Glenn Andert’s blog

In the old self-drive system, you owned the car. You paid the $45,000 for it. You insured it. You maintained it. You cleaned it. You paid to park it. 

In the pod system, pods are owned and operated by a personal rapid transit company. There are enough of them to make for a competitive and efficient operating environment. You have no up-front capital costs, no maintenance expenses, etc. You simply pay by the passenger-mile, more during high volume times.

When you bought that $45,000 SUV, it was all yours, including the entire down payment. Plus the full loan payment, including interest. The pod is far less expensive than your SUV. Plus we need a lot fewer of them. Instead of about 1 car per person, we need about 1 pod per 6 people. So, in effect, the cost of a pod is shared by the many people that share its use. That brings the effective retail price down to a few thousand dollars, on a per-person basis.

When the transit company buys a new pod, it clearly gets a better deal than you do – it buys them in lots of thousands, after all. The wholesale mass quantity price is considerably less than the retail price.

What are you going to do with that extra $40,000? Hey – send your kids to college so there is somebody around to maintain these things!

It should be obvious that propelling a small lightweight single-person pod will require far less fuel than that SUV you used to drive.

It is way cheaper for the transit company to maintain a fleet of pods than it is for you to maintain your one or two cars. There are relatively few models of pods, in comparison to the old self-drive system where there were literally thousands of models to be maintained. The transit company can benefit from modern factory methods  that keep the pods in peak operating condition, in comparison to the typical car owner that only fixes it when it fails the smog test.

What did you pay for insurance on that $45,000 self-drive car? Maybe $1,500 a year? You’re not crashing pods – so no collision premium. And because you’re not crashing into things, there’s no liability premium. And there’s no point in anybody stealing pods. That private automobile insurance is a thing of the past.

If you commute into the city, you are painfully aware of the cost of parking your car. You don’t park your pod – it’s busy serving somebody else when it’s not serving you. So that cost is now zero.

What about depreciation? A self-drive car that is maintained and operated as designed will run for many hundreds of thousands of miles. And for a lot of commuter cars, replacing the engine after a few hundred thousand miles is about 1/10th the cost of buying a new car. Of course, that’s generally not what happens. We generally don’t replace them because of metal fatigue – instead we replace them because they are no longer stylish, or they are ugly because we’ve abused them, or they are broken due to improper maintenance. So, we get many many more passenger miles out of a pod than we do out of a self-drive car.

What about that two-car garage that’s part of your house? And the driveway? How much of the value of your house is tied up in storing your self-drive car at night? It’s big. You don’t park the pod at your house – it’s still working for others, or being maintained, or stored in lanes that are idle during off-peak hours. So you get all that space back! What are you going to do with it? Convert it to another bedroom or two?

All those cops that were employed to give you traffic tickets can work on something else! And all those fine people in the Department of Motor Vehicles can too.

Let’s face it. We spend an incredible amount of money feeding our vehicles. The pod system puts a huge portion of that back in our pockets.

I’d love to hear from anybody that can offer more details on the financial analysis.

A pod is designed for it’s exact purpose. The pod that takes you to your office in the morning is small. It’s light. And it uses the most appropriate propulsion technology for the job.

Making it smaller makes it lighter. Making it lighter makes it more efficient. So the motor can be smaller. Now you can remove structure, and it’s lighter again. At the design level there is a positive feedback loop towards efficiency. 

That’s the opposite of that big SUV you used to drive to work. Bigger meant heavier. Bigger engine. Now more structure required for the increased weight. Bigger engine. More structure. At the design level there was a negative feedback loop towards inefficiency. 

The pod that took the 3 of you to your afternoon meeting was necessarily bigger, and in fact was the 4-person pod.

 The pod taking you on an 8 hour drive to visit your relatives is designed to be efficient for long-haul inter-city work.

So, pods come in a variety of sizes and configuration to suit the purpose. 

Still, there are far fewer configurations of pods than there were cars in the old self-drive system. In the old system, fashion was handled by lots of different body styles, choosing your body color, style of wheels and other accessories.  In the pod system, there are a small number of standard physical pod configurations. Styling is done in Photoshop where you can create your own look anytime you want. Or, just pick from tens of thousands of stock designs already available in iTunes. 

By the way, I’m not talking about a monorail, or BART, or anything else that uses rails or other physical guides. Pods drive themselves on already existing streets. Yes, there are new sensors, mechanisms to keep people from getting run over, and other technical goodies. But the ability to operate on existing roads seems like an essential requirement.

