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Electric cars and the future of transportation


Erik of Hazelfield

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6 hours ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

I think that article is a bit pessimistic in outlook, a bit like saying in 1937 that Sherman tanks would never displace Panzers as the tank of choice. Sometimes things can happen on a 'war footing' so that current models of production no longer hold in the future.

In other words, I am hopeful we may reach a tipping point sometime soon.

The thing about Teslas, I think, is that they show how an electric car can be superior instead of inferior to gas cars. The Model S is the market leader in its segment (large luxury sedans). People use them as their only car without problems. Price is really the only thing holding the revolution back at this point. Charger ubiquity isn't a problem now and likely won't be in the future either, at least not in somewhat densely populated areas. Chargers are much cheaper to build than gas stations and there are far fewer safety requirements which means you can put them anywhere. 

What I'm saying is that once the Model 3 becomes common, the whole world will want an electric car. Gas cars will become about as hot as non-flat TVs are today. That's when I think the change will happen, and it will come faster than most people think.

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11 minutes ago, Erik of Hazelfield said:

The thing about Teslas, I think, is that they show how an electric car can be superior instead of inferior to gas cars. The Model S is the market leader in its segment (large luxury sedans). People use them as their only car without problems. Price is really the only thing holding the revolution back at this point. Charger ubiquity isn't a problem now and likely won't be in the future either, at least not in somewhat densely populated areas. Chargers are much cheaper to build than gas stations and there are far fewer safety requirements which means you can put them anywhere. 

What I'm saying is that once the Model 3 becomes common, the whole world will want an electric car. Gas cars will become about as hot as non-flat TVs are today. That's when I think the change will happen, and it will come faster than most people think.

Uh...  No.  I don't think you can suggest that the tesla is superior to all noon electric cars like that, especially if you are going to dismiss the cost out of hand.

There are a number of reasons for the success of the tesla that have little to do with it's 'superiority' over gasoline powered cars.

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Really, @lokisnow nailed it. Driving an electric is awesome, and if people knew that they'd ditch gas so quickly. There are issues, but the biggest one is the range and ease of charging - and both get solved with more adoption. Same issue with gas stations when people had cars to begin with. 

 

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On 8/6/2017 at 1:47 AM, Datepalm said:

I love this.

but also, from same article:

Quote

Singapore is considering the purchase of a fleet of 300,000 driverless taxis to replace the 780,000 manned ones currently clogging their streets.

That is one locale planning on putting 780,000 people on the unemployment dole. I envision those 780,000 people will probably be doing some admirable civil disobedience attacking, and disrupting and possibly destroying the slaves that are taking their lives and livelyhoods away. ;)

Again, is that moral? deliberately putting 780,000 of your own people out of work?

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1 hour ago, lokisnow said:

I love this.

but also, from same article:

That is one locale planning on putting 780,000 people on the unemployment dole. I envision those 780,000 people will probably be doing some admirable civil disobedience attacking, and disrupting and possibly destroying the slaves that are taking their lives and livelyhoods away. ;)

Again, is that moral? deliberately putting 780,000 of your own people out of work?

Singapore's unemployment rate is 0.8%. Besides, there are plenty of ways to accommodate increased unemployment - shorter work weeks, extended vacations, extended maternity leaves, lowering the old-age pension age, etc. The only thing that matters is that productivity increases, and this is what automation provides. Not too long ago, the work week was 48 hours and Saturdays were regular work days.

Personally, I welcome our new robot overlords (as long as they provide me with a three-day work week and two-month vacation).

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4 hours ago, lokisnow said:

That is one locale planning on putting 780,000 people on the unemployment dole. I envision those 780,000 people will probably be doing some admirable civil disobedience attacking, and disrupting and possibly destroying the slaves that are taking their lives and livelyhoods away. ;)

Again, is that moral? deliberately putting 780,000 of your own people out of work?

Again, I find that alarmist, weird, and a profoundly anti-labour position. Technology has been putting people out of work for centuries. Attemtping to artificially keep jobs that have no real purpose except to make work in the economy as a pro-labour strategy is fucked. It becomes state charity. That's not a sustainable model of labour power, income, rights or job security. Those depend on bargaining power vis a vis owners of capital, and the real question is - whose going to own those thingies, will they turn a profit, and where is that going to go?

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Yeah but we can use the state and the government for populist options like abolishing (or banning in the first place) robot slavery.

just because robot slavery will make the owners of capital insanely rich doesn't mean we have to accept robot slavery as an axiomatically inevitable march of progress.

slavery always makes the owners of capital rich, we should resist it in all it's forms.

Full employment is a more important goal than robot slavery, and full employment is more moral than robot slavery.

losing your job to a robot slave and being told to be happy your life has no value and will never have any value ever again because of robot slavery and being told in addition to that you should be happy living a minimalist life consuming next to nothing since you have been forced onto UBI welfare is going to create insane social unrest at extremely high levels. It won't be pretty.

