 1: depends not so much on the technology as it does
Speaker 1: on the legislation. That's really where it's going to to
Speaker 1: be the battle ground, I think, But it will happen. Uh,
Speaker 1: and don't just believe us. There was a study that
Speaker 1: recently came out that says pretty much the same thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The Earth Institute at Columbia University was one of these studies.
Speaker 1: Are actually quite a few that are really interesting. This
Speaker 1: one is available in full on the net. If you
Speaker 1: want to go and read it, you you can find
Speaker 1: the Earth Institute's Columbia University study was released in two
Speaker 1: thousand their team, and it was looking for sustainable solutions
Speaker 1: for personal mobility. In other words, what is the what
Speaker 1: is the car of the future going to look like?
Speaker 1: And is it going to be a privately owned vehicle
Speaker 1: or will we have shifted to some other means of
Speaker 1: mobility in the future, and they were actually looking at
Speaker 1: what are the most economical and energy efficient methods of
Speaker 1: getting around, especially if you are in an urban environment,
Speaker 1: because the further out from an urban environment you get,
Speaker 1: the more a private personal vehicle makes sense. But if
Speaker 1: you are within an urban environment and your travel is
Speaker 1: restricted to you know, a certain few thousand miles a year,
Speaker 1: like six thousand miles a year because of the way
Speaker 1: you work and live in that space, owning a personal
Speaker 1: vehicle may not make sense. And so they looked at
Speaker 1: several different factors. One was they were looking at the
Speaker 1: way of using the internet to coordinate between a fleet
Speaker 1: of cars and the people who need transportation. So like
Speaker 1: the smartphone apps for Uber and Left and also for
Speaker 1: some cab companies, so it takes advantage of like GPS data,
Speaker 1: It takes advantage of the this intern interconnection where you
Speaker 1: also have a system that can keep track of what
Speaker 1: all the different cars are doing at any given time,
Speaker 1: so it can route the most efficient vehicle to get
Speaker 1: to the destination. Uh that destination being the person who's
Speaker 1: hailing a car. And if you you have an app
Speaker 1: for something like Uber, it probably already does something like this. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's very much like that. If you ever pull
Speaker 1: up the Uber app and you just use it without
Speaker 1: like you're not calling a car yet, you can actually
Speaker 1: see all the cars that are in your area that
Speaker 1: are driving around in different places. And then when you
Speaker 1: you cannot control, please make pac Man. Google Maps did
Speaker 1: for April, they turned They turn Google, But we're talking
Speaker 1: about pac Man with the ghosts being real cars. Go
Speaker 1: watch Pixel and come back to me and tell me
Speaker 1: what a great idea that was. Okay, So the next
Speaker 1: thing they looked at were autonomous vehicles. That's also part
Speaker 1: of the what they were considering for the cars or
Speaker 1: the personal transportation of the future shared vehicles. So this
Speaker 1: would be the you know, abandoning the idea of owning
Speaker 1: your own vehicle and doing something more along the lines
Speaker 1: of taking cabs or Uber or these robotic cars. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you wouldn't known the robotic car. You would just
Speaker 1: you know, hire it for a ride and then you
Speaker 1: would be done, and then you would do it again
Speaker 1: whenever you need a ride the next time. How about
Speaker 1: if the car didn't have to be the same size
Speaker 1: for every trip? Huge, huge part of this, Yeah, because
Speaker 1: let's say you're one person, you need a taxi ride
Speaker 1: and there are three empty seats or two empty seats
Speaker 1: that you're not occupying. Yeah, I've randomly, you know, had
Speaker 1: nothing but minivans to choose from when I get often
Speaker 1: an airport or something. Yeah. No, every time I go
Speaker 1: to c e s. Whenever I'm in the line, the
Speaker 1: taxi cab line, it almost always seems like I get
Speaker 1: the mini van as my cab, and that's space going
Speaker 1: to waste. There could be a group behind me that
Speaker 1: could have really used that. But because the way the
Speaker 1: system works where it's first come, first serve, it doesn't
Speaker 1: you know, they're not they're not matching the size of
Speaker 1: the vehicle with the needs of the writer. But if
Speaker 1: you could do that, if you could write size, if
