Rivian Unveils Custom Silicon, R2 Lidar Roadmap, and Universal Hands Free

Public transit is a dream turned nightmare consistently for seventy-five years. Autonomy will be less efficient -- but not that much less efficient given closer car spacing, speed, and remote parking -- but it will be spectacularly more convenient and comfortable. I'm all for it. You'll survive the tire pollution.

That's one opinion. My opinion is public transport is phenomenal. It's relatively reliable (very in some places), generally clean and safe, low cost, encourages urban/high efficiency development, protects greenspace, and employees people.

I'm not sure where you live, but that doesn't match my experience at all. And I think most people agree given the overwhelming majority of people who choose to drive, notwithstanding traffic and parking. The declining public transit ridership in most metropolitan areas over time is well documented.[1] It's because in most places -- but evidently not where you live -- public transit sucks relative to private transportation and ride-hailing services. As discussed above, EV autonomy will only increase the difference.

[1] https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/fta-transit-ridership-p...

> You'll survive the tire pollution.

I tend to expect better from HN commenters. I don't have an interest in having a discussion with such a callous and dismissive comment. I hope your day gets better.

Tire pollution is worse than tailpipe emissions and the full effects aren't known. You're dismissive of other people's and the environment's health and you're wrong.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/03/car-tyre...

What are you talking about? In most cities public transport sucks, hardly goes anywhere, gets more expensive year after year, makes housing prices go up, and is slow and inflexible enough that people still end up needing cars to go around

It's interesting to read such an opposite opinions on public transport from Americans and Europeans.

> Public transit is a dream turned nightmare consistently for seventy-five years

*In the United States. For reasons we have avoided in much of the rest of the world...

Worth noting that only 17% of passenger transport activity in the EU is public transit (trains and buses).

https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/analysis/indicators/share-of-bu...

> Tire pollution is worse than tailpipe emissions and the full effects aren't known. You're dismissive of other people's and the environment's health and you're wrong.

Tire pollution is now as large or larger than tailpipe particulate pollution, but it’s not a complete apples-to-apples comparison.

Tail pipe pollution includes CO₂, NOx, SO₂, CO, and fine particulates (PM2.5 + PM10) and is strongly linked to asthma, heart disease, climate change.

Tire pollution on the other hand is microplastics, synthetic rubber particles, zinc, and volatile organic compounds. Toxic to aquatic life; long-term human health effects still being studied.

The United States is freaking huge. By the time modern transportation arrived, people were already living all over the country in pockets every which where. We opted for cars and planes to cover the vast distances. And as it turns out, we have some of the best in the world of both of these - and in vast quantities.

We do have dense pockets. NYC, in particular, has a nice metro (it just needs to be cleaner and more modernized - but it's great otherwise).

Most countries are small. Their dense cities are well-served by public transit. America is just too spread out. Insanely spread out.

China is an exception in that, while a huge landmass, its large cities emerged as the country was wholesale industrializing. It was easy for them to allocate lots of points to infrastructure. And given their unmatched population size and density, it makes a lot of sense.

As much as I envy China's infrastructure (I've been on their metros - they're amazing!), it would be a supreme malinvestment here in the United States to try to follow in their footsteps. The situation we have here is optimal for our density and the preferences of our citizens. (As much as people love to complain about cars, even more people than those that complain really love their cars.)

Public transit in the US is probably going to wind down as autonomous driving picks up the slack. Our road infrastructure is the very best in the world - it's more expansive, comprehensive, and well-maintained than any nation on the planet. We'd be wise to double down. It can turn into a super power once the machines take over driving for us.

The fact that we have this extent of totally unmatched road infrastructure might actually turn out to be hugely advantageous over countries that opted for static, expensive heavy rail. Our system is flexible, last mile, to every address in the country. With multiple routes, re-routes, detours. Roads are America's central nervous system.

Our interstate system is flexible, and when cars turn into IP packets, we'll have the thickest and most flexible infrastructure in the world.

We've shit on cars for the last 15 years under the guise that "strong towns" are correct and that cars are bad. But as it may turn out, these sleeping pieces of infrastructure might actually be the best investment we've ever made.

Going to call this now: in 20 years' time, cars will make America OP.