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Full employment is a terrible goal. Why should we want to have everyone work? (and ffs stop using the word slavery, these things aren't slaves anymore than your dishwasher is) The goal should be to allow people to choose what they want to do.

Anyway you seem to be under the impression that it will continue to be companies that will be the controllers of these robots. Which I don't see happening. If for example a mine or factory is run 100% by robots with maybe a person or two to supervise than a given government has all the incentive in the world to take the mine or factory over operate it itself.

Capitalism has worked so well it has made itself obsolete.

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Yes, seconded - the use of the term slavery here is not just ridiculous, but possibly offensive.

Don't have time to start picking apart the vast gaps in labour politics, economics, history or ideology here otherwise. Why more cars is a terrible idea, I can go back to.

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Seems like the obvious solution is to have people buy the autonomous cars and own them, and then get money from them by leasing them out to rental services. They continue to get a revenue stream and become the owners of the slaves while making a safer world. They take on some risk, but that's probably okay overall. 

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Yes the use of the term slavery was offensive.

i may be Misremembering but isnt there a science fiction tradition of equating robots with slaves?

@Kalbear serfs don't become rentiers except in extreme cases which are by their nature extraordinarily unlikely outliers. So it's fine to say they "could" just become owners, but the system is designed to keep the wealth generating revenue streams exclusive to the already wealthy. Why do immigrants do liquor stores instead of McDonald's franchises? Because the rights to a franchise are designed as a form of redlining to keep the non wealthy and non whites out of that revenue stream.

anti robot sentiment will be much more extreme than anti immigrant sentiment because there is no human in the other side to sympathize with! But the results will play out in similar ways. 

I imagine in the United States the anti robot resistance will mostly attack self driving cars with guns, shooting out windows and tires when the cars are unoccupied, and in general hoping to instill terror in the hearts of the affluent whites that are only ones who can afford to use the robots. Attack the demand side wth terrorism in other words. Since most people in the United States that have driving based careers are also gun owners this seems fairly likely once the robots make them unemployed and they are angry and there is minimal human risk to their reformist terror actions.

in grade school we read a book called the pushcart war. The same thing will happen, but with guns because humans are always fundamentally humans pursuing rational self interest.

in a place like Singapore where guns won't be a factor, the terrorism enacted against the robots (and the affluent using the robots) will probably be limited to riskier (at getting caught) behavior like cinderblocks through windows, hatchets into tires, graffiti "attacks" these sorts of attacks on the demand side will need to be done when occupied to maximize the terror and reduce the demand for the robots

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1 minute ago, lokisnow said:

 

@Kalbear serfs don't become rentiers except in extreme cases which are by their nature extraordinarily unlikely outliers. So it's fine to say they "could" just become owners, but the system is designed to keep the wealth generating revenue streams exclusive to the already wealthy. Why do immigrants do liquor stores instead of McDonald's franchises? Because the rights to a franchise are designed as a form of redlining to keep the non wealthy and non whites out of that revenue stream.

 

Immigrants in our area do franchises, so I'm not sure how accurate you're being here. 

Mostly, I see a very clear glide path between people buying cars that are cool which can be autonomous, to people renting those cars out in an uber service, to people renting those cars out to drive themselves while they're at work via an uber service. It requires much less cultural change (people are still buying cars) and I know Tesla and Uber and Ford are already imagining this as a likely outcome, so whether or not you think it's going to happen, others believe it will and soon. 

And from a capital perspective this also makes sense; the services get a lot of disposable resources that they have to pay no maintenance and upkeep on which also constantly upgrade themselves. There's almost no risk for them, and they get a ton of revenue because of it. It's like the Steam model of car transportation, and there's every reason to support those who provide the product because you still get your 30% for basically nothing.

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16 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

Yes the use of the term slavery was offensive.

@Kalbeari may be Misremembering but isnt there a science fiction tradition of equating robots with slaves?\

 

A rich and complex one, primarily using the robot metaphor to cast light on the exploitation of labour. Let me know when you're Karel Capek.

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1 hour ago, TrueMetis said:

Full employment is a terrible goal. Why should we want to have everyone work? (and ffs stop using the word slavery, these things aren't slaves anymore than your dishwasher is) The goal should be to allow people to choose what they want to do.

Anyway you seem to be under the impression that it will continue to be companies that will be the controllers of these robots. Which I don't see happening. If for example a mine or factory is run 100% by robots with maybe a person or two to supervise than a given government has all the incentive in the world to take the mine or factory over operate it itself.

At which point, it would require a couple hundred extra bureaucrats to run it.

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2 hours ago, lokisnow said:

Yes the use of the term slavery was offensive.

i may be Misremembering but isnt there a science fiction tradition of equating robots with slaves?

