Talk:Self-driving car

"Before or after the attendant refuels it, the car would print out the owner's credit card or checking account number in order to pay for the fuel."

LOL! Do you really think that by the time driverless cars have arrived it will still be necessary to print a credit card number? And why would the petrol station bother employing an attendant? Surely if a car can drive itself it can refuel itself too.

Back in the 1990s, Mobil Oil tested an unattended refueling system for gas stations. That is, the car would pull up to the pump and the pump would insert the nozzle in the gas tank of the vehicle. They had also already deployed Speedpass, making for hands-free electronic payment. Not sure what happened with the unattended refueling, the technology does exist, though it may not be profitable. --Habap 19:29, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

"will people still be allowed to drive, when an automated system will be able to do it more safely?" Not a valid question in my opinion. You are applying present-day concerns to a future scenario. If the automated system is advanced enough to offer great advantages over driving manually, most people won't want to drive by hand, and they won't care whether it is allowed. The question sounds like someone in 1900 asking "Will people still be allowed to ride their horses on motorways?". Of course, some people will still want drive purely for leisure, just like people still ride horses today. They will do this on special tracks however and not on the main transport corridors that take people from A to B. 137.222.40.132 17:13, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Many people will insist on driving by hand, probably for decades after it becomes common. Ask anyone over 60 how often they use cell phones, the internet or a PDA. --Habap 19:29, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

I have just read the page about the driverless car. The issue of the driverless car is whether it should be a private car, or a public vehicle. As a private car it solves very few car problems. As a public vehicle, used as a taxi, it solves many car problems. It leads the way to better road space utilisation by allowing people to conveniently use buses for the corridor part of the journey, and the driverless car for the local networked part of the journey.

So what are you saying? What can the article do to better represent this issue? - Fennec 15:19, 10 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Public or private ownership is a mere technicality and not an important issue in my opinion. Driverless cars will allow for a much more competitive rental and pay-on-demand market than is the case with manually driven vehicles. If a city council fails to provide a public driverless car system, private companies similar to today's taxis companies will. More people will choose to use a public-type system because of the clear advantages it will offer (much lower cost due to higher rate of utilisation, more flexible, no parking problems, one way journeys possible). Some people will still prefer to own a private vehicle, or choose combination of both. Whatever the scenario however, I can't see why fully private and "taxi" vehicles can't happily coexist on the road (or any other guidance system).

From what I've heard, it's unfeasible for a computer to drive among human drivers at present, but if human driving were eliminated, it'd be easy for a computer network to control all cars, and at higher safe speeds. this is because of the unpredictability aspect of human drivers even at the lower speeds necessary for their safety.

No personal cars

I chuckled when reading the "no personal cars" at all. I doubt that Americans would be willing to give up the feeling of freedom that comes with car ownership. While people who live on Manhattan or in Tokyo may find owning a car a hindrance, someone out on Long Island or in Akron, Ohio or Detroit, Michigan would probably tell you that "you can have my car when you pry the keys from my cold, dead fingers." Similarly, I doubt Germans would give them up. Heck, Finns, Norwegians and Swedes would probably hate to lose one of the ways of getting around their countries too. The "no personal cars at all" is so pie-in-the-sky silly that I am tempted to remove it or slap a POV tag on this article. It simply won't happen in any of our lifetimes. --Habap 13:54, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

--History-- Where is the history about this?

Does anyone have any information regarding the begining of the AGV Concept.

Slashdot posting had some good ideas

I recall reading a posting on Slashdot that had some terrific ideas about driverless cars (I think in reference to the Darpa Grand Challenge), easily as good as the list in this article. That would be a good source for more driverless car advantages. I also wonder if on-the-road-refuelling might even be a viable concept for situations where it'd be economical. (The cost of stopping to refill would exceed the money spent doing it on the road.) Imagine if there were someday fuel trucks endlessly wandering the interstates refuelling semis and delivery trucks all day and night.