Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast The Rise of Self-Driving Cars About this episode Neil deGrasse Tyson investigates the fast-rising world of self-driving cars with former VP of R&D at GM and Mobility Consultant for Google, Inc. Larry Burns, Wired magazine transportation editor Alex Davies, and comic co-host Chuck Nice.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now.
0:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is StarTalk and I'm your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist. I got with me today as my comedic co-host Chuck Nice.
0:31 Chuck Nice? Hey Neil.
0:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Always good to have you Chuck.
0:33 Chuck Nice? It's always good to be here.
0:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Tweeting at ChuckNiceComic and you get your bad boy sometimes out there?
0:38 Chuck Nice? I like to kinda disrupt the world with my tweets if I can.
0:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Bringing truth to power.
0:43 Chuck Nice? Truth to power.
0:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Always good to have you. Today's a topic I've long wanted to have on this show.
0:47 Chuck Nice? Really?
0:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's an exploration of self-driving cars.
0:50 Chuck Nice? Wow.
0:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Where are they, where they been, where they going?
0:52 Chuck Nice? Okay.
0:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Alright.
0:54 Chuck Nice? Now let me ask you before we even get into the show because since you're fascinated by this, are you an advocate of self-driving cars?
1:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I, you know, yes.
1:02 Chuck Nice? First, do you like to drive? Now I've driven with you, so I'm gonna say that you, you are a person who likes to drive.
1:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm a city kid, so I don't long to get behind the wheel.
1:10 Chuck Nice? I think you like it when you're behind the wheel though.
1:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's fine, but I don't like, you know, walk by the Car and Driver magazines and have them call to me and come back and look at the centerfold, you know, the Ferrari centerfold.
1:22 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
1:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not that guy.
1:24 Chuck Nice? Okay, okay.
1:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, just cuz I'm-
1:26 Chuck Nice? Thank God.
1:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Cuz I'm urban.
1:28 Chuck Nice? Right.
1:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And when you're urban, a car's a liability.
1:31 Chuck Nice? Right.
1:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not an asset.
1:33 Chuck Nice? And you know what a centerfold really is for.
1:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What the purpose? Why they were invented?
1:37 Chuck Nice? When you grow up in the Bronx, you know what a centerfold is supposed to look like and it is not a car.
1:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay. So, interesting to me is that of course a self-driving car would, I think, benefit city people the most.
1:53 Chuck Nice? Okay.
1:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Think about it.
1:55 Chuck Nice? Right.
1:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Where are you gonna park a car? How much does it cost to park a car?
1:58 Chuck Nice? Right.
1:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know, one of the great measures of the cost of living in the city a couple of years ago was when the monthly parking cost-
2:05 Chuck Nice? Yeah, yeah.
2:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Garage cost.
2:07 Chuck Nice? Garage.
2:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Monthly drive passed the monthly two-bedroom-
2:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Home rental in the United States.
2:14 Chuck Nice? Yes.
2:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So that's just set that up.
2:16 Chuck Nice? Wow.
2:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So anyhow, so we're featuring my interview with Larry Burns.
2:19 Chuck Nice? Mm-hmm.
2:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Larry Burns used to be with GM and now he's advising Google.
2:23 Chuck Nice? Okay.
2:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He's thought about this a long time. And but again, I can't take this alone because this is out of my, this is out of my.
2:29 Chuck Nice? Wheelhouse, right?
2:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wheelhouse. So we've got Alex Davies.
2:32 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
2:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Here on video. Alex, welcome.
2:34 Speaker 02 Hey, thanks for having me.
2:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Excellent. So you're transportation editor at Wired Magazine?
2:38 Speaker 02 That's correct.
2:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's a thing. Who would have thought?
2:40 Speaker 02 Yeah, well, I mean, transportation, it's not only crucially important to just about everybody. Everybody moves one way or another, but all these things are changing at such a rapid pace that about a year and a half ago, we decided that transportation needed its own section. So here we are.
2:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, that's cool. And so you, and so this is on wired.com where you report this. Okay, well, excellent. So the future has arrived.
3:04 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
3:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I think. I mean, it's like, it's, or if not, if it hasn't arrived yet, it's, it's in the vestibule.
3:08 Chuck Nice? I was gonna say, yeah, exactly. If it hasn't arrived, then Google has the, I mean, Amazon has the drone on its way.
3:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so, and just a note about Larry Burns, which is my featured interview today. I interviewed him maybe a few months ago.
3:22 Chuck Nice? Okay.
3:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? At, when he came to my office. And so that's where we're slicing that in. Uh, so he's, he's a total advocate of this new era. All right. And he, he wants to reinvent everything, the entire system, top to bottom.
3:34 Chuck Nice? Okay.
3:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Pick up my interview there and see where it takes us.
3:36 Chuck Nice? All right.
3:38 Speaker 03 When you think about the roadway transportation industry, the history of it. Carl Benz invents the first patent, gets the first patent for a gasoline-powered automobile in 1886. And I contend to.
3:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Carl Benz of Mercedes-Benz.
3:51 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
3:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
3:53 Speaker 03 And I would contend if, if someone dug up a 1900 vintage car and then dug up a 2000 vintage car and did a DNA analysis.
4:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's the same DNA.
4:02 Speaker 03 Same DNA, mechanically driven.
4:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Four wheels.
4:05 Speaker 03 Oil energized, powered by a combustion engine, mechanically controlled.
4:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Gasoline.
4:11 Speaker 03 And gasoline and driven by a person and operates pretty much independently.
4:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You sit down with the steering wheel and there it is.
4:18 Speaker 03 Yeah. And so my boss at the time, Rick Wagner, when I became head of GM Research and Development in 1998, he asked me a rather interesting question. He said, Larry, if you were going to invent the automobile today rather than 100 years ago, what would you do different? And to me, that was not a question about any one technology. It was a question about how do you deliver the value that comes with from the freedom of owning and operating a car. So this wasn't a question that could be answered with, oh, I would do, I put a battery in it and make it an electric drive. It was really, how do you preserve all the freedom that people get from being able to go where they want to, when they want to in a car? Get rid of all those side effects, which are 1.2 million fatalities a year worldwide, which is epidemic in scale.
5:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Does that include pedestrians?
5:04 Speaker 03 Oh, include pedestrians, motorcyclists, any kind of roadway fatality. But then our dependence on oil, climate change concerns. As I thought about reinventing the automobile, it was really reinventing the entire system. And this new DNA that surfaced was really electrically driven with diverse sources of energy, cars that are connected, communicating with each other and along the roadway. Very importantly, cars that could drive themselves and the ability to tailor design the car, which is the pathway to making it electric. And when you put all of those together, connected, coordinated, shared, driverless, tailored.
5:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You've got a different DNA.
5:43 Speaker 03 You get a different DNA and you get a different experience for people.
5:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Alex, does your sense of the future of self-driving cars match his sort of global redefinition of what life with a driverless car would be?
5:58 Speaker 02 Absolutely. And I think it's interesting to see that it's not just people like Larry Burns who have left places like GM to work with the Google and Uber types. It's the big automakers themselves are saying that this technology is finally on the cusp of happening and it's time to really rethink how we move around.
6:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But they weren't, the big automakers were not first out of the box. Weren't they being reactive to these more innovative, more nimble companies in doing so?
6:27 Speaker 02 Yes and no. I mean, they would certainly say no anytime you talk to GM or Ford, you're like, well, this is pretty new to you. And they say, whoa, hey, we were in the DARPA Grand Challenges back in the early 2000s, where a lot of this work started. But I think you have to give a lot of credit to Google in particular for putting a fire under them and really advancing the idea of a fully autonomous self-driving car.
6:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Are all the driverless cars on the roads today just experimental?
6:52 Speaker 02 Yes, there are no... yeah, basically, there are a couple, you know, Uber is doing its thing in Pittsburgh and in Arizona where it's actually picking up passengers, but it's still very much an experimental car. It's got engineers up front and they're trying to figure out how well all this is working and how to really make it work.
7:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, back in 2010, GM unveiled like a concept car, what's it called? The ENV?
7:16 Speaker 02 Yes.
7:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Autonomous Electric Smart Car for Urban Environments, right? And so, let's pick up my interview with Larry Burns and see what he tells us about that.
7:24 Speaker 03 We teamed up with Segway and we developed a vehicle called ENV, E-N-V for Electrically Networked Vehicle, and that was the star of the Shanghai World Expo. So, this is a two-person balance machine and the developers of that at Segway took their transporter, widened it and put more power in it, and they went to Cracker Barrel and bought a rocking gliding chair, mounted it on there, put a roll cage around it, and in six weeks they had this thing running. And Rick Wagner and I are driving it around in a warehouse in New Hampshire in the middle of the winter. It was amazing, you know, how fast they put it together. So, we showcased this whole vision at the Shanghai World Expo. And what's exciting...
8:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When I see what they call the smart car on the road, I think of that as a two-seater car.
8:13 Speaker 03 Two-seater, yeah.
8:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You leave off all the rest of what you don't need or use.
8:16 Speaker 03 And so, because it only weighed 750 pounds, you've got one-fourth the mass, so that's wasted material.
8:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, by the way, when a New Yorker sees the smart car, they're not thinking, "Oh, how fuel-efficient." They're thinking, "Wow, you can park that anywhere." We're only thinking parking. We're not thinking anything else about it.
8:34 Speaker 03 And if the New Yorker shared it, it would never get parked because when that New Yorker gets out of that car, it goes and picks up someone else. It doesn't go park. So, what you want to do, if you're going to have a vehicle moving around, you'd like to have it utilized 75% of the time, not 5% of the time.
8:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Which, in all fairness, is what New York City taxis are.
8:52 Speaker 03 That's what they do.
8:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That, in principle, it captures some of this fact.
8:57 Speaker 03 The problem with the taxi, though, is they have six-tenths of a mile driven searching to pick up their next person for every mile they drive with a person in it. If you have a shared vehicle system and you use wireless connectivity communications to connect vehicles with customers like Uber does, you can take that six tenths of a mile down to point oh five miles, five one hundredths of a mile.
9:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So you did the calculation?
9:22 Speaker 03 We did the calculations. And we are convinced that we have a mobility system that's evolving based on driverless shared vehicles that are tailored to two people that can take the out-of-pocket cost of traveling and owning an automobile plus parking of seventy-five cents a mile, we can take that below twenty cents a mile and give you your time back. If you make median income in the United States, which is twenty-five dollars an hour, that's the fiftieth percentile income, and you move at twenty-five miles an hour, your time is worth a dollar a mile. So we're in a world of a dollar-
9:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You even calculated that?
10:00 Speaker 03 Yes.
10:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is there anything you don't calculate?
10:02 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's what engineers do. Neil, we're in a world of a dollar seventy-five a mile for the typical car owner dropping to twenty-five cents. Americans travel three trillion miles a year. If you can save just ten-
10:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Three trillion?
10:16 Speaker 03 Ten cents-
10:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's half a light year.
10:18 Speaker 03 Ten cents on three trillion, well, you would know that, yeah.
10:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I got that one, I got that one. Three trillion miles is half a light year.
10:25 Speaker 03 Ten cents on three trillion miles a year-
10:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's a couple dollars.
10:29 Speaker 03 It's three hundred billion dollars.
10:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
10:35 Chuck Nice? I just love that you will take driving a car here on Earth and find a way to relate it to the cosmos.
10:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Alex, I think most people who are newbies in this are thinking, "I will buy and own a self-driving car." They're not thinking that the car gets shared. So would you agree with this vision that this is how it's going to come to us out of the box? Or is there some adjustment pains, do you think, we'll have to go through?
10:58 Speaker 02 Absolutely. I think when you're talking about full autonomy, the car that's shared, that you never drive, you know, the Google Pod car that doesn't even have a steering wheel or pedals, that car is going to be shared. So you get that vision of shared autonomy, which works, and part of that is a technical limitation of these cars, is people think that within three, four years, they can make a fully self-driving car, but not one that can drive anywhere or handle any conditions. They think that you start by making a car whose capability is like this, but that can only drive in this big a space. That's why Google's- Testing in certain cities, that's why Uber is testing in downtown Pittsburgh and slowly expanding from there. So the shared thing in set geographic areas really makes sense.
11:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So is this NV concept car, is that still alive? Cause he's recalling that from back in 2010. I assume we've moved beyond that by now, is that correct?
11:53 Speaker 02 I think we're beyond that and when GM talks about self-driving cars, what they're using to test that technology right now is the new Chevy Bolt, the Bolt EV. That's the first electric car that can do 200 miles on a single range and it costs around like $35,000.
12:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The Bolt or the Volt?
12:10 Speaker 02 The Bolt with a B.
12:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Bolt?
12:12 Speaker 02 Yes.
12:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Bolt. Like the dog. Like the dog?
12:16 Speaker 02 Yeah. That's why they changed the name, they always say Bolt EV right now because I feel like maybe they made a mistake naming their cars almost the same exact thing.
12:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So now, and you're right, they made a mistake because I'm still confused, is the Volt still around? The V Volt? Is that still around?
12:30 Speaker 02 The V Volt is still around. They actually just put out a new version of it last year, it's really good.
12:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, okay. I just think it's great, we have two leading electric cars named after physicists. Yes. Okay, there's, so there's Alexandra Volta. Volta. After whom we named this unit of electromagnetic voltage? Uh, uh, uh, force, electromagnetic potential, the Volt. Volt. And then you have of course the Tesla. Right. Nikola Tesla. That's just cool. That's cool. I just think we get physicist on cars, this is good. It's very cool.
13:01 Speaker 02 There are even electric trucks called Nikola. There's an electric truck company called Nikola.
13:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Excellent. Wow. Again, his first name and his last name. He'll go against middle name, his mama's name. So let's rejoin my interview with Larry Burns. We're going to talk about the economic implications and consequences of this shift in our culture, really, and who's going to have a job and who's not. Let's check it out.
13:28 Speaker 03 It has the potential to not only impact the automobile industry, but the energy industry, the insurance industry, the retail industry, and how we consume food, how we educate ourselves and others. And it's pretty exciting. Is this all a rosy story? No, there's a lot of jobs tied to these industries that I've talked about. And what's the economic implications of suddenly not needing drivers in vehicles? And a huge number of jobs are tied to that. So just like the future of innovation always has been, there's going to be new solutions. They're going to be adopted. The world's going to have to change. Think if you were in the horse industry back before the car was invented,
14:11 Speaker 03 and you grew hay, or you did horseshoes, or you had barns, or you cleaned up after horses, and the horseless carriage comes along and displaces all of that industry. We're entering into that.
14:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's the proverbial buggy whip. Do you make buggy whips anymore? Is it a place in the catalog to buy? No. But what impressed me 110 years ago was how rapidly we transitioned from horses to horseless carriages. Because we used horses for 10,000 years. If there's anything that would've, should've, could've had inertia to never change, it would be the horses.
14:52 Speaker 03 Yep. 1886, Carl Benz gets the patent. 1903, Horatio Jackson drives across the United States. By the early 1900s, Henry Ford hit on the assembly line concept. And then by the 19-teens, he's building a car that his workers can afford to buy. And you're off and running.
15:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In 30 years, an entire industry basically goes obsolete. So going forward, do you see this autonomous car transition happening as rapidly as was the transition to cars in the first place?
15:22 Speaker 03 Absolutely. I think it's going to happen very fast. I think the biggest risk incumbent companies in this industry can make is to assume it's going to take longer than it's actually going to take.
15:34 Chuck Nice? Wow.
15:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, so Alex, it seems to me that a change can happen not simply because you have good PR people, but because it has significant economic benefit to those who want to make the change. And then you make the change overnight. It's a business calculation. But the people who would lose their jobs.
15:53 Chuck Nice? Right.
15:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? How does this... Are you ready for that? What... In your column, how do you... Have you talked... Thought about this? How to transition this entire community of people? I heard yesterday... Yesterday.
16:04 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
16:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That nearly 10% of all jobs.
16:08 Chuck Nice? Right.
16:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Are drivers.
16:10 Chuck Nice? Right.
16:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? People drive trucks, taxis.
16:13 Chuck Nice? Trains.
16:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And most of them are men.
16:15 Chuck Nice? Right.
16:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But trains, yeah. Most of them are men.
16:17 Chuck Nice? Mm-hmm.
16:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And gone. So what's... How do you deal with this?
16:22 Speaker 02 That's not really clear yet, but it is a lot of jobs.
16:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's not my problem.
16:26 Chuck Nice? That'd have been great if Alex would've been like, "Uh, Neil, we here at Wired don't give a damn about blue collar workers. That's their problem."
16:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The way you began that sentence, I was certain it was gonna go there.
16:41 Chuck Nice? Oh, that's great. No, sorry, Alex.
16:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, go on.
16:43 Speaker 02 There's something like 3 million truckers in the United States. And in one sense, it's a really good job because it's one of the few jobs that can make you good money without anything more than a high school diploma and a commercial driver's license. And it is gonna be stressful on a large part of the economy when those jobs start going away. I think that'll happen gradually. And if you talk to people like Daimler and Volvo, the companies that also make trucks, and they're all working on autonomous trucks because they see really great economic benefits there almost right away. But it's not really clear what's gonna happen to those workers. I think, you know, like Larry said, it's something that's happened throughout time and it's just... Growing pain.
17:28 Chuck Nice? Yeah, the difference, though, is there, you know, like, when you said buggy whips when you were in your interview.
17:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Uh huh.
17:34 Chuck Nice? The thing is that buggy whips found a home in the dominatrix industry.
17:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
17:41 Chuck Nice? Um, that will not happen with drivers.
17:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right.
17:45 Chuck Nice? Uh, if, if you, if you have autonomous vehicles, there is no need for a driver anywhere, so.
17:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When we come back, we're gonna tackle issues like traffic and accidents and fatalities and other things that a self-driving car might get involved in.
