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>However, once people realize they can pay $35,000 for a killer car that can earn them $30,000 in a year by simply pressing a button and telling your car to go
by vaishaksuresh 10y ago
>However, once people realize they can pay $35,000 for a killer car that can earn them $30,000 in a year by simply pressing a button and telling your car to go pick up passengers for you while you work or sleep — it’s game over.
That is not happening in the near future. At least not in a meaningful scale.
- msoad 10y agoAnd if it does happen, you will not be the one owning and profiting from those cars...
- Zyst 10y agoYeah, I don't see why companies like Uber and Lyft would, so to say, share a piece of the pie, instead of buying these types of cars themselves. I could see competing products (Apps) with less infrastructure launching this business model though. So I guess it might exist in one way or another in the end.
- aianus 10y agoI was going to post a response on how they wouldn't have enough money from private sources to build that many taxis but it seems it'd cost only ~$23 billion to replace every single taxi in the United States with a Model S. That's shockingly cheap.
- SilasX 10y agoWell, you could do it to defray some of the cost of the car by making use of its idle hours, but it probably wouldn't make sense to buy a car just (or even mostly) to rent it out, for much the same reason that individuals don't do it today. Plus, when Teslas are usable as self-driving cars, the value of the rides provided will drop precipitously -- that figure would be more like $5000, and you'd have to lock up usable hours for it and perhaps pay some penalty to renege on specific hours.
- prostoalex 10y agoThose two effects are mutually opposing forces - are car owners willing to take the risk of someone contaminating their car by smoking, spilling, eating, puking or having sex to earn a pretty penny?
- wolf550e 10y agoI think all robotaxis will have inward facing dashcams that transmits into a vault in the cloud in near real time. If the car comes back undamaged, the video is deleted. People who hire robotaxis might need to have money in escrow if they don't have enough reputation.
- vertex-four 10y agoEscrow really doesn't exist on a personal level today - why would people suddenly go from the current situation to being perfectly find putting hundreds/thousands of dollars in an escrow account in the future? What do we do about people who can't afford that?
- vishvananda 10y agoWe have the equivalent for car and room rentals. The escrow is just a hidden feature of our credit cards. If you try to rent a car without a credit card, you are usually required to put down a deposit.
- vertex-four 10y agoNote that in my country, it's rare for hotel rooms to require credit cards or deposits. (Debit cards are required so they can charge you later if necessary, but they don't put a hold on them.) There's certain chains that do, but it's mostly an American thing. Renting a car requires one, but there's also more generally a high barrier to renting a car - plenty of forms, showing your license, booking in advance, etc etc. There's also no choice. The same is not true for getting in a taxi. Why would I put down a deposit to ride in an automated car, really?
- vaishaksuresh 10y agoRight! Why would I buy a car when I can get a self-driving car to pick me up and drop me off when I need?
- namlem 10y agoI wouldn't be surprised if Nevada had this by 2022.
- ghaff 10y agoThere are these things called markets. I don't expect this particular scenario to happen anytime soon. But I pretty much guarantee that if I can buy $OBJECT in a competitive market and rent it out for some ridiculous rate of return in a competitive market, competition for that renting will drive down prices until it's not a ridiculous rate of return any longer.