We’ll come back to these details later.

Introducing Personal Rapid Transit (PRT):

The alarm goes off.  From decades of experience, you know you’ll be ready for pickup at 6:15am. You pick up your iPhone, and start the Charlie application. Charlie, the computer voice, says “Good Morning Julie, when would you like to be picked up this morning?” You answer “615″. Charlie says “Let me check for you, it will take me about 15 seconds”. Charlie’s very punctual, so you can handle the wait. Besides, you’re looking for your new boots while you’re waiting. Charlie comes back with “I can have a pod at your house at 6:17. That will put you at work by 6:46, give or take a couple minutes. Will that suit you Julie?” And you answer “That’s great, thanks”. And Charlie replies “cool – see you in 57 minutes”.

[Notice that Charlie defaulted your departure location from your GPS location, and your destination from the fact that you make this same trip M-F at roughly this same time.]

At 6:07 while brushing your teeth, you hear Charlie’s voice on your phone saying “10 minutes till pickup”. And at 6:15 while you’re putting on your fancy boots, you hear “2 minutes till pickup”.

You walk out the front door of your apartment building. There are two pods waiting. That’s interesting, somebody else in your building is leaving at the same time. Anyway, you know which one is yours, because the exterior skin of the pod is gleaming with that cool raspberry swirl design that you created last weekend in Photoshop. [When the pod was scheduled to come pick you up, it read your default pod skin design from cloud storage and transformed itself to your design just as it came to a stop outside your apartment building, sort of like an octopus.]

When you approach the pod, the door magically opens and Charlie the computer voice greats you with “Hi Julie. Your pod awaits you”. [The pod knew who you were, because it sensed the RFID chip in your iPhone.]

As you settle in your seat, you don’t even notice that the seat is set to the exact same ergonomic position as yesterday. [The pod read the RFID chip in your phone, and read your default pod environment settings from cloud storage.]

You appreciate that the temperature is just the way you like it, and it’s playing a track from the same album you were listening to on the ride home yesterday. When you created you new pod skin last weekend, you also designed a new vanilla scent with Smell Maker (one of your favorite iPhone apps). And the scent is working great this morning – so you’re very happy.

You relax for a few minutes as the pod automatically begins the journey to work.

After your brief rest, you adjust the tint in the windows to bring in just the right amount of light, and say “Charlie, table please”. A thin table emerges from the side of the pod. You adjust it over your lap. You touch the surface of the table and login. [The entire surface of the table is a touch screen computer interface that works pretty much like your iPhone. Since all your personal files and your company files are stored in the cloud, they are all accessible right here, using the pod's built-in mobile broadband.]

You have a meeting with the rest of the team at 7:00. So you’ve got just enough time to read over what your teammates have put on the agenda, and to double-check the slides you put together for your presentation. 

Reviewing slide 6, you realize nobody is going to “get it”. So you quickly incorporate some new statistics which you just found, thanks to Google. After a 5-minute review via Skype with Fred (in his pod, coming in from the other side of the city) and Mary (already in the office) the new version of slide 6 looks awesome.

At 6:43 Charlie announces “We’ll be at work in 5 minutes Julie”. You push the table back up, and it disappears into the pod’s wall, re-adjust the tint in the windows for optimal viewing, and you spend the next several minutes watching your arrival at work. You’re checking out the skins of the other pods. You smile as you realize that you’re new raspberry swirl is very cool! 

Your pod pulls up outside the front door of your office building, the door opens, and Charlie says “Here we are. See you tonight for the ride home Julie”. You say “See you Charlie”, pick up your purse and your iPhone and step out of the pod. You see Sandy’s deep cobalt blue pod pulling up and decide to wait for her.

[You didn't have to present any payment tokens because your payment settings direct the pod system to simply keep track of your mileage, and automatically charge your credit card at the end of the month.]

[As you depart, the pod closes it's doors briefly while its internal vacuum system cleans the interior. It then changes it color to a jet black in preparation for it's next user, who is just about to arrive.]

So, let’s review this relative to the requirements. 

#1: It has to be fast

Today it took 31 minutes to get you to work, door-to-door. In the old days it took a total of 65 minutes. It took a few minutes to clear the snow off the windshield and warm up the car. The commute traffic used to be horrid – you’d rarely get over half the posted speed limit. And then it used to take 7 minutes to find a parking place.