Speaker 1: I'm one person for this trip, right, then you could
Speaker 1: have a vehicle of the appropriate size, a small vehicle
Speaker 1: come pick you up. Whereas a family a four that
Speaker 1: are on vacation and have luggage, they could have a
Speaker 1: larger vehicle pick them up. And of course that's not
Speaker 1: just about space, that's about energy. If the car only
Speaker 1: needs to fit one person, it will weigh less and
Speaker 1: it needs less and less energy, and also it takes
Speaker 1: up less space for storage, it takes up less space
Speaker 1: for parking. There are a lot of reasons why you
Speaker 1: would want to maximize the efficiency of the size of
Speaker 1: the various cars in your taxi fleet, because it may
Speaker 1: be that you're you know, especially if you look at
Speaker 1: the statistics in New York City, most of the rides
Speaker 1: tend to be one or two people. So if your
Speaker 1: fleet is mostly of vehicles that can carry one or
Speaker 1: two people, then you can, uh, you know, you you
Speaker 1: can have a much smaller storage space for your fleet
Speaker 1: of vehicles since only a small portion of them would
Speaker 1: be larger, right for the for those times where there
Speaker 1: are three or four more people who need to get
Speaker 1: from point A to point B. Now I see another
Speaker 1: thing that you said they take into considerations advanced propulsion.
Speaker 1: Now we're talking about nuclear pulse propulsion. I wish, yeah,
Speaker 1: in the in the actual study, they call it advanced
Speaker 1: propulsion systems, and I thought plasma. What's going on? It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: sadly there's there's specifically talking about electric vehicles and whether
Speaker 1: it's pure electric as in a battery powered vehicle or
Speaker 1: fuel cell. They also mentioned fuel cell vehicles, which are
Speaker 1: you know, they're also electric cars. It's just they're using
Speaker 1: hydrogen as a fuel to create this chemical reaction that
Speaker 1: generates electricity, and then the output is electricity, heat, and water. Uh,
Speaker 1: whether it's fuel cell or electric battery there. That's really
Speaker 1: what they were looking at for advanced propulsion. So they
Speaker 1: wanted to see what could we do if we really
Speaker 1: concentrate on these five things and combine them in some way.
Speaker 1: The ideal future personal transportation system would be a combination
Speaker 1: of all five of these things in one form factor.
Speaker 1: So they're creating like their fantasy football team version of
Speaker 1: the New York transportation system. Yeah. Yeah, And they said
Speaker 1: that if you combine all of these you could save
Speaker 1: a huge amount of time, money, energy, I mean pretty
Speaker 1: much across the board. You would be making a better
Speaker 1: choice for getting people around an urban environment. That seems intuitive,
Speaker 1: but I guess the question is how much better? Okay,
Speaker 1: so we talked about that seventy nine thousand cars around
Speaker 1: New York City. Uh, specifically they were looking at the
Speaker 1: yellow taxi cabs, which, let's be fair, let's eliminate everything
Speaker 1: else but the yellow taxi cabs. So that's back to
Speaker 1: the thirteen thousand, four hundred or so. This study said
Speaker 1: that you could replace all of those yellow taxi cabs
Speaker 1: with nine thousand electric autonomous vehicles. So you have already
Speaker 1: wiped out a ton of those. Now. The other thing
Speaker 1: to keep in mind is that those yellow taxi cabs,
Speaker 1: while they represent only a fraction of the overall driver
Speaker 1: service cars out in New York City, they have the
Speaker 1: vast majority of the fairs. They are by far providing
Speaker 1: the most trips out of all the different cab services
Speaker 1: and liveries in New York City. So you could just
Speaker 1: boost that nine thousand number up a little bit and
Speaker 1: presumably you would have enough to cover all of those
Speaker 1: drivers services in New York, which is pretty phenomenal. And
Speaker 1: the way you do it is through being incredibly efficient
Speaker 1: and having next to no downtime. So and if you're
Speaker 1: a driver of a cab, a yellow cab, and the
Speaker 1: only way you get fares is when you see someone
Speaker 1: flag you down or you have to drive around with
Speaker 1: an empty cab, yeah, tons of downtime where you don't
Speaker 1: have someone or at least enough downtime so that it
Speaker 1: is a problem, it's wasted potential. But when you have
Speaker 1: this master system that is scheduling things out and keeping
Speaker 1: things as efficient as possible. There's very little downtime involved.
