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Yes it is. First, efficiency of utilisation: Driverless cars can be driven around the clock (modulo maintenance and refueling time), so car depreciation/mainte

Yes it is. First, efficiency of utilisation: Driverless cars can be driven around the clock (modulo maintenance and refueling time), so car depreciation/maintenance gets amortised amongst more passengers. Second, efficiency of scale in maintenance: It is extremely unlikely that the maintenance costs that uber drivers take on - buying parts retail and taking their car to the nearest garage for repairs - are lower than what would be a dedicated factory-like maintenance shop for thousands of automatic cabs. And third of course: direct wage costs of the driver once you subtract car maintenance from fares is still a lot bigger than zero, so eliminating that saves money.

abricot 10y ago
Note, that most of those points: Buying parts, cars, repairing is stuff they don't pay a dime for now. They only pay a wage to drivers. The structure of their cost changes completely - which is very hard to make any sane calculations on. And if they are not first with driverless cars, big national cab-companies are also in the run.
- mcintyre1994 10y ago
  The latest Tesla masterplan includes a global fleet of self driving taxis too.
dagw 10y ago
Driverless cars can be driven around the clock So in theory can normal cars. Many taxi companies (and I'm assuming at least some Uber drivers) share one car between 2-5 drivers to maximize the time on the road. The other aspect you're not considering is that even after you take economies of scale into account a driverless car will almost certainly cost more than the market price of the current median Uber car. I'm guessing that $3000-5000 will get you a perfectly Uber-worthy car that will give you years of fairly trouble free use. What will a driverless car cost? And that is ignoring the fact that most Uber drivers would have owned and maintained a car even if they had had a different job, so the only 'cost' is the marginal cost of extra maintenance being used as an Uber car causes. Also I wouldn't be surprised if maintenance costs will also be higher at least in the short-to-medium term due the complicated and experimental nature of the components involved. So even if there are long term savings I imagine that they will take a long time to materialize and even longer to show up in fare-prices, unless Uber decides to subsidize driverless fare to kick start the market.
- kesselvon 10y ago
  Taxi's drive around looking for fares. Uber can better optimize the time used through an algorithm. I'm betting there's a lot of time wasted for cabs that rely on street hails.

abricot 10y ago

Note, that most of those points: Buying parts, cars, repairing is stuff they don't pay a dime for now. They only pay a wage to drivers. The structure of their cost changes completely - which is very hard to make any sane calculations on. And if they are not first with driverless cars, big national cab-companies are also in the run.

mcintyre1994 10y ago
The latest Tesla masterplan includes a global fleet of self driving taxis too.

dagw 10y ago

Driverless cars can be driven around the clock So in theory can normal cars. Many taxi companies (and I'm assuming at least some Uber drivers) share one car between 2-5 drivers to maximize the time on the road. The other aspect you're not considering is that even after you take economies of scale into account a driverless car will almost certainly cost more than the market price of the current median Uber car. I'm guessing that $3000-5000 will get you a perfectly Uber-worthy car that will give you years of fairly trouble free use. What will a driverless car cost? And that is ignoring the fact that most Uber drivers would have owned and maintained a car even if they had had a different job, so the only 'cost' is the marginal cost of extra maintenance being used as an Uber car causes. Also I wouldn't be surprised if maintenance costs will also be higher at least in the short-to-medium term due the complicated and experimental nature of the components involved. So even if there are long term savings I imagine that they will take a long time to materialize and even longer to show up in fare-prices, unless Uber decides to subsidize driverless fare to kick start the market.

kesselvon 10y ago
Taxi's drive around looking for fares. Uber can better optimize the time used through an algorithm. I'm betting there's a lot of time wasted for cabs that rely on street hails.