I am frequently gripped by all the contradictions that my career inevitably surfaces. I care about the environment and, yet, I lust over the sound of an unchoked V8. I think there should be fewer new cars, eventually, while spending a lot of time here chiding automakers when their sales fall. I love all that new technology brings, though I often wonder if the newness of said technology distracts me from the fact that it’s at cross-purposes with my own values. Driverless cars, in particular, are something I think about all the time.
There’s an interview that David Zipper did with the outgoing head of San Francisco’s powerful transit agency, which oversees the city’s robotaxis, and there’s a lot there that’s got me on tilt this morning. Right up at the top is Zipper’s key question: Do robotaxis make life better for the larger population? The answer is worth discussing.
It’s going to be one of those Morning Dumps, so buckle up. Let’s transition to talking about Mercedes-Benz. The company got electric cars to the market quickly so we’ve got a good chunk of data to evaluate and can see pretty clearly that the company’s first effort didn’t work. They’ll get another chance, though.
You know who is doing it right? Cupra. Volkswagen is great at spinning off brands that are more successful than the home brand. You know what another great brand is? Alpine.
Robotaxis Are Great For ‘The Privileged’ But ‘Create Problems For The Efficiency Of The Transportation System As Whole’
It would be bad if I quoted the whole Bloomberg article, which features Jeffrey Tumlin, the soon-to-leave head of San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA). The job is somewhat unique in that the SMFTA is responsible for all transit, streets, and cabs/livery, which means that robotaxis fall under Tumlin’s purview. This gives Tumlin the best external view of how robotaxis operate holistically within an urban environment.
Again, read the whole interview, because it’s fascinating and I can’t blockquote all of it.
Tumlin starts by pointing out that robotaxis, especially Waymo, do a better job of predicting erratic human behavior than he originally expected, crediting the technology with clearing that seemingly high hurdle. He also acknowledges what anyone who has used a Waymo knows, which is that it’s extremely nice. Or, well, it’s extremely nice for the people using it (at least when the car isn’t confused). I’ve had women in my life text me their location because an Uber driver or a cab driver seems weird, is going the wrong way, and they otherwise fear for their safety. Services like Waymo dramatically reduce this risk.
Great, right?
Overall, are robotaxis a positive or negative for San Francisco?
So far, there is no net positive for the transportation system that we’ve been able to identify. The robotaxis create greater convenience for the privileged, but they create problems for the efficiency of the transportation system as a whole.
What do you mean by that?
What I like about Waymo is that the user interface design works well. I don’t have to talk to a human, and the vehicle’s driving behavior is slow and steady. I think robotaxis offer the potential for significant upsides for personal convenience, but it remains to be seen whether they offer any overall benefit to the transportation system.
He also pointed out that, for as nice as the service is, if society puts billions of dollars more into public transit then public transit could also be nice. And if society wanted cars that didn’t speed it could just put mandatory governors in all cars (please don’t do that).
Here’s another bit that struck me:
[I] have sat in on panels at transportation technology conferences discussing the “pedestrian problem.” There have been many such conversations asking, “If we have ubiquitous autonomous mobility, why would anyone ever need to walk again?”
Waymo has at least demonstrated that we don’t need to install chips in all humans so that AVs can identify pedestrians. That’s good news; industry is not having that conversation anymore. But yes, I am very worried that so much of the joy of the remaining walkable cities in the world could be at risk from self-driving cars.
San Francisco is a place, in my experience, that’s great at creating positive outcomes for people of extremely high income at the expense of the livability of everyone else. It’s not alone in that, but at least in New York when people buy a car just to drive from their apartment on one side of Central Park to their apartment on the other side (a real thing I saw someone do) there’s no pretending that they’re trying to make the world a better place.
Driverless cars displace jobs. According to Tumlin, they displace transit. This seems more than net-neutral, this seems net-bad. I’m not saying that the technology shouldn’t exist and people shouldn’t be allowed to have access to it. I do wonder if it wouldn’t be better if this were priced at a level that makes it not the default and if we took some of that money and funneled it into better transit/bike paths/pedestrian paths.
That’s not how this works, though. What these services will do is they’ll take their immense wealth and investment and, if not undercut transit or Ubers, make the price so low that they inevitably reduce the reliance on these systems until they no longer seem necessary. And then they’ll jack up the cost. It’s basically what Uber did to cabs, so there’s probably some cosmic justice involved if that happens.
I don’t know the answer here. I don’t know what the better path is. I just know that I can’t shake the question.
Oh, and our favorite person, Cruise founder Kyle Vogt shows up in this interview:
Was there a robotaxi moment over the last several years that prompted you to think, “I cannot believe this is happening”?
In my first meeting with the original CEO of Cruise [Kyle Vogt], I was in City Hall trying to lay out the case why good data supports public trust, and explaining why I didn’t expect robotaxi companies to be perfect. San Francisco streets can handle a good deal of chaos, but I can’t have dozens of Cruise vehicles being immobilized in traffic and blocking my train lines.
He leaned across the table from me, pounded his fist on this heavy oak table, and said, “Jeff Tumlin, you are the single greatest threat to the American autonomous vehicle industry.”
LOL. It should be noted that Cruise’s robotaxis did exactly what Tumlin predicted, blocked emergency service vehicles, and that Vogt himself had to resign after one of his company’s cars dragged a pedestrian and he, according to an internal GM report, tried to conceal data about the incident from government regulators.