Speaker 1: As soon as a car is dropping off, it's on
Speaker 1: its way to go pick someone else up, and uh,
Speaker 1: it's you know, I'm really curious to be able to
Speaker 1: dive deeper into their research because some of it sounds
Speaker 1: almost magical. They were talking about nine thousand cars doing this,
Speaker 1: and your weight time would be less than a minute
Speaker 1: from when you hailed the cab. So you open up
Speaker 1: your smartphone, you say I need a ride. Less than
Speaker 1: a minute later and autonomous electric vehicle pulls up and
Speaker 1: you get in. Now, if you're talking about your average
Speaker 1: yellow taxi cab weight time, if you are actively looking
Speaker 1: for a cab and trying to flag one down, the
Speaker 1: average weight time is closer to five minutes, So you've
Speaker 1: already saved time just with that. And you're using fewer cars,
Speaker 1: so there are fewer cars on the streets of New
Speaker 1: York City as well. That also means that there's less traffic,
Speaker 1: so you've also sped up the amount of time is
Speaker 1: anyone on the road to get anywhere exactly. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: there those are huge benefits there so yeah, a slightly
Speaker 1: larger fleet would probably do that for all those So
Speaker 1: the imagine that you now can remove seventy thousand cars
Speaker 1: from the New York City area and those are replaced
Speaker 1: by let's be I'm gonna double it, just for the
Speaker 1: heck of it, eighteen thousand electric vehicles, less than twenty
Speaker 1: thousand vehicles can replace seventy thousand that exists right now.
Speaker 1: And that's again just the driver's services. You could also
Speaker 1: eventually see people say, well, I don't need a personal
Speaker 1: vehicle now I can get to where I need to
Speaker 1: go by taking one of these cars. So you get
Speaker 1: rid of the personal vehicles. Because when you think about it,
Speaker 1: personal vehicles, of the time they're parked, you're not using them.
Speaker 1: And in New York City you're paying for that. Most
Speaker 1: people are paying more for a parking space than you
Speaker 1: would find for an average house. Here in Atlanta, it's
Speaker 1: kind of crazy. Um, it might be a slight exaggeration,
Speaker 1: but not by a whole lot. So also, because we're
Speaker 1: talking about electric vehicles and not gasoline powered vehicles, there
Speaker 1: is the environmental factor to consider. According to another study
Speaker 1: done by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the per mile
Speaker 1: greenhouse gas emissions of an autonomous electric vehicle would be
Speaker 1: lower than that of a two thousand, fourteen gasoline powered vehicle.
Speaker 1: That was even taking into consideration how the electricity is
Speaker 1: being produced simply by the reduction in the amount of
Speaker 1: travel and the right sizing that being a huge part it,
Speaker 1: because if you're right sizing, meaning that you're sending out
Speaker 1: only the vehicle necessary to carry the passenger and there
Speaker 1: you know, to meet the passengers needs, then you're not
Speaker 1: using the same bulk vehicle that's going to be drawing
Speaker 1: the same amount of electricity as every other bulk vehicle
Speaker 1: out there. You're gonna be using a lot of smaller
Speaker 1: ones that are just gonna be sipping at electricity instead
Speaker 1: of gulping at it. Sure, and here's the part where
Speaker 1: we do have to say, as always that the way
Speaker 1: that you generate that electricity through the grid matters. It
Speaker 1: does matter. Like in California, this would make way more
Speaker 1: sinse than New York. And the reason I say that
Speaker 1: is that California has a lot more green power plant
Speaker 1: technology incorporated in it than New York does. So in
Speaker 1: New York City, most of the power plants, in fact
Speaker 1: I think all the power plants in New York City
Speaker 1: are gas fired power plants. That means they're using natural gas,
Speaker 1: and some are using a combination of natural gas and coal.