18:02 Chuck Nice? And who's, who, who, who are you gonna call when that happens?
18:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? On StarTalk when we return. Welcome back to StarTalk. I'm Neil Gras, nice and Chuck Nice.
18:16 Chuck Nice? Hey.
18:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And right to my left.
18:18 Chuck Nice? It's right to her.
18:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're wearing an Einstein t-shirt today.
18:20 Chuck Nice? I am.
18:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're feeling some Einstein.
18:22 Chuck Nice? It's my spirit animal.
18:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's your spirit advisor. Oh, your spirit.
18:26 Chuck Nice? It's my spirit animal. I made her animals.
18:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, that's a beautiful thing. Uh, we're featuring my interview with Larry Burns, who's a self-driving car consultant.
18:38 Chuck Nice? Fascinating.
18:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? For Google, has deep history in the automotive industry.
18:42 Chuck Nice? Mm-hmm.
18:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? He's thought of, he's an engineer, so he's got the engineer sense of the world, where they calculate everything. And I had to ask him, he came by my office several months ago, and so we're slotting in the clips from that interview. So I had to ask him about accidents and what could lead to fatalities when nobody's behind the wheel. That's an expression, right? Who's behind the wheel?
19:02 Chuck Nice? Right, exactly.
19:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Nobody.
19:04 Chuck Nice? Nobody. And we meant to, we meant it that way.
19:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? On purpose.
19:07 Chuck Nice? Right.
19:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? On purpose. So let's check out what he says. How does that change the legal ramifications of a highway death?
19:15 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's hugely important question, the whole ethics behind this, the legal system behind it is a very important part of the story.
19:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because if I, if I get on the road drunk, it's easy to point blame there legally, but if everyone is completely sober and they get in an autonomous vehicle and your software ends up killing them, holy shit. So there's, that, those are banner headlines. And without anyone saying, well, look, people, 29,000 people didn't die this year, no one is gonna be, no one pays attention to who doesn't die.
19:49 Speaker 03 Yeah. There's a fascinating analogy to that, and that's the history of vaccines. Flu vaccines were being developed as a good thing because people die from the flu. And but the producers of those vaccines were concerned that someone could have an allergic reaction to my vaccine and die, and I'm going to be held accountable for that. People were concerned about that flu vaccine because if they took it, they may have a reaction and die. But it's a good thing. If I get the flu shot, not only do I not get the flu, I'm not going to give it to you. So that's a public good. So the government stepped in and created what's called the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. Twenty-five cents of every flu shot goes into this fund.
20:30 Speaker 03 And the liability protection for the manufacturer and for the person that gets injured from the vaccine comes from that fund. So I think it's a good thing if we go from 35,000 fatalities down to 1,000 fatalities. I would hate to think
20:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or even less, yeah.
20:46 Speaker 03 Or even less. I'd hate to think that manufacturers won't go down that road because they're concerned about your scenario, that the one time the software doesn't work, it causes someone to die. We're going to have to work through that as a society. You know what I think is going to happen, Neil? We'll learn past the thousand. We'll understand those fatalities well enough so it'll go to 900 to 500, and maybe we'll get all the fatalities out of the system.
21:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Got Alex Davies on video. Alex from wired.com. You're the transportation guru. What's your actual title?
21:20 Speaker 02 Actual title would be editor, but I think guru might fit.
21:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A couple guru if that were you, Alex. Yeah, let's go with guru. Guru. So Alex, is there, could you update us on, so we all know that there have been self-driving cars in test modes out there. Have there been any injuries or fatalities so far?
21:42 Speaker 02 The, there's been one fatality so far in the United States that we know of, and that was in a Tesla self-driving car. So it's not the full autonomy that people like Uber and Google are chasing. What Tesla has is called Autopilot, where it's a car that, once you get on the highway or any place with lane lines that doesn't have intersections, the car can stay in its own lane and use radars to detect other cars and stay a safe distance from them. And about a year and a half ago now, in Florida, a man was driving in his Tesla in autopilot mode when a truck was turning across the highway and the Tesla didn't slow down at all and slammed into the truck and it killed the occupant. And that caused something of a furor because people were like, this is the first self-driving
22:27 Speaker 02 car death and there have been fears that once that happens, you're going to scare people away from the technology. That didn't really happen ultimately and the US DOT investigators looked into the accident.
22:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Department of Transportation, yeah.
22:40 Speaker 02 Yeah, the Department of Transportation said, okay, we're going to look at this. They investigated the accident. They ultimately said that it wasn't Tesla's fault. Tesla still went back and tried to revamp its system.
22:51 Chuck Nice? But they said it wasn't Tesla's fault, if I recall correctly. They said it wasn't Tesla's fault because the car was not, the purpose of the program was not to have the car drive you. It was to aid in you driving the car. Therefore, you are still considered the driver of the car, which means that anything happens is ultimately your responsibility. So it's kind of a technicality like that. It's a little bit of a technicality because even though, in other words, the guy was misusing the car.
23:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
23:25 Chuck Nice? Because he was in the backseat taking a nap or whatever.
23:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, okay.
23:28 Chuck Nice? And he should have been driving it.
23:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Let's get to, how did this fail?
23:32 Speaker 02 So Tesla never really revealed exactly what happened, but that version of the car used a combination of cameras and radars. And mostly, it was really dependent on cameras also to detect obstacles in front of it that it would need to brake for. And what seemed to happen here was it was a very gray day and it was a white truck. And the theory is that Tesla's camera had trouble distinguishing that truck from the cloudy sky. And so it didn't stop. So then Tesla went back, it revamped its self-driving system, it tweaked it to use more cameras, more radars, and to hopefully offer a better blend of sensor technology.
24:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, just when I thought we had discussed everything that matters with self-driving cars.
24:16 Speaker 02 Yeah.
24:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There's more.
24:18 Chuck Nice? Oh.
24:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes. In my interview with Larry Burns, check it out. What happens to traffic in the world of an autonomous vehicle?