Mercedes-Benz Electric Cars Drop 22% In 2024
Mercedes is a great company and, of all the German automakers, the one I think is best suited to thrive in the coming ‘Darwinian Period’ of the auto industry. No one builds a better S-Class than Mercedes, and there are incredible vehicles up and down the lineup.
The EQ-line of electric cars, though? It didn’t work. Wave the flag. Let’s just call it what it is.
I kinda respect Daimler for taking a huge swing with the EQS, EQE, and the SUV versions of those cars. They were expensive, tech-forward, with giant screens and all sorts of useful features (the dramatic rear-wheel-steer makes these fun to drive). It was a very Mercedes approach and, a few years earlier, it might have worked. In my last job I did a lot of work with Mercedes and had a chance to explore these cars up close and to understand all the thought that Mercedes put into the EQ vehicles. There was no half-assing here.
What Mercedes missed was what most people missed. For all the cool features, people want range. The killer app of any electric car is the ability of that car to drive very far over long distances and to do so at a decent price. What all those features were covering up was that, even with giant battery packs (115-118 kWh), the Benzes weren’t particularly efficient.
No one complains when an E63 AMG Wagon uses a lot of fuel, because that’s the point, right? That logic doesn’t apply to electric cars. It especially doesn’t apply in China, where there are at least 112 different brands selling electric cars.
Mercedes put out its full year numbers today and they’re not great, not terrible. Overall, the company lost 4% of sales year-over-year, even with a stronger fourth quarter. If you look at the total Mercedes-Benz Group, electric cars dropped 22%. If you take out everything except for the Mercedes-Benz brand, the numbers are slightly worse at a 23% year-over-year decline. Sales in the company’s biggest market, China, were down 7%. Sales were up 9% in the United States, so that’s something. Here’s what Ola Källenius, head of Mercedes, had to say:
“In 2024, Mercedes-Benz once again demonstrated the power of our brand and the depth of our broad product offering. This culminated in strong sales of our Top-End and Core vehicles in the fourth quarter. We continue to consistently strengthen our portfolio with the biggest product offensive in our company’s history starting this year with the all-new CLA.”
Mercedes can get this right, but it’ll take a do-over and at least the company seems to recognize this.
Cupra Is Killing It
Remember when I wrote about how Volkswagen was replacing itself In America with the Scout brand? That’s probably even more true with VW’s sub-brand Cupra, which has a super hot lineup of affordable and fast EVs, hybrids, and regular cars.
Both SEAT and Cupra (Cupra is a sub-brand of SEAT, so it’s a sub-sub-brand), had big years. From the company’s press release:
SEAT S.A. achieved sales growth of 7.5% in 2024, despite the challenging environment affecting the global automotive industry. The continued success of the SEAT and CUPRA brands allowed the company to deliver a total of 558,100 cars (2023: 519,200).
CUPRA continued breaking records and reached 248,100 cars to deliver a 7.5% increase compared to 2023 (230,700). The SEAT brand also maintained its positive trend and deliveries grew by 7.5%, reaching 310,000 vehicles (2023: 288,400). In a declining electric vehicle market, SEAT S.A. defied the trend by achieving growth in sales of electrified vehicles with 49,400 plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) and 48,000 electric vehicles (BEVs), increases of 14.0% and 5.9%, respectively.
Cupra is coming to the United States and, if you ask me, it can’t come quickly enough.
The Alpine A290 Is The European Car Of The Year
I don’t give a ton of truck to Car Of The Year awards, mostly because they seem designed to grab automaker money and keep mediocre hanger-on journalists still in the business. One day I will be a hanger-on journalist so I guess I should at least give an F-150 and join one of these organizations.
Gotta hand it to the European Car of the Year folks, though, because the Alpine A290 is the car I’m most excited about in Europe right now. I haven’t driven it and, yet, I know for sure that this is the right choice. It’s just one of those things. You can read all about it right here, but at just under 3,300 pounds and with 215 electric horsepower on tap it’s right in the hot hatch crosshairs for me.
Here’s what ECOTY said:
Europe has elected its new king. The Renault 5 (along with the Alpine A290) has become the Car Of The Year 2025. In a ceremony held at the start of the Brussels International Motor Show (which will return to the stage after the 2023 edition) and in a Eurovision style, the 60 members of the jury of The Car Of The Year award have issued their verdict choosing the best car in the automotive market in Europe.
The Renault 5 was crowned best car of the year 2025, beating in the final six other contenders Alfa Romeo Junior, Citroën C3-ëC3, Cupra Terramar, Dacia Duster, Hyundai Inster and Kia EV3. This year’s edition was more competitive than ever, as all the finalist models had electrified features, most of them 100% electric.
Oh, yeah, the Renault 5 also won because it’s kinda the same car. I’ll take either.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Since we’re talking about Europeans, please enjoy Peter, Bjorn, and John’s “Objects of my Affection.” It’s extremely Swedish and is the most Jens Lenkman song that has ever existed, even if it was neither written nor performed by Jens Lenkman:
And the question is, was I more alive then than I am now?
I happily have to disagree, I laugh more often now
I cry more often now, I am more me
The Big Question:
Are robotaxis, which are probably safer than regular drivers already, net positives for society?