Speaker 1: So you are using fossil fuels to generate electricity. So
Speaker 1: while the cars themselves are lean, the electricity may not be,
Speaker 1: and in the case of New York it isn't. So
Speaker 1: that is something to consider that. Yes, the individual cars
Speaker 1: are not going to be generating greenhouse gases, but the
Speaker 1: system that provides the energy that lets the cars move does,
Speaker 1: So there's a larger picture that you have to look at.
Speaker 1: In that case, According to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,
Speaker 1: it still makes sense. They go into a great deal
Speaker 1: of detail, and part of it is that they assert
Speaker 1: that more and more regions are looking into greener means
Speaker 1: of producing electricity, so part of it, part of it
Speaker 1: is rest on the assertion that things are going to change,
Speaker 1: which might be a little let's let's be fair, let's
Speaker 1: say it's optimistic. Well, well, I mean the commercial urge
Speaker 1: of having, you know, hypothetically a bunch of electric vehicles
Speaker 1: on the road that all need to be charged would
Speaker 1: give people more of an incentive to start creating these
Speaker 1: these greener ways of power. Yeah, and they're tons of
Speaker 1: incentives to do it. And that's just one of them obviously,
Speaker 1: I mean, just just wanting to clean up the environment
Speaker 1: being another one. Wanting to screw the penguins or too cute,
Speaker 1: or or for for ones that are petroleum based, wanting
Speaker 1: to to uh free yourself from the burdens of having
Speaker 1: to import some of your petroleum and thus the national
Speaker 1: security angle of energy comes into play. Uh. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's all of these things are are they look like
Speaker 1: they're positives. In fact, both the Columbia study and the
Speaker 1: Berkeley study, the Lawrence Berkeley study, both of them came
Speaker 1: to the same conclusion, which is that, in an unusual
Speaker 1: turn of events, the greenest approach, also in the long run,
Speaker 1: is the most economical. It will save you more because
Speaker 1: the key they're being in the long and the long run,
Speaker 1: and and not for personal ownership. You have to take
Speaker 1: that shared vehicle into account. That's what makes it uh
Speaker 1: an attractive economical coach. Not for the person who wants
Speaker 1: to have their own car. This is for the person
Speaker 1: who lives in a city and wants to be able
Speaker 1: to get around and maybe doesn't want their own car
Speaker 1: because they don't want to make car payments, they don't
Speaker 1: want to make insurance payments, they don't want to be
Speaker 1: taxed every year on the vehicle that they used to
Speaker 1: get around. So if they are using a system like this,
Speaker 1: then they're paying on a per trip basis, and even
Speaker 1: if you factor in all the trips, it may be
Speaker 1: that your your cost per year is lower than that
Speaker 1: of owning a car, unless you're one of those people
Speaker 1: who can buy a car and make it last for
Speaker 1: twenty years, in which case you could argue, hey, no,
Speaker 1: I'm in my case it doesn't make sense. But but
Speaker 1: most of us are not like that, right, most of
Speaker 1: us can't have a car and have it in good
Speaker 1: working condition for a really long time. That's getting less
Speaker 1: and less common these days. So again, because of all
Speaker 1: that technology and how expensive it is, the average estimation
Speaker 1: of how much that would add to the cost of
Speaker 1: a vehicle, adding on top of the already you know,
Speaker 1: whatever the price tag is is another one thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: So take a thirty thousand dollar car, toss a hundred
Speaker 1: fifty thousand on top of it thousand dollars for your
Speaker 1: autonomous car. Yeah, I don't have that sitting around. I
Speaker 1: don't either. I thought I did. Turns out it's more
Speaker 1: like about a buck seventy three and change, what is
Speaker 1: it with the true code sealant exactly? Like what if
Speaker 1: I want that undercoat treatment thing? Um? Yeah, no. So
Speaker 1: if we do look at it from that personal ownership,
Speaker 1: it's prohibitively expensive and would be for quite some time
Speaker 1: because again, even bringing those costs down, you would have
Speaker 1: to bring them down an incredible amount to get close
Speaker 1: to what the cars of today cost, right, so this
Speaker 1: would be decades or at least a decade to get
Speaker 1: to that level. How Ever, if you look at it
Speaker 1: as you are an organization that wishes to provide driver
