This is what vexes me about the lack of emphasis on highway self-driving. Everyone's obsessed with robo taxis.
An overnight trip that's automated could go at 40 mph and get seriously good gas mileage. I mean man with four people would probably get almost 100 miles per gallon.
And this would eliminate a lot of short-range flights
It should be a lot easier to implement than having to worry about a whole class of problems that robo taxis in cities have
Sounds like a train.
The robo taxi links the last few miles to transit.
I recently travelled from my house in Seattle to my office in SF without ever getting in a car. I walked more in the airport than I did anywhere else.
Home -> Walk 11 min -> Metro Bus -> light rail -> SEA -> SF -> BART -> Walk 2 min to Hotel.
Next time I go down I’m going to take Amtrak. I couldn’t this time because it was full. In 2024 360,000 people rode that route on 730 trips for an average of about 500 people per trip. Looks like Amtrak gets between 0.6 and 2mpg. That’s 300mpg to 1000mpg per person which is better than a Prius’ 200mpg at 40mph.
Seattle to SF is 1019 miles. At 40mph that’s 25 hours, which is an hour slower than the Amtrak schedule.
Yes. Electric self driving cars are why I am not too concerned about all the tunnel and highway building. They are train tracks of the future.
Train tracks are the train tracks of the future.
Trains are far more efficient than cars, especially at scale.
Assumes everyone is in medium to high density urban areas.
I like the idea, rural life excepted, but hard to imagine sprawl will ever be replaced.
It doesn’t. Trains cover the same distances as airplanes. Take a train across Washington, or anywhere, most of the stops are small towns.
Light rail, busses, and robotaxis cover sprawl.