Silicon Valley trying to reinvent the bus.
The core issue with robotaxis and by extension all cars is geometry. They simply don’t fit in cities. You cannot build enough road capacity to service everyone who would want to drive (for free) into a city and have any city left. (And boring a few tunnels is no fix either.) Uber was supposed to help this by lowering car ownership, a proxy for vehicle miles. Instead, it increased vehicle miles, largely because of people driving to pick people up (a deadhead trip with no mobility). Robotaxis will have the same problem in that dynamic. However if robotaxis are a premium transit option for date night in a varied fleet of autonomous vans, buses, trains plus great bike infrastructure, it just might fit into a city.
I say robotaxis are not -yet- a net positive, but I do not live anywhere they operate so I have no firsthand evidence to support my contention.
Further, I would argue that the only real potentially positive effective of robotaxis is in eliminating having to deal with a human driver of unknown skill, honesty, sanity, criminality, sobriety or temperament. Otherwise, it’s just another conveyance taking you from A to B on the same streets in the same traffic as any other taxi, bus or personal car and not doing a better job of it.
The best to be hoped for in terms of performance is that they will be the equal to the best human operated cabs and no worse or dangerous than the average human cab experience. That’s a lot of investment for very little transportation gain, if any. Maybe that changes when a majority of cars operating in cities are automated, but we’re a long way from that, now, and will probably never have a driving environment completely free of human operators.
The answer is jet packs and moving sidewalks.Those would be dollars well spent!.
You lump in busses with all the rest but it has been proven that busses reduce traffic congestion.
More mass transit improves speed of movement in cities and access for everyone
More robotaxis just means more taxis clogging the roads
I agree with your points and I only meant to mention buses within the context of their having to operate in the same traffic as everything else, so subject to the same limitations as any other car. Which, I probably didn’t make clear.
Robo taxis are just plain dumb. Remote control taxis (and trucks) would be much better.
I take a taxi maybe twice a year. Public transit even less. So, it’s not really a factor either way in my society.
Outside of the lens of maybe residents of the 10 biggest cities in the US I’m guessing it has little to no impact on society writ large either way (in any material sense anyway).
I do see a benefit to robotaxis as they pertain to the disabled and elderly. At some point all of us will need to give up those keys. This gives this population an extra option. I realize that there’s public options available like access-a-ride but this is not an option in suburban or rural areas. We all hope to live independently with dignity in our golden years and maybe this helps keep us out of an assisted living home a couple more years.
please don’t do that
Why? Do you advocate speeding?
Because driving fast is fun and there are places you can do it pretty safely. A race track. A wide open road. Come on.
Sure, right up till its not:
https://www.ksl.com/article/31670598/porsche-driver-dies-in-high-speed-nevada-race
Even on a wide open road speeding is more dangerous. There are potholes, road debris, animals, blind corners and sometimes other drivers you don’t see till its too late..
Removing one tool we can use in a situation to avoid accidents from the tool chest is a bad idea for everyone.
No worries, All such proposed mandates include temporary governor defeats.
Of course that will be automatically issue a citation. Once the emergency is over you’ll have the opportunity to explain to the court why your speeding was justified and why don’t deserve that citation and a hefty insurance hike. As part of the citation all camera and sensor feed will be entered into evidence for your use.
I don’t wanna be all “muh freedoms” here, but does your second paragraph, and the sheer volume of data collection it entails, not strike you as massive regulatory overreach?
Sure, the privacy ship may have sailed, but tracking *more* of everyone’s every move is not the answer. “If you’re not doing anything wrong, you’ve got nothing to fear” has historically been an effective tool of oppression.
No. You are on a public road with clearly posted guidelines. If you violate those guidelines you should be held accountable according to the law. Same if you run a red light, blow through a stop sign, fail to yield to an emergency vehicle with its lights on, blow smoke out the tailpipe, etc.
How that is managed is up to the state. If a state decides its too much trouble to prosecute every single case drivers might get a couple of freebees a month. Or the speeding has to be especially egregious, like 20 over, speeding for more than 15 minutes, speeding with weaving, or speeding in a school zone when there are kids around. Such a system need not be for the very occasional, very mild speeder, only for the chronic and most dangerous ones if the state decides it to be so. Or the local courts might just make it a PITA to fill out a stack of forms online. Just the hassle of having to do that over and over again may be enough to get people to slow down.
As to the “sheer volume of data” that data is already collected by modern cars. This would simply earmark it as relevant to the upcoming case, prevent it from being deleted or modified and maybe transmit a copy to the state’s server.
“If you’re not doing anything wrong, you’ve got nothing to fear” has historically been an effective tool of oppression.
That’s no excuse to give everyone a pass for everything though.
Maybe this is the fedora-tipping atheist in me, or the fact that I’ve yet to grow out of my high school anti-authoritarian phase, but if you (not you, Cheap Bastard, the impersonal you) need stricter-than-existing regulations to keep you from driving in a reckless and unsafe manner, then you’re still an asshole, just one who’s scared of punishment.
And for that reason, I’ll just flip the slippery slope fallacy (since maintaining the status quo hardly tantamount to “giving everyone a pass”) of
>That’s no excuse to give everyone a pass for everything
right back: Some folks being tools is no excuse to over-regulate everything 🙂 We don’t have to choose between a Big Brother surveillance state and total anarchy.