Speaker 1: services in a dense urban environment, and you compare it
Speaker 1: to the cost of maintaining a fleet of uh gasoline
Speaker 1: powered vehicles operated by humans, it suddenly starts to make
Speaker 1: sense because you're not paying those drivers. Robots don't get paid,
Speaker 1: so they might take our jobs, but at least we
Speaker 1: know they're not making a living. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: little silvery silver lining, and then there they're just as
Speaker 1: miserable as I am. And I want to point out
Speaker 1: that these organizations that are providing cab services have some
Speaker 1: money because it's not a cheap thing to run a
Speaker 1: taxi service in New York. You have to purchase that
Speaker 1: medallion that that license to run your cab, and the
Speaker 1: prices of them vary with the market, but they run
Speaker 1: in the in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to
Speaker 1: the millions of dollars. For for Examp, well, they sold
Speaker 1: for an average of eight hundred thousand dollars each during
Speaker 1: the first quarter, and that's way down from like the
Speaker 1: two million that they were going for a couple of
Speaker 1: years ago. So on top of that, you've got insurance
Speaker 1: and industry fees, And what I'm saying is that overall
Speaker 1: it's a very expensive business to be in. And whether
Speaker 1: or not this would make it less expensive is very complicated,
Speaker 1: but even but I can imagine that like it would
Speaker 1: lower your insurance premiums, it would if you're using electric,
Speaker 1: then you don't have the fuel costs associated with fueling
Speaker 1: a fleet of taxis. Uh. If you're doing the right sizing,
Speaker 1: then you are also very intelligently storing those vehicles whenever
Speaker 1: they're not in use. Usually they're just be coming into
Speaker 1: charge normally, what you would do is you would have
Speaker 1: a certain number of vehicles in reserve fully charged, and
Speaker 1: then have those go out onto the streets while the
Speaker 1: ones that have to have to recharge come in. Um
Speaker 1: and you know, even that that high upfront co us,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not that high when you're looking at
Speaker 1: the medallion cost. And uh, the long term maintenance may
Speaker 1: be much lower depending upon what breaks. Because they're also
Speaker 1: very sophisticated machines. Right, So if you have something that's
Speaker 1: beyond a mechanical failure where you know you've got a
Speaker 1: mechanic coming in there, if it's a computational problem, that
Speaker 1: actually could end up being a bigger issue. Mechanical cars,
Speaker 1: most cars are mechanical. You guys, did you know electric
Speaker 1: cars I've heard can be more expensive to up keep. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that is one of those things where when something
Speaker 1: when it's something is a problem, it probably is more expensive.
Speaker 1: The argument I have seen is that problems would be
Speaker 1: more infrequent assuming that you have a reliably built vehicle. Uh,
Speaker 1: of course that's a that's a big assumption. Obviously. If
Speaker 1: that's wrong, then that's a problem. But getting back to Uber,
Speaker 1: where we talked about all those uh that nineteen thousand
Speaker 1: Uber drivers that are also in New York City of
Speaker 1: fifteen thousand and nineteen thousand, depending upon the of what
Speaker 1: you're looking at. Uber CEO Travis Kalnik said in two
Speaker 1: thousand fourteen, and here's a way to motivate your employees.
Speaker 1: That long term plan for Uber it was that the
Speaker 1: company would replace human drivers with autonomous vehicles, so essentially saying, hey,
Speaker 1: all you guys who drive for us, your days are numbers.
Speaker 1: You're super replaceable. Don't forget it by a car. As
Speaker 1: it turns out, you're replaceable via machine. Uh. Now, we're
Speaker 1: not there yet. Obviously, we don't have autonomous cars that
Speaker 1: are that are allowed on the streets to do this
Speaker 1: kind of business, and it maybe sometime before we are.
Speaker 1: But that is Uber's plan um and for Uber it
Speaker 1: makes perfect sense because even though it's that huge upfront
Speaker 1: cost of purchasing a vehicle that's going to have a
Speaker 1: hundred fifty thousand dollar hike on its price tacking which
Speaker 1: they don't have to purchase any vehicles right now because
Speaker 1: they use the driver's vehicles, right. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: a big expense, but Uber drivers take home you know,
Speaker 1: the majority of their fairs they are earned, which makes sense.
