Triple Constraints

Seth Godin got in on the action a bit, in making fun of Elon Musk's fancy new truck.

Regardless of what his choice to throw a ball at a window of his brand new truck says about his showmanship skills, the big technology development of the future is related to transportation. As well as mass transit works in places with high population density and a large number of tourists such as New York and San Francisco, most places don't have enough of either of those two items to make mass transit really work. This means self-driving cars will be the real growth area.

I was reading the following article...

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613399/the-three-challenges-keeping-cars-from-being-fully-autonomous/

...and realized not too far into it that we were just talking about the triple constraints. The three big challenges are that they must be safe, usable, and affordable. They go on to discuss that you could make a vehicle so safe that it would be unusable, since it wouldn't drive very fast or be fuel efficient. This is similar to how the most secure computer is one that is not connected to the internet and with no keyboard or monitor.

But for a vehicle to be useful/usable, some safety constraints have to give way. If we push on both the usability and safety levers at the same time, the cost will be through the roof. Cheap and usable? Not safe. Cheap and safe? Not usable. Safe and usable? Not cheap.