24:25 Speaker 03 Yeah, traffic is a real important concern. The reason you have traffic congestion is there's more people who want to use the road than there is supply for the road. And because of that, the traffic backs up, it's a fancy term, it backs up nonlinearly. You're going and the traffic's moving smoothly and all of a sudden it's chaotic and you get a traffic jam. With autonomous vehicles, communicating with each other, optimally spacing and flowing together, you're going to be able to get much more throughput on those roads. When you get the crash out of the system, you're going to be able to get more throughput.
25:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Every morning there's a crash blocking traffic.
25:02 Speaker 03 Yeah, next time you're driving on an expressway, watch the people around you. The car next to you will pass you and get in front. A little later on, you'll pass that car and get in front of it. A little later on, someone else will pass both of you. You've gone 20 miles, you get to that point and all three cars are at the same spot. So all that lane changing isn't adding a lot of value. Big over the road trucks can slow traffic down. We may be able to organize that freight traffic in a single lane with optimized spacing or headways between the trucks to improve aerodynamics and fuel economy, reduce crashes.
25:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So every truck would basically draft off the previous truck?
25:35 Speaker 03 Yeah, and then does parking in Manhattan? I've heard, I'm not sure it's true because I haven't validated this, that I've heard that 20% of the miles driven by Manhattan cars in Manhattan are people cruising around looking for a place to park. Plus you've got the street side parking. And we may be able to even organize our lives in such a way that those delivery trucks that block up a street or an avenue, maybe they can deliver at night. And because that just works with their overall business model because it's autonomous perhaps. So I think there's a lot of ways to get a lot more people moving on the roads that already exist.
26:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Alex, do you have a ranking of which cities in the country have the worst traffic?
26:19 Speaker 02 Not offhand, but the last I saw it was LA, San Francisco, New York, Atlanta's terrible traffic.
26:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Terrible.
26:27 Speaker 02 It's the usual suspects.
26:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. Um, Alex, have you, do you guys calculate how much we lose in productivity by being in traffic? I think about that all the time. I'm sitting there waiting to get through a toll booth and there's, you know, it opens up to the, you know, however many lanes.
26:43 Chuck Nice? Right.
26:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And I'm looking at all these people and I'm thinking, we could be either with our family, with our kids, or at the job.
26:50 Speaker 02 It's billions of dollars and this is a number I'm pulling off the, the top of my head. I think the average Angelino spends like, ah geez, dozens of hours stuck in traffic every year. And you think about the time they could be spending at home or the time they could be spending working. And if, in a self-driving car, even if you can't get rid of the traffic right away, at least you could spend that time working, sleeping, or doing whatever you want.
27:16 Chuck Nice? Well, now I just felt, now I'm, now I'm against self-driving cars altogether now.
27:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Why?
27:20 Chuck Nice? Cause I gotta work now.
27:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, you gotta work.
27:22 Chuck Nice? I gotta sit in there and do my work.
27:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That'll be expected of you, yeah.
27:26 Chuck Nice? Exactly.
27:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Also, it might collapse the audiobook industry.
27:28 Chuck Nice? Oh my goodness, that's a, yeah, you're right about that. Cause that's when people make use of that time to listen to their audiobooks.
27:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's right.
27:35 Chuck Nice? Right.
27:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's right. And so, uh, do you spend much time thinking about, uh, traffic flow and rubbernecking and all these other elements that, that urban planners have to think about?
27:45 Chuck Nice? Cause a self-driving car would get rid of, it would eliminate rubbernecking.
27:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There's no rubbernecking.
27:50 Chuck Nice? The car doesn't give a damn, right?
27:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's exactly right.
27:52 Chuck Nice? You know, and as a matter of fact, you're mad at the car. You're like, no, slow down, I wanna see that.
27:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The car doesn't say, oh, blue flashing lights, I wanna have a closer look.
28:01 Chuck Nice? Exactly, yeah. And that's only cause the car's not black.
28:06 Chuck Nice? Blue flashing lights, oh my god.
28:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, would it be good if the self-driving car had a rubbernecking mode? Where it got closer to the accident so that you could see.
28:15 Chuck Nice? So you can see. Would you like to see the accident?
28:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Alex, what's your take on the solution to traffic? Do you see that as fundamentally built into the solution that involves self-driving cars?
28:33 Speaker 02 I think it is, and because as you've noted, things like human error, accidents, rubbernecking, all that stuff, that leads to a lot of traffic. But don't think that once you put one or two self-driving cars on the road, the problem's fixed. It could actually get worse in the short term when you have self-driving cars mixed in with humans because you're still gonna have enough human error to clog things up. And, you know, you really need a much higher percentage market penetration to really start making the difference on the highways, that stuff that Larry was talking about.
29:07 Chuck Nice? You know what I read, I just read this, and it may have been in Wired Magazine, as a matter of fact, Alex, that in the beginning of self-driving cars being introduced onto the roadways, that the self-driving cars may be more frustrating to those passengers because they will defer to the regular drivers because they'll look and say, "Oh, that guy's an a-hole. I gotta let that guy go." And so you'll be able to bully them.
29:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, so here's how that actually came to pass. I think we might have read the same article.
29:37 Chuck Nice? Okay.
29:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You come to a four-way stop sign.
29:38 Chuck Nice? Yes.
29:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, now, the rule is, the car to your right is the right of way, provided everybody stopped. But suppose you come to the four-way stop sign, but you do a California stop.
29:49 Chuck Nice? Right.
29:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You slowed down, but you didn't actually stop.
29:52 Chuck Nice? Right.
29:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you ended, self-driving cars is waiting for you to stop.
29:56 Chuck Nice? Right.
29:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because it knows, it's moving 1 cm per hour.
30:00 Chuck Nice? Exactly.
30:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's still moving.
30:01 Chuck Nice? It's still moving. I gotta wait for that guy to stop.
30:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, so that we can then do the four-way stop sign rule.
30:06 Chuck Nice? Right.
30:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And then...
30:06 Chuck Nice? And the self-driving car is sitting there all day.
30:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Sitting there all day, because it's getting bullied by... This is a scenario, right, Alex?