Speaker 1: They're doing the work right there. Uber is the facilitator,
Speaker 1: but they're the person doing the work. And in fact,
Speaker 1: I remember seeing when they the the rate went down
Speaker 1: to like they take home the fairs. When that happened
Speaker 1: in San Francisco, that was huge news because they used
Speaker 1: to tell how more than that. But from Uber standpoint,
Speaker 1: they'd be saying, Hey, look, we'd take home the entire fair.
Speaker 1: The car doesn't get any of it. We might really
Speaker 1: we have to reinvest in the vehicles, but the car
Speaker 1: itself is a machine, a tool. The money goes to
Speaker 1: the company. So from the company's perspective, it makes perfect
Speaker 1: sense to make this investment because they'd be making way
Speaker 1: more money. Oh yeah, even even taxi services. Taxi drivers
Speaker 1: perceive about fifty seven percent of their fares or did
Speaker 1: as of two thousand five, which is the last number
Speaker 1: that I could find on it. But but that would
Speaker 1: still make complete sense for taxi companies as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so callen x gun even further than this. Recently, in
Speaker 1: July of that's when we're recording this. Early July, he
Speaker 1: said he would be willing to purchase five hundred thousand
Speaker 1: electric cars from Tesla by if those cars were autonomous.
Speaker 1: So Tesla has been experimenting with autonomous cars. I think
Speaker 1: they've got like twelve prototypes on the road, and Ellen
Speaker 1: Musk has said that he's very interested in pushing autonomous cars.
Speaker 1: He says that's the future of cars, and it's not
Speaker 1: going to be in private car ownership. Now that is amazing.
Speaker 1: Here a guy who is the CEO of a car
Speaker 1: company saying personal car ownership is limited, it's not the future.
Speaker 1: In fact, he sees a future where humans will not
Speaker 1: be allowed behind the wheel of a car, that only
Speaker 1: robots will be able to will be allowed to drive
Speaker 1: vehicles because they are so much safer than humans are
Speaker 1: that even once you get past that initial you know,
Speaker 1: experience of I don't really I want to be in control,
Speaker 1: once you get past that and you realize, well, this
Speaker 1: machine that is in control is way better at doing
Speaker 1: it than I am. And all the other crazy people
Speaker 1: on the road are in the same boat. All of
Speaker 1: their cars are in control. So I don't have to
Speaker 1: worry about the crazy person who is not really paying
Speaker 1: attention to driving, but is paying attention to something completely
Speaker 1: different and would be a danger. Otherwise, well, they're not
Speaker 1: controlling their car anymore. The robots are. So I think
Speaker 1: people have convincingly made the case, Yeah, in the future,
Speaker 1: that we're going to look back on the era of
Speaker 1: people being allowed to drive their own cars, kind of
Speaker 1: in the way we we now look back on the
Speaker 1: era of doctors not needing licenses. Yeah, it's just kind
Speaker 1: of like what were So the interesting thing here is
Speaker 1: that if Kalanick and Musk had struck a deal then,
Speaker 1: and and if Tesla in fact only made autonomous cars
Speaker 1: in the five thousand cars that call Nick said he
Speaker 1: would purchase, that would represent the entire run of that
Speaker 1: year's Tesla model, because that's how many cars they make
Speaker 1: in a year's five thousand. So essentially call Nic saying
Speaker 1: I'll buy every car you make in its autonomous and remember,
Speaker 1: nine thousand cars, according to that Columbia study, would be
Speaker 1: enough to satisfy the needs of New York City. So
Speaker 1: with five thousand, you could potentially have tons of markets
Speaker 1: covered by these driverless cars, assuming it were legal for
Speaker 1: you to do so. And that again is where we
Speaker 1: run into the first major roadblock. It's not the technology,
Speaker 1: which is I wouldn't say it's mature, but it's really close.
