I was more or less imagining a carpooling system like some cabs do today where they pick up multiple riders en route, but okay you don't want that. So you can decrease costs by a factor of 2.5. Still a significant improvement.

During peak there would be the possibly of carpooling effectively creating a privatized transportation system. Those that don't want to carpool could pay a much higher cost. Also not everyone is on the road at the same time during rush "hour". Where I'm at it rush at around 6:30 am and runs till 9:30 am and starts again at 3:30 pm and runs till 6:30 pm. If you assume a half hour commute and two riders per vehicle you could potentially cut the number of vehicles used in the morning by a factory of 12. Probably a bit less since the vehicles will have to pick people up at two different locations and drop off as well as driving between rides, so I'll round down and say you can decrease the vehicles used by a factor of 10. So now you have a vehicle that before would only be used by one person is now being shared by 10. Even if you assume a 200% markup on costs you will still see a decrease in costs for the consumer by a little over a factor of 5. I say a little over because now you don't have to worry about parking.

Not in the suburbs.

Cars are expensive and spend a lot of their time parked. There are already companies like zipcar, which have memberships where people can use the vehicles and for many it's more reasonable than owning their own. If a company would take over both the civil and criminal liability associated with an autonomous car driving me around and let the passengers sleep/whatever I would line right up for a membership. I'd even pay to 300-400 a month for it too.

I would like to see mandatory personal vehicle ownership go die in a fire. I hate having to own a car just to go to work. If I can get a reasonable alternative, say a company has a fleet of these things to pick people up and drop them off I would be so happy.

That's why there's still controls to drive it non autonomously.

You're angry that science reporters are doing science reporting. This is the analysis of the data that has been collected thus far and it is the most reasonable explanation.

I've seen it. She wanted to die and the doctor that kept her alive wouldn't let her die, because as long as she was alive he had access to her fortune and as soon as she died all of her money would be willed away.

UW Madison is a good school (ok, I'll cine clean, I go there) although I'm not a cs student I can tell you that their programming courses are fun although the introductory ones with bore you half to death.

I think this was aimed mostly at families with more than one car. Lets say one car is a smaller car that gets 33 mpg and the other is a large truck that gets 10 mpg. If they are both driven the same distance it would be better for that family to get a new truck that gets 20 mpg than it would be for them to replace their 33 mpg car with a 50 mpg car. (that is assuming though that they need both a truck and a car. In a lot of rural areas having a truck to haul stuff is very handy.)

Pewaukee by chance?

If I was going into a computer science field I would definately want to work for a company like that.

I actually know of a tech company that does this. I'm only a student so I don't know much about this, but I had a tour of a company's headquarters outside Madison, Wi and it wasn't bad at all. They took the approach that to get the most out of every developer each developer needed his/her own office (with a door that closes)...and they didn't have a dress code either.

Most of the elevator would actually stay in orbit and only a small portion of it would actually fall down to earth. Maybe none of it because the part that won't remain in orbit may actually be strong enough to hold itself up under compression.