Washing machines were... rather a big deal? Caro's first LBJ tome has like 50 pages on electrification in Texas and dwells ad nauseam on how washing machines revolutionised the lives of women more than any other invention. The end of drudgery etc.
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You’re a bit making Giles’s point for him. It revolutionised the lives of getting on for half the population, and liberated them from a day or more’s work a week that was back-breaking. No matter how neat some people think robotaxis are, they’re not going to do that. Particularly not in Europe.
sep 8, 2025, 6:17 am • 2 0 • view
The ingenuity, the investment, the tech - all of that would in most towns and cities in Europe be vastly better expended on mass public transport (including, of course, driverless forms).
sep 8, 2025, 6:19 am • 1 0 • view
Being able to unlink "stuff moving" from "humans moving it" will be huge. Who needs petrol/charging stations if your car goes to charge itself up at 3am? Who needs parking spaces in cities? It's really not about just replacing a few thousand cabs for hire - that's just the unimaginative 1st use-case
sep 8, 2025, 8:39 am • 1 0 • view
It’s just another form of moving individual humans in individual vehicles on their individual journeys in - in Europe - already crowded and growing cities where space is short. It’s unsustainable and risks making town and city life even more unpleasant and dangerous.
sep 8, 2025, 8:53 am • 1 0 • view
I can readily imagine, on the other hand, driverless rural-to-urban and inter-city multi-occupant solutions being pretty interesting.
sep 8, 2025, 8:53 am • 0 0 • view
Yes, yes it does.
sep 7, 2025, 9:34 pm • 0 0 • view
I agree.
sep 8, 2025, 5:35 am • 0 0 • view