30:13 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's a real scenario. This is happening to Google engineers in their early days. They were just sitting there at four-way stops, and ultimately their solution was to program their car to be a little bit more human.
30:26 Chuck Nice? So what now? What does the car do now? It's like, "Hey, I'm driving over here." "Over here, hey, I'm driving over here."
30:35 Speaker 02 They haven't started programming horses yet.
30:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
30:38 Speaker 02 But they will.
30:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Those are cars from the Brooklyn factory. The Brooklyn self-driving goes, "I'm over here, I'm driving over here."
30:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, uh, so, uh, there's another issue that came up in my conversation with Larry. And let's find out what that is, check it out.
31:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What are the people who just like to drive?
31:02 Speaker 03 Yes, you know, there are people who love to ride horses. Equestrian, horse racing, and the horse industry hasn't gone away completely. And it's okay to ride horses and it's gonna be okay for people who wanna drive. Um, that's great. And, uh, no one's saying to you, "You can't drive." That's the last thing I'd ever try to imply here, that we're gonna impose on them something that they can't drive. A lot of these people like to drive on, uh, Highway One in California on a beautiful sunny day where there's no traffic and curvy mountain roads. And that is a thrill, the thrill of the road. But when they're stuck in Los Angeles traffic or Detroit traffic or New York City traffic, that is not enjoyable.
31:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And presumably, most people drive as a utility element of their life.
31:46 Speaker 03 Most of the miles.
31:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not for entertainment.
31:48 Speaker 03 Most of the miles are a utility element, yes. So, so no one wants to take it away, just like no one took horses away.
31:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, so Alex, you, I, I assume you agree with that, that's, you can't just get rid of cars. People love their cars. People who love their cars, love their cars.
32:03 Speaker 02 People do. I think there's gonna be a nice little boom in the, in the racetrack business. Somewhere where you can go, where you can safely drive as fast as you want. Once, and I do think, driving will never be illegal, but I do see a world in which cities say, "Hey, this is a self-driving zone. If you wanna get in here in a car, that car has to be autonomous for safety and for traffic reasons."
32:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or park, or park the car at the border. And then you're gonna do an Uberized, uh, driving car coming through.
32:34 Speaker 02 Exactly.
32:35 Chuck Nice? Wow.
32:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah.
32:36 Chuck Nice? Wow, that's, I mean, that sounds like an awful place to live, I'm sorry.
32:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So.
32:40 Chuck Nice? I love driving.
32:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When we come back, we're gonna get into, like, drones in shopping with autonomous, uh, delivery systems.
32:49 Chuck Nice? Oh my God, that just sounded like the most awesome shopping trip ever. Where a drone goes with you to go shopping and then it drops a bomb on the mall. You don't mean that kind of drone.
33:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, no, no.
33:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Not the military drone.
33:04 Chuck Nice? Okay.
33:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? When StarTalk continues, more on self-driving cars and autonomous vehicles.
33:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're back on StarTalk. Today's topic, self-driving cars.
33:19 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
33:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Automation.
33:23 Chuck Nice? Sorry, I had to...
33:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You have Jetsons on the brain.
33:25 Chuck Nice? I know, that's... You self-driving cars, I just couldn't help it.
33:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chuck, we've got Alex on the line, Alex from Wired Magazine. So, we're featuring my interview with Larry Burns, who's an advisor to Google.
33:39 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
33:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? On autonomous vehicles, and he thinks deeply about every dimension of this question. Ways I didn't even know people thought before, and it's great. I'm gonna have a great conversation with him. And so, we got into autonomous delivery vehicles.
33:55 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
33:56 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And what, how that would change a whole other industry. Let's check it out.
34:00 Speaker 03 It's about goods movement as well. You know, Domino's has created a robotic unit called Drew.
34:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Domino's Pizza Delivery.
34:07 Speaker 03 Domino's Pizza Delivery has created Drew, the Domino's robotic unit. 12 mile an hour vehicle that can operate and deliver hot and cold food to your home robotically. That's kind of neat. They think that's better than maybe a FedEx truck, or a UPS truck, or a postal truck that weighs 4,000 pounds and a driver... You know, I work out of my home office a lot, so I'll be sitting at home and doorbell rings, it's the FedEx guy. Doorbell rings later, it's the UPS guy. Postal service will come to the door. What's going on here? Well, I have two daughters and my wife, they're shopping online, and all this stuff is coming to the house two and three times a day, and you've got a person bringing a one-pound item to the door in a truck.
34:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You have a 150-pound person bringing a one-pound item to the door.
34:52 Speaker 03 150-pound person bringing a one-pound item to my door in a truck that probably weighs more than 4,000 pounds. And now, we've got, the people who developed Skypes have created, I think, a company called Starship Technologies. They've got a little robot that can deliver two grocery bags at four miles an hour. So, I'm not clear exactly how all this is gonna play out. You know, you've got Amazon working on drones that can deliver packages in 30 minutes by...
35:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I irrationally don't like drones.
35:22 Speaker 03 Excuse me.
35:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I irrationally don't like drones.
35:25 Speaker 03 You don't?
35:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, yeah, if I see a drone, I want to hit it with a baseball bat. For no reason, I just, is it looking at me? Why is it there? I don't care if it has a package for me. It creeps me out. Get out of my window.
35:37 Speaker 03 You know what fascinated me about?
35:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's not rational. It's a non rational response.
35:42 Speaker 03 What fascinated me about the 60 Minutes episode on Amazon's drone wasn't the drone. It was that Amazon thinks it's important to get me something in 30 minutes. That intrigued me and I asked my wife and daughters about that. Well, absolutely. I can try those jeans on in 30 minutes and decide whether I like them or not. And if I don't, I can ship them back. So that's all about how are we going to shop?
36:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Drone, can you hold on while I try on the clothes? Can I watch, you know?
36:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? voyeuristic drones.
36:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Alex, in your column, do you also deal with other autonomous systems?
36:20 Speaker 02 We do. We look at drones a lot. And it's worth noting that Domino's actually just joined up with that Starship Technologies thing. And now in Hamburg, Germany, they've got little wheeled robots delivering pizzas to people.