Jokes aside, I’m with you – if I make the conscious choice to speed and violate the law, and I get in trouble for it, so be it; them’s the shakes. My issue is more on the side of the data being collected being stored in places (e.g., government servers) other than what I consented to by buying the vehicle in the first place, whose security I have no control over, and potentially being used for purposes other than – again – what I consented to when I bought the vehicle, by an authority that can make my life a lot worse if it so desires.
Ultimately, there’s a psychological effect too. Instead of framing this as “I’ll speed if I’m not being watched and not speed if I am,” I see it as more of a “I’ll drive at roughly the same speed no matter what, but under one regime, because I want to, and under another, because someone else wants me to.” And that, my friend, just feels icky, not gonna lie.
Lastly, on a very tangentially related point, I think speed governors would have the side effect of not letting speed limits evolve as they currently do – if the majority of drivers go a certain speed on a certain road, chances are the speed limit there will be revised (up or down) to reflect what is safe in real-world terms. This both makes traffic more efficient in the long run and incentivizes people to maintain higher situational awareness while driving.
P.S. I’m utterly enjoying this back-and-forth. I love the Autopian commentariat and its diversity of opinions.
*looks at your user name* you drive a chevy spark could you even speed in one of those? Haha I kid I kid
I should probably change what I said above to “I’ll drive at roughly the same speed no matter what, because my car can’t go any faster” 🙂
The world could use more slow-car-fast and I will die on this hill.
I like when I am driving my Cummins (which tops out at like 85-90mph on flat roads) and I am at a light and I get up to 55-60mph faster then people with a car that would have enough time after finishing a quarter mile race to run and get a coffee and be back before I finish haha.
need stricter-than-existing regulations to keep you from driving in a reckless and unsafe manner, then you’re still an asshole, just one who’s scared of punishment.
Definitely not me. I tend to drive 5-10 under in the right lane whenever possible. In all my decades of driving I have never had a speeding ticket. Nor a ticket for being too slow.
Some folks being tools is no excuse to over-regulate everything
And again the degree to which this is implemented is variable. Such a system can easily be set up to punish only the most egregious offenders and that punishment can range from the minor annoyance of filling out a form online to whatever maximum penalty the law permits.
My issue is more on the side of the data being collected being stored in places (e.g., government servers) other than what I consented to by buying the vehicle in the first place, whose security I have no control over, and potentially being used for purposes other than – again – what I consented to when I bought the vehicle, by an authority that can make my life a lot worse if it so desires.
Yeah, about that:
https://nsa.gov1.info/utah-data-center/
Pretty sure you didn’t consent to any of this either.
“I’ll drive at roughly the same speed no matter what, but under one regime, because I want to, and under another, because someone else wants me to.”
The problem with that is you are driving on a public road, with other drivers all of whom might think very differently from you and who may have very different capabilities than you. You’ll be sharing the road with coked out drivers, drunks, vaping flat brims, aggressive dudebros in brodozers, Buick driving geriatrics, rusted out hoopties, inexperienced teens and folks from other countries with VERY different ideas of what a good driver is and for whom the laws are unfamilar. That is the point of traffic laws, to keep the playing field as level as possible.
Lastly, on a very tangentially related point, I think speed governors would have the side effect of not letting speed limits evolve as they currently do – if the majority of drivers go a certain speed on a certain road, chances are the speed limit there will be revised (up or down) to reflect what is safe in real-world terms. This both makes traffic more efficient in the long run and incentivizes people to maintain higher situational awareness while driving.
To listen to the speeders EVERYONE already speeds and speed limits just stay the same anyway. How’s that evolution working out now?
P.S. I’m utterly enjoying this back-and-forth. I love the Autopian commentariat and its diversity of opinions.
As do I. That’s part of what keeps me here.
Is there a world where you trust police, courts, local jurisdictions, insurance companies, or the general bureaucracy enough to put yourself in that situation? That is some serious 1984-style dystopia.
You prefer the chaos of a world where people ignore traffic laws with no repercussions?
Surely there must be an alternative to launching SkyNet to keep us unruly humans in line?
It’s not an all or nothing. There ARE many shades of gray between the black and the white.
I advocate speeding.
Why?
It’s fun.
So keep it on the track.
Stupid gubmint can’t tell me wut to do
Officer Friendly will be happy to set you up an appointment with Judge Hardcase to discuss the matter.
Having lived in SF for 20 years and not owned or driven a car for the last 14 years I lived there – which happened to coincide with the beginnings of Uber – I have thoughts:
San Francisco is a terrible place to own a car. Even if you have a garage space, it’s a nightmare to drive anywhere due to parking: You will get parking tickets despite your best efforts and you will pay through the nose to park in a pay lot. You will circle the block a few times to find parking in desirable neighborhoods – if you ever do (More than once I’ve given up and returned home) And your bumpers will be used as parking guides by the people parking ahead/behind you. Car ownership (or renting a car, if you’re visiting) just isn’t worth it!
San Franciscans have two things in common: We are always curious about how much you’re paying for rent, and we love to gripe about Muni and BART. It’s our pastime, because there’s no point in talking about the weather unless something is falling out of the sky. However, mass-transit ridership is huge – despite trains and busses that do not run on any sort of conceivable schedule. The same bus that takes you and your boss and their assistant to your office takes your kids to school and your maid/janitor to your home.