And the great thing is that Charlie gets you there exactly as he predicts, plus or minus a minute. In the old days, if you had a morning meeting, you’d have to leave 15-30 minutes early in order to make sure you made it on time.

You typically get in 20+ minutes of productive work during your 30 minute commute. Most people do work in their pods during their commute. So your boss recognizes that, and subtracts that from the amount of time you are expected to be at your physical desk.

So, in effect, it cost you 10 minutes to get to work, compared to the old 65 minutes!

The actual drive used to take 55 minutes and Charlie does it in 30. How did Charlie do it 25 minutes faster? The simple answer is no traffic jams and minimal waiting at intersections. All traffic is computer controlled by a central scheduling system. This avoids overloading the roads, which is what creates congestion. A savings of 15 minutes comes from the fact that Charlie is driving the whole way at the speed limit, instead of jammed in traffic. The other 10 minutes of savings comes from the fact that you don’t have to wait close to 3 minutes at the 4 major traffic intersections between your house and work.

#2: You travel where and when you want

No, the system doesn’t have enough capacity to get everybody to work at exactly 8am every day. However, because the scheduling system eliminates congestion, the system has more throughput than the self-drive world. Plus, the pods are very space efficient in comparison to the 4×4 3/4 ton SUV that you used to drive to work, by yourself. Taken together, Charlie gets about 5 times as many people to work at exactly 8am than the old self-drive world.

Plus, Charlie makes the logistics easy. Suppose you have an important meeting at your customer’s site at 2:00 pm. You simply let Charlie know that you have to be there by 1:57. The latest he can get you there might be 1:52. So that’s 5 minutes less than perfect. But , he’ll tell you exactly when he’ll pick you up, and be accurate within a minute at both ends. In the old self-drive world, to ensure you didn’t get nailed by traffic and parking, you’d have to leave at least 15 earlier than this. And, you’ve got your iPhone with you. So during that extra 5 minutes before the customer meeting you can catch up on some of that industry news you need to read anyway.

A pod can pick you up anywhere and take you anywhere, door-to-door. So, unlike a bus, subway or train, you can pretty much go anywhere.

Peak travel times are a bit more expensive – like air conditioner usage during peak power times. But the automatic payment system takes care of that for you, and informs you in your monthly statement how much you could save by shifting your travel times a bit.

#3: Privacy

Notice that on your morning commute into work, you had a private pod. That suites you just fine during your commute – you like getting some work done, and getting a jump on the day.

During that 2:00pm trip to the customer site, two of your colleagues came along. Charlie brought a pod that fit the 3 of you, so you could talk about strategy on your way.

No BO. No bad music. Just the conversation you want. 

#4: Comfort

 The pod is always immaculate when it arrives, and everything is adjusted just how you like it from seat ergonomics, temperature, lighting and  music, to even the interior smell and the pod’s skin design. If you’d like a rest before you arrive home after a hard day’s work, the seat reclines into an shape perfect for a nice 20 minute power nap.

#5: Safety 

The old self-drive system killed and maimed an astonishing number of people every year. But pods are driven automatically. They don’t crash. Alright, nothing’s perfect. There might be the occasional crash. The old self-drive system would kill at least 50,000 people every year in California. The automatic pods do suffer a ‘crash’ every now and then. But it’s only about 5 per year in California. And the self-drive system has a tendency to kill people. Because of all the safety features in the pod system, pod crashes rarely result in death or serious injury. 

The old self-drive system was so deadly that people actually passed laws to force people to wear seat belts. The pod system is so safe they don’t even have seat belts.

#6: Fun

Going to visit the relatives on Saturday? Mom and pop can go in one pod. Mom uses her desktop touch screen to admire the latest pair of sexy boots from her favorite shoe designer, while pop has a snooze. The two munchkins are in another pod playing the latest double action adventure game with all the explosions at full volume. Oh, and the kids can load up the pod’s skin from their latest cool design that they just purchased on iTunes, play their favorite music (that drives you crazy), etc. The inter-pod communication system allows you to monitor what’s going on in their pod, including the internet sites they are accessing.

Conclusion:

Charlie meets all the requirements, and more. In the posts that follow, we’ll be exploring various aspect of the system, including how to build it, pay for it, and gain adoption.

I assume a lot of us care about global warming. And I assume we all see that the automobile is a major contributor to the problem.