Speaker 1: Like it's much closer than than what you would expect,
Speaker 1: considering it's not something that's readily available for consumers. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be the legal barriers of how do you create
Speaker 1: legislation that covers a world where both manually operated vehicles
Speaker 1: and robotic vehicles are sharing the road, Because there's gonna
Speaker 1: be years of transition before we reach this point where
Speaker 1: the majority or perhaps even all of the vehicles on
Speaker 1: the street are operated robotically. And until we get there,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be some growing pains. There's gonna be some
Speaker 1: tough decisions, unprecedented in some cases, and we honestly don't
Speaker 1: know where that's gonna go because humans are far less
Speaker 1: predictable than machines, and when it comes to legislation and
Speaker 1: powerful lobbies as well, it's hard to say how that's
Speaker 1: gonna go. I mean, I would imagine if I were
Speaker 1: a politician in New York City, the Taxi and Limousine
Speaker 1: Commission probably and and perhaps in you know, organizations representing
Speaker 1: the drivers would probably want to really have some serious
Speaker 1: conversations with me about any decisions I might make that
Speaker 1: would be in favor of autonomous cars and perhaps against
Speaker 1: human drivers, I would imagine. So, so one of the
Speaker 1: things we do have to think about, like if you
Speaker 1: are one of those those politicians having to make those decisions.
Speaker 1: An element that comes into into the conversation that is
Speaker 1: hard to dismiss is what about the jobs of all
Speaker 1: those drivers, not just drivers, but also mechanics, you know,
Speaker 1: folks who would be out of work. I saw one
Speaker 1: study that talked about how you would see a loss
Speaker 1: of jobs in auto mechanics because there will be fewer accidents. So,
Speaker 1: because there'll be fewer accidents, there will be less called
Speaker 1: for body work. And then you think, well, fewer accidents
Speaker 1: is good because you decrease the risk to human health, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you're you're not going to have as many
Speaker 1: incidents where someone is going to be injured as a
Speaker 1: result of an accident. But then, yes, it does have
Speaker 1: this other effect of eliminating the need for the job.
Speaker 1: No one has to repair the cars, no one has
Speaker 1: to repair the humans get hurt. I mean, yeah, this
Speaker 1: has kind of fire reaching effects. There's a domino effect definitely, right,
Speaker 1: it spreads out or ripple effect even and domino is
Speaker 1: probably not even accurate. Ripple is probably more accurate. So
Speaker 1: these are questions that we don't necessarily have answers to,
Speaker 1: and and it's it's something that you do have to
Speaker 1: think about. If you're thinking, well, the benefits are clear,
Speaker 1: and it would benefit a ton of people, so it
Speaker 1: makes sense to make this move from that perspective. However,
Speaker 1: there are folks that are going to be negatively impacted
Speaker 1: by this, at least in the short term, if not
Speaker 1: longer than that. So what do we do about that?
Speaker 1: We you know, some people I'm sure would argue, hey,
Speaker 1: we can't let this stop us from making progress, but
Speaker 1: we can't just ignore it either. Well, certainly, I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's yet another chapter that's pretty similar to
Speaker 1: previous chapters in in the story of automating work. I mean,
Speaker 1: you could say the same thing about farmers in the
Speaker 1: nineteen and twentieth century, or manufacturing, yeah, I mean, or
Speaker 1: anyone who worked for Amazon. Lots of the jobs that
Speaker 1: used to exist just don't anymore. And I mean we
Speaker 1: would probably all now say that we're better off because
Speaker 1: that we've got machines doing those jobs instead of people. Um,
Speaker 1: but I'm sure at the time it was hard for
Speaker 1: the people who had invested time and money into training
Speaker 1: for those skis really yeah. Yeah. So one of the
Speaker 1: things I think is important is that we have to
Speaker 1: keep in mind that this this era of automation is
Speaker 1: going to it's going to continue. It is coming. It's
Speaker 1: not it's not like this is something that is is.
Speaker 1: Maybe this is a it will happen. We're not going
Speaker 1: to stop it. We could delay it, but the question
Speaker 1: is is it a good idea to delay it? Well,
Speaker 1: and it's a question of when whether we purposefully attempt
Speaker 1: to delay it or not. Because you know, just because
Speaker 1: Uber says that they want to buy five tho ours
Speaker 1: from Tesla, doesn't mean that Tesla is going to sell
Speaker 1: those to them, or that they're going to have an
Speaker 1: autonomous car ready to go. Musk thinks it's closer to
Speaker 1: and get ready twenty to forty years exactly what Lauren
Speaker 1: was saying that we don't you know, would be that
Speaker 1: that's Calinic's dream to have that, and and for obvious readings,
Speaker 1: and it would be a big benefit to us as
Speaker 1: well as you know, it's a huge benefit to Uber.