That said – There are generally at least two bus or train lines within three blocks of anywhere in the City – and almost all coverage on Downtown. Where I lived, I had four bus lines within two blocks of my building – and I came to know my neighbors because I’d see them at the bus stop every morning and evening.
But there are always those days where you’re running late, something is falling out of the sky, and/or four busses have rolled right past you without stopping because they’re already full. This used to elicit us waiving down a taxi – which meant we had to have cash and be able to put up with a collapsed right rear seat, stranger smells than on Muni, and a suicidal driver.
This is where Uber was a lovely thing – because it was started as a way to get those guys in their Carey Cars (Usually Lincoln Towncars) who would idle behind BofA, Wells Fargo, Schwab, Levis, etc all day waiting for their Presidents and CEOs out into the streets and servicing the public. What a joy it was tapping your phone, having a Black Town Car show up, and being whisked across town with your suitably impressed date home for a nightcap, etc….
But then we got Lyft, with their pink mustaches and “High-Fives”, Uber X/Pop/Pool – and the streets became crowded with underemployed people who couldn’t afford a taxi medallion and were even more suicidal in traffic. Then the Taxi companies realized that they needed an app too, and a way to pay without using cash…
This was also around the time when certain local employers, such as Levis, Visa and Twitter, began running their own mini-busses for their employee’s use…
The streets became cluttered with randos stopping in the middle of a 3 lane street to pick someone up – this was not good.
Even worse – you’d be hitting the button after a big event – everyone else would too – and your instant $17 car ride would suddenly become $58 with a 25 minute wait. This was not the Utopia we were promised!!
If only there were a way to get home that was cheap, semi-reliable, and could handle crowds….
….oh, wait – there’s the Bus!
But it doesn’t run this late at night
I guess we’re walking home…
Robotaxis may solve some of this – for late night/off hours service where no driver wants to be out and about – but those are limited case scenarios.
You want to make big city transit work?
Eliminate fares & pay for the systems with the city taxes we pay, which will then make the ridership greater and simpller and more timely because we won’t be delayed by someone who doesn’t have correct change or arguing about whether their little paper transfer is expired or not.
And make those bus & train lines run till midnight on weekdays & holidays and 2am on weekends.
And run extra trains and busses when there’s a big event such as NYE, Bay to Breakers, Pride or a Giants game.
As far as the outer urban areas – I think we need to have busses and trains go into central areas where folks can catch the bus/train and get into employment centers – Downtown, office parks, etc. Again, fare-free to encourage ridership.
That said – Suburban sprawl and rural areas are just not made for mass transit – nor for taxis, ubers and driverless cars – because you’re going to be out there in Genericaland waiting forever if that’s your plan….
The last paragraph is also why the inexplicably demonized “15-minute cities” need to be absolutely embraced, especially around suburbs. The entire urban planning concept is to just zone stuff so everything you need is within a 15 minute walk.
I am lucky enough to live in a walkable neighborhood now, and the ability to keep the car at home when I need to do simple tasks like get groceries or go to work is brilliant. I still love my car, love driving it, and need it for a lot of stuff. But being able to leave it at home sometimes is brilliant for me, and brilliant for anyone else who has to share the road since there’s one less car.
But, somehow, people have managed to turn it into this controversial thing and make up a ton of lies about the idea, and they’re really shooting themselves in the balls as a result. Making it so there are fewer times where you have to drive makes the times when you do drive that much more enjoyable.
The funny thing about the 15-minute city nonsense is that people love to vacation in 15-minute cities where they can walk everywhere and see and enjoy stuff. Yet living in one is somehow evil government control.
A cruise ship is just a 15-minute-city for people from Cedar Rapids.
I am one of those people if visiting a city it is nice to be able to walk to different things like museums, parks and restaurants but I would not want to live in a place like that. I like being further away from things and having personal space for my home. Don’t have to worry about people seeing everything I am doing while at home, people making noise complaints or others being super noisy, not having to worry about giant traffic jams, can own as many vehicles as I would like and can work on them where ever on my property (lives in suburbs before and someone complained to the city when I had to swap a failed rear differential out) I am sure I could go on haha.
So tldr I am one that would not like it if everything was converted 15 minute city as sure it is nice for me to visit but not where I would like to stay.
I’m gonna counter that with this: Small farming communities. Grew up by one, if you lived in town there was a small grocery store, a small gas station/hardware store, a few other amenities and so on, and nothing was really more than a 15 minute walk away. And if you didn’t live in town it was still pretty easy to get everything in one or two stops. It’s definitely possible to have space and convenience.
Honestly, I think it’s only the suburbs that don’t get it. They’re the places where you really can’t get anything you need in a convenient way.
If I am just looking at this through a black and white lense. I think the point of a 15 minute city is that you can walk, bike or public transit anywhere in 15mins? With smaller rural towns you would have to drive into town to make it there efficiently vs walk/biking/public transit. I cannot see smaller towns having the money to invest into public transit. Where I currently live it is a weird mix of rural and suburbs (in NWI about 50-55 miles from Chicago) but I am only 10-15mins driving from any stores or restaurants I would go to. Things I couldn’t see working with the more “rural” life style if there was no more personal vehicles like going to the hardware store to get supplies for a project (like building a duck pen), feed for horses/cattle, home renovations and so on. Like yes sure this stuff could be delivered but now you need infrastructure in place for that.