I’m lucky to be living where I do in Wellington. On most days I can get wherever I want to go by just putting on my shoes and walking there. That’s awesome. I prefer the walk, even when the whether is miserable. When I have to use the car, the traffic is frustrating. And I hate driving around in circles looking for a parking spot in the city. Those moments keep sending me off to thinking about the ‘mass transit’ problem.

I’m going to write a series of posts on ‘mass transit’. Along the way I hope to shed some light on why today’s mass transit doesn’t work, what it needs to look like, and how we might get there. 

Do you actually enjoy sitting by yourself in traffic for 45 minutes to get to work? No. Then why do you do it? Because there is no effective alternative. An alternative has to meet these requirements:

Requirement #1: It’s faster than using your car

You’re busy. There’s more to do than ever. Work takes up more time than ever. If you’ve still got your job, you’re doing your work plus that of your comrades that were made ‘redundant’. If you lost your job, you might be doing multiple part-time jobs now in order to pay the mortgage and keep food on the table. You’re both working now. Yet somebody still has to go to the grocery store, get the cars serviced, take Johnny to sports, etc.

You’ll never use a form of transportation other than your own car unless you’re going to get there faster. That’s right, faster. Let’s face it, it’s going to take a lot to get you out of your car.

Let’s evaluate current alternatives in light of this requirement.

How about taking the bus to work? How do you get from home to the bus? Let’s call that a 5 minute walk.  If the bus comes on average every 15 minutes, there is about 7.5 minutes of queueing delay. Buses try, but rarely arrive on time. Not to mention that buses stop all the time, and therefore travel slower. Let’s be kind and call it 30 minutes extra every day to take the bus. Will you do it? Highly unlikely. You won’t do it even if it’s only 1 minute slower. 

How about walking or riding your bike? That’s takes even more time. Subways are mostly like buses, so we’ll lump then into that category. And trains typically have even bigger queueing delays.

How about car pooling? You’d think that car pool lanes would work – after all, once you’re a car pool, you get to travel in a lane that is less congested than the others. But, there are still queueing delays. The driver has to get from his house to yours in the morning – most likely an extra distance. And then he has to wait for you to be ready, or you have to wait for him to arrive. How long is that? Another 7 minutes? It’s starting to look a lot like the 30 extra minutes, again. Will the increased speed in the car pool lane make up for an extra 30 minutes? Maybe. But probably not.

Requirement #2: It goes anywhere anytime, and at your command

You’re life is chaotic. There are no noodles for tonight’s spaghetti, and no milk for tomorrow’s breakfast. So, you need to stop at the grocery store on the way home. Or, your wife Mary called and while it’s normally her night to pick up Johnny from sport, she has a late meeting that she can’t get out of – so can you please do it. This is a nightmare on a bus or a train. And if you car pool, now your commute partner becomes your chauffeur. This is one of the main reasons you stay in your own car – your car takes you where you need to go, and you have the keys.

Requirement #3: It gives you the privacy you want

You’d enjoy having friends you chose accompany you on your drive to work. But on a bus you have to sit next to somebody you’ve never met before, and who won’t look at you. And on the subway ride home you’re staring at an armpit that smells like it hasn’t seen a shower for a week.

Requirement #4: It’s at least as comfy as your private car

In your car, you can set the music, control the temperature, adjust the seat, etc. You’re in control and you can adjust it the way you want. What would it take for you to trade in the comfort of your own car for the opportunity to stand in a hot sweaty bus next to those armpits that haven’t bathed for a week?

And what about the groceries, or all the baby stuff? How do you handle that on a bus?

Requirement #5: Safety safety safety

You drive a big secure SUV. In a crash, you win. No weird looking or smelling people around. No foul language. You’re not worried about your purse. And you’re not worried about who’s going to say or do what to your kids.

Requirement #6: Fun

A lot of time you’re car isn’t fun. Like when you’re stuck in traffic. Or when it breaks down on the very morning when you are already late for a meeting with a major customer. But, it sure was fun when you drove it off the new car lot. And it sure is fun when you take it for a drive to the beach, or take your girl out on Friday night.

Conclusion 

Let’s face it, mass transit as we know it isn’t going to have a significant impact on private use of the automobile, no matter how many billions you spend on it, no matter how expensive you make fuel, and no matter how high you pile guilt on the consumer.

Come back for our next edition where we explore an effective alternative.