5 ms·
I'd bet that if anything, it costs more to own an aircraft now than it does in the 1990s though, that might be a better comparison.
by Noos 10y ago
I'd bet that if anything, it costs more to own an aircraft now than it does in the 1990s though, that might be a better comparison.
- ryanwaggoner 10y agoAirplane ownership and operations costs are probably higher than in the 90s, but the factors driving that are diverse, and I'm not sure they'd apply in any meaningful way to self-driving cars. A lot of the regulation that drives the cost of planes up won't apply to cars because of the different economies of scale. The most popular light aircraft in history is the Cessna 172, and since it was introduced in 1955, only 43,000 have been built. Ever. By contrast, the most popular vehicle on the road today in the US is the Ford F-series pickup truck. Since being introduced in 1977, Ford has sold 26 million of them. So roughly 600x as many as Cessna has sold 172s over a period of time 20 years longer. The US market alone was responsible for 17.5 million new cars and trucks being sold last year. Globally, it's approaching 100 million per year. Pretty incredible economies of scale available with that kind of market.