Tldr. This issue is a big grey area. I just don’t see public transit or autonomous vehicles being the be all end all and it should be some sort of mix especially in the US much different for small European countries haha.
Basically, you can get to everything you need in a 15 minute walk or bike ride. It’s not about eliminating cars entirely – though naturally some places have terrible parking because of the way development worked out – but just having everything available in a pretty close distance so you don’t necessarily have to drive to live your life day-to-day.
Where I grew up, if you’re on a farm you’re driving into town, of course. But if you lived in town, the way that the town was planned it kind of all radiated out from the center. The main street had the co-op grocery store, the bank, the pharmacy, used to have a hardware store – though that moved to the edge of town – and so on. It had basically everything you need. And really that’s all a 15 minute city is, just a place designed so you don’t actually have to drive that much – though you can if you want to.
Most of the towns around where I grew up were effectively 15 minute cities already, though I know of one that used to be – but isn’t anymore – because all the grocery stores moved to the edge of town.
I think a lot of people do misunderstand what a 15 minute city is – and I feel like it’s really being used to suggest that you’re not allowed to drive there, or it’s a conspiracy to eliminate private car ownership. But really it’s just about making sure convenience is part of city (or town, or village) planning. Most people aren’t saying that we need to eliminate private car ownership – there are fringe weirdos, of course, but aren’t there always? Instead they’re saying that making it possible to live without a car, or handle a bunch of day-to-day needs without a car, should be part of city planning.
Many people equate “We need 15 minute cities” to “We need to make everyone live in a dense urban environment”. Sometimes this is exactly the intent and the kneejerk reaction is from people who appreciate calm, nature, and find randomly selected people annoying.
If I were going to live in a city, I would want it to be a 15 minute city design. I have chosen not to live in a city and I would like to keep it that way.
I think that’s totally the right approach. But also, I said this elsewhere, a lot of farming communities are effectively 15 minute cities for the people who live in town. You’re still driving in from a farm, of course, but you can also park and get everything you need in one stop.
Let me preface my takes on robotaxis with the following:
You will have to pry the wheel from my cold, dead hands. I am firmly in favor of personal vehicle ownership.I am vehemently in favor of public transport – along with new affordable housing, I consider it one of the pillars of good urban development. More selfishly, it also makes for more fun driving and less sitting in traffic, by giving commuters, many of whom hate driving, an alternative.I recognize that, much like the vast majority of tech startups, all robotaxi companies are doing is undercut the competition until the competition disappears, then provide essentially the same or worse service.I am generally against getting rid of jobs via automation – both because AI is half-baked and will be for the foreseeable future (I work in tech) and because, under capitalism, it is not realistic to expect people in those jobs to “get with the times” and “get better jobs”. Realistically, this is just going to make the poor poorer. This is not gig economy apologia – fuck that shit with a cactus too.
All of the above should make me opposed to robotaxis in both theory and practice. However:
The idea that robotaxis are going to lead to always-available autonomous transportation that is going to eliminate personal vehicle ownership is, simply put, garbage. It’s the same tired pitch startups have been slinging to investors for decades. It’s not going to happen.People, and that includes those other than the ultra-wealthy, will have various reasons to not take public transport, even if it is greatly improved in terms of coverage, efficiency, reliability/punctuality, and safety. Prior car-centric (sub)urban planning means some communities cannot reasonably get access to public transit. The elderly and disabled may need door-to-door transportation. The immunocompromised may prefer private transportation. Sometimes my schedule just isn’t flexible enough to work with a train timetable. (etc.) Cars for hire – i.e., taxis, ride shares, or robotaxis – are here to stay in some capacity.Robotaxi development does not need to be government-subsidized. Use taxpayer money to fund public transit, let private businesses develop autonomous vehicles on their own dime.We can revisit this when we get to the enshittification point in the robotaxi life cycle. For now, I like being able to adjust the temperature, music, mood lighting, and whatnot – things you cannot do in an Uber. I also love not having to tip (rideshare expectations having gone from no tip, to symbolic tip, to 15%, to 20+% for standard service) because Uber won’t pay their drivers a living bloody wage. I understand this is flirting with “AI is a better worker than you because it doesn’t need to eat and sleep”, but it is strictly better for the fiscally-conscious consumer.
No one is arguing (at least not in good faith) that robotaxis are meant to bring about a social benefit. They are being rolled out with the express purpose of making their creators money, as is any product or service these days. However, evaluated on their merits, my current belief is that they outperform the direct alternative that they are competing with (taxis/rideshares).
Rant over.
Fucking HELL, why does my formatting show up when I post and then disappear when I refresh the page? Let me try to edit this back into a bulleted list, and in the meantime, sorry for the wall of text.
…aaaaaand the edit timer got me 🙂 Rats.
Fucking HELL, why does my formatting show up when I post and then disappear when I refresh the page?
You’re the one who works in tech; you tell us.
😉
You got me there 😀 Alas, I’m afraid computational chemistry skills do not translate well to web development (unless we’re talking spider proteins…)
Good stuff that spider silk.