@Kalbear serfs don't become rentiers except in extreme cases which are by their nature extraordinarily unlikely outliers. So it's fine to say they "could" just become owners, but the system is designed to keep the wealth generating revenue streams exclusive to the already wealthy. Why do immigrants do liquor stores instead of McDonald's franchises? Because the rights to a franchise are designed as a form of redlining to keep the non wealthy and non whites out of that revenue stream.

anti robot sentiment will be much more extreme than anti immigrant sentiment because there is no human in the other side to sympathize with! But the results will play out in similar ways. 

I imagine in the United States the anti robot resistance will mostly attack self driving cars with guns, shooting out windows and tires when the cars are unoccupied, and in general hoping to instill terror in the hearts of the affluent whites that are only ones who can afford to use the robots. Attack the demand side wth terrorism in other words. Since most people in the United States that have driving based careers are also gun owners this seems fairly likely once the robots make them unemployed and they are angry and there is minimal human risk to their reformist terror actions.

in grade school we read a book called the pushcart war. The same thing will happen, but with guns because humans are always fundamentally humans pursuing rational self interest.

in a place like Singapore where guns won't be a factor, the terrorism enacted against the robots (and the affluent using the robots) will probably be limited to riskier (at getting caught) behavior like cinderblocks through windows, hatchets into tires, graffiti "attacks" these sorts of attacks on the demand side will need to be done when occupied to maximize the terror and reduce the demand for the robots

If we do end up with automation caused mass unemployment it might take a while for the governments of the world to actually make all those huge reforms that would be necessary to adopt UBI's or similar. So up until that point I agree that there could be a lot of social unrest, particularly in a country like the USA where the existing social safety nets are so weak. 

I think what could be even more serious is that we might end up with all these desperate people electing increasingly more insane politicians, like what happened in many countries during the Great Depression (and which is arguably already occuring). God knows where that could lead us. 

Alex Jones 2024?

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that is my thought too.

centrally planned, top-down, ruthless, malicious and system-wide deliberately inflicted unemployment at unimaginable numbers (but only of non-college jobs, gotta protect thine own turf whilst fucking the serfs!) inevitably  = desperation --> social unrest, upheaval, and the election of increasingly terrible leaders which eventually means war.

we are not looking at one factory going down, or a domino effect of factories toppling one by one over a generation time frame. but the sudden mass unemployment across an entire eco system.

the proposed technology apocalypse so many enthusiasts want to inflict on labour is like the damage a severe drought inflicts on an entire system: thirsty animals become desperate animals, and many die.

Left Wing wonks are very fond of Universal Basic Income.  "Universal Basic Income" is just a fancy phrase designed to make people hate the wonks saying, "universal basic income" and  (bonus!) is also designed to ensure politicians espousing the phrase "universal basic income" lose elections at high rates! people HATE being on the dole. the people not on the dole HATE the people on the dole, UBI is a social disaster waiting to happen, and idiots want to inflict this catastrophic policy clusterfuck on the non college educated (because they don't actually know nor interact with anyone who is non college educated, so it's okay to inflict this nightmare, because it is happening literally to the other).

Left Wing Wonks should be pursuing Universal Basic Employment instead. Carter actually was pursuing this for a while, but it fizzled out as his relationship with congress deteriorated.

UBE doesn't have to be tasks like in Phantom Tollbooth, but at least it would be better than the political suicide of UBI.

 

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back a bit on topic. Left Wing Wonks are very fond of the phrase "FORCING more people to take public transit" this hostile language (which they view as a positive for some bizarre reason) is in virtually every cheerleading article written about mass transit. 

That is because they don't actually use mass transit, they just want other (non college educated, poorer and non white) people to use it instead, so that roads are reserved only for the increased convenience of the "Wonderful 3 Ws"--wealthier, whiter and well educated.  Congestion pricing, for instance, is a policy instituted soley to benefit the 3Ws.

Utilizing mass transit is a huge personal time sacrifice that deprives the user of leisure time and family time. Since Left Wing Wonks do not value the time of those who do not belong to the 3Ws, they never consider the downstream impacts of "FORCING" people to take mass transit. and there are a lot of negative downstream impacts of making all the non 3Ws double or triple their commute times.

BUT! there is a very simple market-based solution to get more people to OPT to ride mass transit.

Pay them to ride it.

If every bus rider in Los Angeles was paid five dollars for any commute length bus ride within an eight hour period you would see a huge increase in bus ridership, because now people would be paid for their time.

You would then have therefore reduced the number of cars on the road, helping out the climate, and you will have reduced the number of poor people driving themselves, which is the ultimate goal of the 3Ws.

A win win win. and probably a better use of 120 billion dollars, than the 120 billion los angeles is going to spend on fixed rail infrastructure over the next few decades.

(note I realize with 30 million bus trips a month 120 billion is gone in an instant! all part of the fun ;)

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The disdain of public transport is an almost purely American phenomenon. In places like Japan, Singapore, large parts of Europe etc everyone uses it because it's faster, cheaper and more convenient than cars. That could be the case in the U.S. too if it wasn't for the fact that its public transportation is underfunded, underdimensioned and underappreciated.

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