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You're dramatically overestimating the costs. Renting a car only costs $20-40 per day now. Far, far less than $180. It's not going to increase with driverless c

by stult 9y ago

You're dramatically overestimating the costs. Renting a car only costs $20-40 per day now. Far, far less than $180. It's not going to increase with driverless cars. It may actually decrease because of reduced insurance and wear and tear from better driving. More generally, the cost of ownership per mile is only around 10 cents. So a driverless car with a utilization of 85% and an average speed of 60mph (high estimates) would need to charge $120 per day to break even. For 1200 miles of driving and 20 hours of travel time, which is far more than a single driver with a rented car would travel. That's $6 per hour. And gas accounts for 95% of that, so if we go electric the costs are even lower. With taxis, the overwhelming majority of the cost is the driver's wage. Which is way more of an issue in rural areas where they aren't getting paid once they drop the fare off. Without a driver to pay, low density demand is far less of an issue because you may have to bear the cost of getting the car to the next fare, but that's going to be a function of distance traveled rather than time.

caseysoftware 9y ago
I think you're 100% right that most people don't consider the much higher % utilization in their analysis. I think the gap is still the "stations" for the automated cars to pull into for the cleaning, maintenance, etc. But looking at the Tesla maintenance page - https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/support/maintenance-plans https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/support/maintenance-plans - many of the normal checks and changes go away. Wide scale adoption of electric cars will be one shock to the auto industry (no pun intended) and self-driving will be another. I wonder who will survive?
illumin8 9y ago
Your rental rates are accurate, but the cost of ownership is way more than $0.10 per mile. For that to be true, you'd have to pay $20K for the average car (the average is higher), drive it for 200,000 miles, and that doesn't count maintenance, insurance, or gas. Realistic costs are far closer to the $0.55 a mile that the IRS uses to calculate the mileage tax deduction.

by stult 9y ago

caseysoftware 9y ago

I think you're 100% right that most people don't consider the much higher % utilization in their analysis. I think the gap is still the "stations" for the automated cars to pull into for the cleaning, maintenance, etc. But looking at the Tesla maintenance page - https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/support/maintenance-plans https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/support/maintenance-plans - many of the normal checks and changes go away. Wide scale adoption of electric cars will be one shock to the auto industry (no pun intended) and self-driving will be another. I wonder who will survive?

illumin8 9y ago

Your rental rates are accurate, but the cost of ownership is way more than $0.10 per mile. For that to be true, you'd have to pay $20K for the average car (the average is higher), drive it for 200,000 miles, and that doesn't count maintenance, insurance, or gas. Realistic costs are far closer to the $0.55 a mile that the IRS uses to calculate the mileage tax deduction.