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2012/jan/23/golden-silk-cape-spiders-in-pictures
I also love not having to tip (rideshare expectations having gone from no tip, to symbolic tip, to 15%, to 20+% for standard service) because Uber won’t pay their drivers a living bloody wage.
Yet another reason tipping culture must DIE!!
No, they were never meant to be social benefit. Robotaxis and by extension autonomous single passenger vehicles are about removing labor and turning the private ownership of said vehicle into a service.
It’s obliviously not about increasing efficiency. If one wanted to address efficiency of single cars, the driver would be the last place you would start. We’re put in numerous controls on road that frankly work pretty well. And even though the road feels like every idiot just got their driver’s license yesterday. Driver error is fairly limited on it’s effect on time. Example: Think how often a person speeds by you, only for you to catch up a mile or two later.
Really if we cared about efficiency, or safety, or cleanliness, or the environment. These are all solved problems. Transport really isn’t some deep space mystery. We have functional examples all over this planet. We’re just choosing not to do like any of those, as they like cost money and sometimes poor people benefit from it. Multi-modal models have been proven time and time again to work.
“We’re playing those mind games together”
It was unexpectedly cool they played “Imagine” at President Carter’s eulogy.
This is what drives me nuts about so much of the tech industry. Shouting that they are solving problems with tech that are actually caused by corruption and bureacracy. Y’all aren’t solving the traffic problem with robot taxis. You’re just pretending the other (extremely well known and well studied!!) solutions don’t exist, because there’s no way for you to get rich off of them.
I don’t think robotaxis are a positive even if they are safer, especially in cities. I do suspect they could do better in suburban areas. The main reason is congestion. Early on robotaxis claimed they would alleviate congestion but that premise always seemed shaky at best to me, there is still the same number of people trying to get to the same places as with taxis or personal vehicles. To add to this robotaxis would also spend some amount of time driving completely empty to go to pickup locations. My best assumption is that they would increase congestion even assuming they work perfectly. This would be less of a concern where traffic is not as heavy and is currently under served by taxis or ridesharing which would mean outside of city centers. Ultimately I think the ideal scenario is to drive personal vehicles and to an extent taxis outside of city centers. Big clear lanes for mass transit like busses or trams and reclaimed walking space for foot traffic. Every time I drive in a city center is just stressful, and all so I can park at best several blocks away from where I’m actually going so I still need to walk or take some other mode of transport.
The only possible way I ever saw FSD or robotaxis reducing congestion — and this goes way back to C&D articles in the 90s — is to reduce the space between them through inter-vehicle communications. I still think this is the case, but I almost never see it discussed. Imagine an HOV lane with 50 cars in a row, all 1 length apart, communicating seamlessly with one another in a foolproof system. It’s a tall order, but to me the traffic issue was always two main things: Too few people per vehicle; and too much space between vehicles (especially those rush hour compression waves with every stop and start)
Makes sense. And reduced reaction time going from stopped to moving at a traffic light – which is getting noticeably worse thanks to driver distraction/cell phones. Also, if there is a way to get excess empty robocabs quickly off city streets when demand drops that would help too.
Well that would depend if the cost of parking them is less than the cost of just having them endlessly circle to block, and if it’s not then welcome to hell I guess.
I’ve often thought that AVs won’t be able to truly hit the mainstream until V2V and V2I communication is standardized and implemented at a high rate. Those technologies will allow for cars to be closer together, as well as be able to all start at the same time when a light turns green, along with lots of other benefits.
Robotaxis are literally made because rich dickbags can avoid the public transit that is actually needed, or in the case of Mr. Krabs, a literal ploy to keep public transit from being funded in favor of his remote controlled toys that get him money.
TL;DR on Waymo is that San Francisco has introduced a “You don’t have to watch a guy taking a dump on a city bus” tax.
Man, the taxes there are insane.
I mentioned this in response to Torch’s post yesterday about the Waymo that went around in a circle, but SFGate and the Chron said that the blind are very positive on Waymo, among other things because they allow guide dogs to ride.
Can’t find the Gate article, and the Chron’s is behind a paywall
Why some Bay Area blind people say Waymos are changing their lives
I totally buy that and it’s a great use case for Waymo.
The whole thing represents a case in a notorious tough area of economics called partial equilibrium analysis. Change one thing within a system, and try to understand how it effects everything else. It’s fascinating.
The rideshare revolution offered a similar case study. Economists are still sorting it all out, but initial data for instance show that it increased congestion in cities as demand for being driven around in a car both took riders away from mass transit AND provided an incentive for more cars to enter the city.
The true robotaxi is robust public transit, and always will be.
“Robotaxis” as they currently exist are not autonomous. They are supported by an army of humans who monitor and control them remotely. Yes, they have some pretty impressive technology, but it isn’t even close to “autonomous”.
That said, I’m not anti-robotaxi. I believe they can serve a purpose, especially for vulnerable people who fear (rightly or wrongly) that they are getting into an Uber or taxi with a driver who can’t be trusted. I don’t see these as a concurrent option with what we currently have, but as a replacement. Otherwise they just add to congestion.
Don’t kid yourself. There are plans for super wealthy cities to be built from scratch. The unsolvable problem is that they can’t figure out how to have such a place and not have anyone else. Who will brew their coffee, make their tacos, and mow the lawn?