Speaker 1: That would be an enormous benefit for people to for
Speaker 1: the reasons we've already stated. Um, but that does mean
Speaker 1: that we do need to start thinking about what do
Speaker 1: we do with the people who are these drivers, Like,
Speaker 1: what other jobs could they be doing? How could we
Speaker 1: transition them from that role to something else? Because it
Speaker 1: is coming, it's gonna happen, just as automation is going
Speaker 1: to take over more and more jobs and lots of
Speaker 1: different disciplines. I just think that the driver's one is
Speaker 1: a particularly visible uh job that is in danger of
Speaker 1: being replaced through automation in the foreseeable feature what however
Speaker 1: long that may be from now. But I think twenty
Speaker 1: years is actually being really super like pessimistic. I think
Speaker 1: it's gonna be it's going to be less than two one.
Speaker 1: Well when you have you know Henrik Christensen saying that
Speaker 1: kids born today will never drive a car like well
Speaker 1: in order for that to be true, So uh and
Speaker 1: I side more with his assessment than I do with Musks.
Speaker 1: But uh, and it's mostly because there are other players
Speaker 1: on the field besides Tesla. I mean, that's one company,
Speaker 1: but Google has been very bullish about this, uh and
Speaker 1: companies as well. Yeah, I mean that that's another way
Speaker 1: of looking at it is that since it's not really
Speaker 1: a technology problem but more of just like a social
Speaker 1: and political acceptance or maybe say legal acceptance problem, what
Speaker 1: will it take to make this transition. Well, it'll basically
Speaker 1: take some powerful people with money being behind it, right yeah,
Speaker 1: and it'll and you know, having the these and if
Speaker 1: we have that, I mean it sounds kind of like
Speaker 1: we do well, especially if if they're able to pitch
Speaker 1: it in such a way where it gets public support
Speaker 1: where you say, hey, uh, this approach is going to
Speaker 1: mean less traffic. It's going to mean you spend less
Speaker 1: time getting from point A to point B and more
Speaker 1: time doing what you want to do. You're spending less
Speaker 1: money because you're not paying for car payments or insurance
Speaker 1: or yeah, yeah, you don't have to worry about being
Speaker 1: hit by a car by someone who's who's distracted because
Speaker 1: the cars are never distracted that sort of stuff. That's
Speaker 1: if they can, if they can sell that to the
Speaker 1: public and the public gets support for it, then I
Speaker 1: see the change happening more rapidly. But if they don't
Speaker 1: get that support, it's going to artificially increase the amount
Speaker 1: of time it takes for this transition to happen. You know,
Speaker 1: I think there are a lot of parents of some
Speaker 1: day soon to be fifteen to sixteen year olds who
Speaker 1: are probably going to be on the on the bandwagon
Speaker 1: with this too. And I, of course, you guys know me,
Speaker 1: I'm totally on this bandwagon. Yeah, I would love and
Speaker 1: imagine the streets of Atlanta if they're if they weren't
Speaker 1: clogged with traffic all the time. I can't, I can't.
Speaker 1: I don't have that with mechanical spiders that we rode
Speaker 1: the backs of. Yeah. Oh, and actually, what if your
Speaker 1: car does get distracted? What if it's dreaming? You know what,
Speaker 1: We'll talk about machines dreaming in our next episode. How
Speaker 1: about that, Lauren, We'll do that. So, since we're all
Speaker 1: you determined what our next episode is going to be,
Speaker 1: as in the one will be recording immediately after we
Speaker 1: stopped this one, I want to invite our listeners to
Speaker 1: suggest future topics for forward thinking. You know, let us know.
Speaker 1: It'll be like Frank, write us tell us what you think,
Speaker 1: because that launched into this episode, which was a lot
Speaker 1: of fun to talk about. Uh. So you can send
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