36:32 Chuck Nice? Yeah. And that really seemed like a good idea because certain neighborhoods, you're going to have kids just really enjoying some free pizza.
36:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In my neighborhood, it would be adults doing that.
36:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? No, how could you have an autonomous anything walking with a pizza in front of you?
36:49 Chuck Nice? Right.
36:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's not going to, that's a recipe for disaster.
36:54 Chuck Nice? I don't know anybody who's going to let a free pizza just walk by, you know? Hey Drew, Drew, come here.
37:02 Speaker 02 And they will say that, I asked them that and they're like, no, no, no, it's locked. But people steal ATMs.
37:07 Chuck Nice? Exactly.
37:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I don't see that. They'll lasso it and put it in the back of the truck. The ATM down the road.
37:13 Chuck Nice? Yeah, so what you're going to have is a bunch of missing Drews on pizza boxes. Have you seen Drew? It'll be a pizza, have you seen Drew? You know, so you'll have that and you'll have like destroyed drones that are going to Neil deGrasse Tyson's house. Mr. Bisos, for some reason, we keep losing drones that go to Neil deGrasse Tyson's house. And in the backyard of Neil's house, there's just a pile of drones that have been
37:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? A pile of busted up drones.
37:40 Chuck Nice? Eating to death with a baseball bat.
37:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What you would need, like, to make drones that know martial arts.
37:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So I also wanted to know, also needed to know about flying cars. Oh. Who doesn't? Isn't that the big promise that? It's, it's, it is the big, I feel bad. The holy grail, right? I'm in the commu-, I'm in the, I'm in the science community. And we all promised people flying cars. Yes, you did. I had to bring it up with Larry. Check it out. Cool. Okay, after you give me the autonomous car, we want the flying car. Okay, so you are way overdue for the flying car. I just, I just want to publicly, on record, say you have failed us on the flying car promise.
38:22 Speaker 03 I, I failed on the flying car promise as an engineer? Why not? Okay, and we're gonna have to, to work it out. I, you can't help but be impressed by the progress on the drones and how fast we've gone from not having any to a lot of people working on them. You know, I had the privilege when I was at General Motors to travel to twenty five, twenty to twenty-five countries a year for over a decade. I was able to see Mexican engineers, Korean engineers, Israeli engineers, German engineers, Chinese engineers, Brazilian engineers, all motivated to do exactly what American engineers are doing. And I would wake up at night thinking about China and realizing that the twenty-five percent of the smartest people in China equal the population of the United States.
39:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Total population of the United States, that's right.
39:06 Speaker 03 That's a stunning fact. And what's happening with drones and autonomous vehicles are those young engineers are getting captivated by these opportunities. And when you put that much brainpower and creativity and motivation globally around things, why not flying cars?
39:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Alex, you wrote a story about Uber taking over the skies with flying, what, what, what was that? Tell me about this story.
39:32 Speaker 02 Uber actually thinks that flying cars can happen. And this isn't the idea of a car that drives sometimes and flies sometimes. It's more of a vertical takeoff and landing electric vehicle. So basically, you know, it comes in, picks you up wherever you are, flies up vertically, flies wherever it's going, and then drops you off.
39:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Isn't that called a helicopter?
39:56 Speaker 02 I said, wait, why not just?
39:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We have a word for that.
39:58 Speaker 02 I was like, well, rich people already have helicopters. And I say, well, one, you know, we think that this could be done electrically. You can do it in smaller packages and more quietly than helicopters. And so I found some aviation engineers and kind of to my surprise, they're like, yeah, that's not totally insane. In a few years, we'll actually have the battery and the aeronautic technology to make these things work somewhat efficiently. But there are a lot of other questions like, how on earth do you regulate them? How does FAA get involved? How does air traffic control change? So technologically, it's not crazy, but realistically, there are some pretty big hurdles.
40:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And I brought up this point with Elon Musk. We interviewed him for StarTalk as well, on all manner of topics. But in there, I asked him about flying cars.
40:44 Speaker 02 Right.
40:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because he's like Mr. Inventor.
40:46 Speaker 02 Right.
40:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Rockets, cars.
40:48 Chuck Nice? There's anybody who's gonna bring us flying cars.
40:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There's anybody.
40:50 Chuck Nice? It's Elon Musk.
40:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Elon. So I thought he had a really good answer. Because once we understand the point of having a flying car.
40:57 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
40:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because you're stuck in traffic and you, and there's all this air above you, just travel through the free air, right? And not, and, okay? So what you're doing is you're adding a dimension to the traffic pattern. And when you do that, you completely blow open all the ways you can get from one place to another.
41:15 Chuck Nice? Mm-hmm.
41:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You get this? So, what he said was, we already have a modern version of that, holding aside helicopters. You know what the modern version of flying cars is? Tunnels.
41:28 Chuck Nice? Okay.
41:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Think about it, underpasses.
41:31 Chuck Nice? Right.
41:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Tunnels, subways.
41:33 Chuck Nice? All right.
41:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So here we are, no, it's not flying, but it is under feet. And under the traffic you are stuck in.
41:39 Chuck Nice? Right.
41:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There are railway cars going.
41:42 Chuck Nice? Mm-hmm.
41:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And on multiple levels even there.
41:46 Chuck Nice? Yes.
41:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right?
41:48 Chuck Nice? The problem is, or not the problem, the benefit will be, my flying car will not smell like urine.
41:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay.
41:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, we can work on that problem.
42:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? As long as you have traffic lanes that are in a third dimension, be they tunnels, bridges, underpasses, you know, even here in New York City, there's the, we have a Battery Park underpass.
42:12 Chuck Nice? Yes.
42:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You don't have to drive through Battery Park, there's a whole tunnel underneath that.
42:15 Chuck Nice? That's correct.
42:15 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's basically a flying car.
42:16 Chuck Nice? Right.
42:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Through what would otherwise be traffic.
42:18 Chuck Nice? And still, the best way to travel in New York City, I don't care what anybody says, is the subway.
42:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Even though it smells like urine. It used to smell really like urine.
42:25 Chuck Nice? Right.
42:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Now it only kinda smells like urine.
42:27 Chuck Nice? That's because I stopped doing that.
42:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're the one that did.
42:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So, um, so Alex, have you, have you thought about Elon Musk's plan to build tunnels under LA? Cause this is, again, this is the, the flying car solution. You just have you go in another dimension. Have you, have you thought about that?
42:48 Speaker 02 Uh, we, it's something we've looked at and it's something we actually talked to Elon Musk a little bit about. And our question was, well, if you just build one tunnel, that's not really gonna solve anything. And then he came back and he said, well, yeah, you're thinking too small. I'm thinking thirty, forty layers of tunnels, which is mostly insane. The idea of building like a forty-layer-deep tunnel structure under a metropolis that's already full of stuff like pipelines and subways and train tracks.
43:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, is it crazier than saying, I wanna fly?
43:19 Chuck Nice? Right.
43:20 Speaker 02 No, not necessarily.
43:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or I wanna go to the moon. Wait, wait, we have been to the moon and you're saying it's crazy thinking to put tunnels under a city? Now, explain yourself.
43:30 Speaker 02 I'm saying it's crazy that Elon Musk wants to build forty layers of tunnels under the city.
43:35 Chuck Nice? Okay.
43:36 Speaker 02 I think you could do a couple and I think it's a really smart solution.
43:38 Chuck Nice? Okay, okay. I'm so glad you clarified that because for a moment there, I was like, how did this guy get a job at Wired magazine?
43:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, Elon is putting rockets in space. Now he wants to build tunnels. Oh, that's crazy talk, Elon. Don't.
43:54 Chuck Nice? So you, you actually agree that it's a good idea, Alex? You just think that to the extent which he wants to do it, there may be a lot of problems with that, but to have a couple layers of tunnels would be a good deal.
44:04 Speaker 02 I think part of my job is putting a little bit of salt on Elon Musk's ambition.
44:12 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, that was funny. Let's get to my very last clip with Larry Burns and just see where he, where we land this plane.
44:20 Chuck Nice? Okay.
44:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Check it out. So what's the future? Pilotless airplanes, engineerless, you know, conductorless trains?
44:29 Speaker 03 Well, yeah.
44:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There's no stopping, there's no stopping this trend.
44:31 Speaker 03 There's nothing to stop, no, I mean, the train industry has to have two people on the train, one on the front, one on the back, and right now, that's a regulatory issue, not a technology issue. It's an economics issue for the railroad industry, and let's say suddenly you're launching driverless over the road trucks, and the railroads are still having a, someone in the front car and someone in the rear car. Again, I think society will find a way to work through this. There's vested interests in all of this, there's vested interest in the oil story, there's vested interest in the insurance companies, and there's vested interest in the auto companies, the road building industry and all of that. But at the same time, we need to have a planet that survives, and the sustainability concerns
45:12 Speaker 03 in mobility are about all these sources of waste that we have and how we elect to move people and goods around on roads. And there's a new DNA in town, and there's a whole new set of opportunities.
45:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, so Alex, those are quite summative marks there. Do you have a, a sense of how you want to sort of end our time with you?
45:32 Speaker 02 I think it's important to note that, you know, automation isn't quite here, there's a lot of work left to be done, but it's most certainly on the way. All of the big players have bought in, and I think one of the, the watermarks there is that Ford came out last year and it said, "We're not an automaker anymore. We're an automaker and a mobility company."
45:51 Chuck Nice? Uh-oh.
45:52 Speaker 02 So if you've got Ford, the biggest, one of the biggest automakers in the world, saying, "This is not only what we're doing, we also have to talk about mobility."
45:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Because Exxon is not an oil company, it's an energy company.
46:02 Chuck Nice? Absolutely.
46:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's how they think about it. Okay, go on, yeah?
46:05 Speaker 02 So I think, I think you are seeing a sea change, that all these players are getting into this market, and automation is going to touch on so many things, even beyond transportation, but within the world of moving around, trains, absolutely, drones, construction, agriculture, mining, driving, trucking, flying, I think you're going to see it come into every part of this economy.
46:27 Chuck Nice? And since there are going to be so many people losing their jobs... How can we make some money off of this? How do we get in on this action?
46:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, I got more here. There's a little bit of that interview that didn't make it to these chosen clips.
46:40 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
46:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And that was, what's the limit of the Uber model?
46:44 Chuck Nice? And not to interrupt Neil, if you want to hear that full interview, you can do it on StarTalkAllAccess.com. But go ahead.
46:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The full interview with Larry Bird.
46:51 Chuck Nice? Yeah, the full interview, yes.
46:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Excellent.
46:53 Chuck Nice? But go ahead.
46:54 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So the limit of the Uber model is you don't even own a screwdriver. You just call up a screwdriver and a screwdriver gets delivered to your windowsill 10 minutes later.
47:04 Chuck Nice? Wow.
47:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's a shared screwdriver. And if you need a hammer, why keep a hammer? Why keep, why keep a, a, a, um, you know, what, the tools, the, the power tools?
47:15 Chuck Nice? Toolbox or a power tool.
47:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Why keep anything that you use once a month?
47:18 Chuck Nice? Right, exactly.
47:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Have that stuff fly. So what that would mean is there will always be these hammers and screwdrivers and, and power tools just floating around, looking for who to deliver to. You use it and then you give it back. You don't even need a garage under those conditions.
47:32 Chuck Nice? I already do that. I have a neighbor.
47:36 Chuck Nice? Chuck, can I get my lawnmower back, please?
47:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Alex, thanks for joining us on StarTalk.
47:44 Speaker 02 Thanks for having me.
47:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And you've got, you've got a column on Wired.com and...
47:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, Wired.com/Transportation.
47:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Transportation, we got you and that's where we can find you. Chuck, always good to have you as my co-host. And you've been listening and possibly watching StarTalk on this episode involving driverless cars and automated delivery systems. I've been your host Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, and as always, I sign off by bidding you to keep looking up.
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