Robotaxis are created to help alleviate part of the obstacle. Of course, IMHO this is just a pipe dream unless they can get unmanned sewer departments.
Deport all the robotaxis to Mexico and change their name to Muchomás?
Not unlike the Audi piece the other day, BMW seemed to do best of the 3, and in particular with EVs. Their US EV sales were up 12% in 2024. (sorry if that was already in another TMD and I skimmed past it!)
Could be early mover advantage since BMW seemed to dabble with electrification sooner or more prominently anyway. The products seem to be better, I haven’t followed them that closely though. Most of the i models could pass for an ICE version which may say more about regular BMW styling, but then enough’s been said about the EQ line styling too. Also probably helps that BMW started on the lower end of the price scale, i4/i5 seem to start lower than most of the MB models save the EQB which seems like a hard sell for its size and price.
I would think the only way autonomous cars are positive is if it decreases the amount of car ownership but as you stated I would rather all this money just be put into developing public transport.
Robotaxi, I could see a net positive if they linked up to another. However, they aren’t there yet, so currently it’s net zero.
I’m not sure on robotaxis as much as just autonomous personal vehicles, and work on public transit as they can.
Like maybe families or employers could go in on autonomous personal vehicles, and then they can guarantee people can get to and from work as needed, or bring the kids home from school while the parents are still at work.
For taxis the whole sketchy thing seems to have taken off with Uber, registered cabs seemed a lot safer than random stranger showing up and you just get in, I’ve never taken an uber or lyft and hope to never do as it sidestepped most regulation there was for cab companies.
So go back to regular cab drivers, sell autonomous cars like regular cars and get some more staffing on the subways.
On robotaxi, imagine your and everyone elses’ car just roaming the streets waiting for you. People will want their own car and not a shared car. It would make traffic way worse.
This may be the single best argument in favor of robotaxis that I’ve ever seen.
Or for owning your own car? Haha
I don’t have to talk to humans on trains and light rail, either.
I’m ready to be unpopular today, so here goes:
If we are going to live in a world where *it is even conceivable* that someone can be burned alive on a subway car while cops look the other way, then people with choices are going to vote against mass transit funding, are not going to ride mass transit themselves, and are going to support further development of alternatives where that sort of risk doesn’t exist. Such as robotaxis.
Arguably, whatever facts or statistics about safety you can find are less than meaningless compared to the feeling of control. You can argue against human nature all you want, but that won’t change people’s votes or actions.
If you don’t want a future of robotaxis, change the present state of subways.
I live in a town where subways aren’t an option and the surface trains and buses we have are slightly better than terrible. I give them that small bump simply because there a few cases where someone lives at Point A and needs to regularly travel to Point B and just happens to have a transit station at both of those points. For the rest of us it’s simply unusable. I’m not yet impressed with the current state of “autonomous” vehicles but if those ever actually deliver as promised they’ll probably be the only alternative to personal car ownership in this city.
I didn’t even know about that been staying away from media of that sorts lately sick of all the depressing stuff like that. But yeah stuff like that and just hearing about the crazies out there is a reason why I would not want to rely on others for my own transport, care and safety. I normally avoid flying anywhere and will just drive even if it takes way longer and if I am going into Chicago I’ll just drive myself and if it is for a long event (concert, play etc) normally park at my dad’s and see if he can drop and pick me up if it isn’t to much of an inconvenience for him.
I don’t think this is as unpopular an opinion as you might think, but as we’ve discussed before, a public place is a public place. By the same measure, you shouldn’t go to a public park, a public school, or any other place where a bad thing could happen that’s outside of your control. I lived in NYC and took the subway all the time, including with a kid (and will probably take the subway tomorrow), and rarely had any incidents. I’ve been in much scarier situations on the road and in places where the antagonist had a heavy car/truck to crash into me.
That being said, we should try to vastly improve public transit and public safety and NYC’s current Mayor seems ill-equipped to do either.
I know that The Atlantic isn’t exactly everyone’s cup of tea. But this new article The Anti-Social Century – The Atlantic– really does an admirable job in speaking to the death of the third space phenomenon.
Also, maybe Eric Adams can take inspiration from the Ankara Metro next time he’s there.
I mean, fair to an extent, but public schools with locked doors aren’t really open to the public, and being outside in a park is a little different from being trapped in a small subway car, bus, or airplane.
I think it’s legitimate to say that some small number of people by their behavior have forfeited the right to be amongst the public, that until quite recently the trend in cities was to ignore that opinion and loudly shout down the people saying it, and that if we as a society committed to combatting disorder and petty crime, public transit (among many other things) would become more popular.
With respect, I don’t think your comparison to other public places holds water. For one thing, the rich absolutely do use alternatives to public parks and public schools, sometimes even for safety reasons! Also, there are some things that are valuable because they’re public even if they’re less safe. That is, when you have choices you get to weigh the pros and the cons and make a decision.
I know it’s anecdotal but the last public freakout I experienced was in a CVS pharmacy, guy standing in the entrance screaming, scared for my family because we couldn’t leave. I take public transit a few times a month and have seen a few freakouts over the years there too. I don’t think public transit is any worse than other public places but YMMV.
I agree with you and it is one of the primary reasons that visiting large cities in this country is something I avoid. I prefer the pace of rural life and enjoy having fresh air and a view that isn’t a concrete jungle.