Those things everything complains about - they'll be America's superpower.

The rest of the world with their heavy rail trains and public transit will be jealous. Our highways will turn into smart logistics corridors that get people and goods P2P at high speed and low cost to every inch of the country.

Roads are truly America's circulatory and nervous system.

I'm so stoked for this. I once fell for the "we need more trains meme" - that was a suboptima anachronism, and our peak will be 100x higher than expensive, inflexible heavy rail.

> I'm all for it. You'll survive the tire pollution.

Will you enthusiastically support the taxes on you needed to entirely offset this negative externality?

Rubber ppm over some threshold safety level is a negative externality worth maybe a few billion in remediation, healthcare costs, etc. (As a society, we're still not convinced pulmonary health as impacted by particulate inhalation is important - which is a mistake. It absolutely is a big deal and negative externality driving a whole host of bad health outcomes.)

Malinvestment into public transit in a way that serves only a limited few of the population and that costs 10x the already high initial estimates is a negative drain on the balance sheet worth 500 billion or more. And this infra is woefully inflexible and static.

California HSR alone is already suboptimal vs. flights, and once we have long distance autonomous self-driving, that'll meet the same demand with 1/100,0000,000th the cost (if you average out the costs and benefits of self driving over all other routes).

In a way, a fusion of both is possible

Autonomous cars that move largely along the same route could form temporary "trains", or rather convoys, moving in a coordinated fashion. That would simplify navigation, reduce chances of accidents, reduce energy consumption, and definitely give the passengers more peace of mind during the commute.

Such convoys would split when needed, join together when needed, notify other convoys and drivers about their route and timing. This would alleviate traffic jams considerably even under heavy load.

At the same time, they would consist of cars and trucks that would be capable of moving completely separately outside highways.

This, of course, will require some kind of centralized control over entire convoys, and a way to coordinate them. Railways and airways definitely can offer examples of how to handle that.

California is just uniquely dysfunctional in many ways.

A typical ICE car will consume at least 500 gallons of petrol (gasoline) per 1 gallon of tire tread worn. The environmental impact per volume of tire is certainly greater, but it's not remotely five hundred times greater.

I'm not saying we should disregard the issue of tire pollution. But if it was as serious as you suggest, it would be making more headlines than it is.

> The United States is freaking huge. By the time modern transportation arrived, people were already living all over the country in pockets every which where. We opted for cars and planes to cover the vast distances. And as it turns out, we have some of the best in the world of both of these - and in vast quantities.

You have this narrative precisely backwards.

At the risk of pointing out the obvious: the great sprawl that made us dependent on cars happened after cars got popularized.

Yes, the cities were already spread out relative to each other, but that distance can be covered with trains well enough. What made us need cars, and what cars encouraged, was a huge amount of spread within a city or metro area. If you sprawl out over a city such that population density is constantly low, then public transit and walking can't work effectively anymore, and everyone needs to own a car.

US cities that were already large and well populated before the advent of cars tend to be densely built. Their cores, at least, are walkable as a result. This is true even for non-major cities -- just google "streetcar suburbs" as an example.

Why wouldn’t it be 500 times greater? Gasoline is combusted for energy, converting most of it into mostly harmless byproducts; tire tread is just released as is.

> The United States is freaking huge.

Completely irrelevant. I'm not interested in public transport across vast areas from city to city, I can drive or fly for those (very rare) occasions.

Public transport is most useful for the hyper-local day-to-day movement. I'd just want good reliable public transport within my town and neighboring areas.

(Actually I'd prefer to just bike, which requires secure bike parking in all destinations. I can already bike anywhere in town, but my bike will get stolen if I stop anywhere to shop or eat, so I can't do that.)

> It's relatively reliable

In most places it is not, which is a big drawback. Every week I hear on the news how the train shut down some stations or got massively delayed for random reasons. I couldn't possibly rely on that if I need to be at work at a specific time.

The best evidence that tyre tread is significantly less consequential than gasoline consumption is that such criticisms overwhelmingly arise in discussions of electric cars.

> We opted for cars and planes to cover the vast distances. And as it turns out, we have some of the best in the world of both of these

You actually believe that?!