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The move motivated by Full Self Drive away from full-time ownership and towards robotaxis should indeed reduce the number of personally owned vehicles, but woul

by toss1 7y ago

The move motivated by Full Self Drive away from full-time ownership and towards robotaxis should indeed reduce the number of personally owned vehicles, but would it really reduce the number of vehicles? Instead of vehicles driving 150K miles over 11 years (~~ average car age now in US) a robotaxi could burn through 500 miles in a day or 500K miles in 2.7 years. They'd certainly need the interior replaced several times in that period. Overall miles driven, could it increase with robotaxis, if the cost per mile is less than for owned cars? I'd think so, since it would open up car usage to whole new classes of people who don't use cars much, since they can now 'buy' the usage of the car a lower rates and in the smallest package, of only the miles they need. Anyone have some data that points more strongly in either direction?

the8472 7y ago
> Overall miles driven, could it increase with robotaxis Perhaps, but when robotaxis are a thing then robobuses will be too, which can drive vehicle-miles down even as passenger-miles go up.
Faark 7y ago
Robotaxis will quickly become highly durable (well, maintenance become cheap), since for the first time incentives mostly align. The car will be produced and maintained by the same one of few powerful corporations. The bigger problem will be aligning incentives with the customer. Especially regarding safety, since riders can hardly evaluate that by themself.
- toss1 7y ago
  >>Especially regarding safety, Yes, that's a big one, and indeed may be setting up a commons problem, if not strongly regulated. For the short term, and for each individual company, cutting corners for safety will be in their interest (save funds now at no cost). But for the industry and the long term, the entire concept could be destroyed by a relatively small but tragic number of safety failures. A few high-profile passenger deaths will probably be covered in the volume of terrorist attacks, and even if the actual risk is still small, give the impression of horrible widespread risk. I'd like to hope that all the players are responsible and far-sighted, but the experience with Uber killing the cyclist in Arizona does not bode well -- they had many lapses and corner cutting, only reforming a bit when they killed someone.

by toss1 7y ago

the8472 7y ago

> Overall miles driven, could it increase with robotaxis Perhaps, but when robotaxis are a thing then robobuses will be too, which can drive vehicle-miles down even as passenger-miles go up.

Faark 7y ago

Robotaxis will quickly become highly durable (well, maintenance become cheap), since for the first time incentives mostly align. The car will be produced and maintained by the same one of few powerful corporations. The bigger problem will be aligning incentives with the customer. Especially regarding safety, since riders can hardly evaluate that by themself.

toss1 7y ago
>>Especially regarding safety, Yes, that's a big one, and indeed may be setting up a commons problem, if not strongly regulated. For the short term, and for each individual company, cutting corners for safety will be in their interest (save funds now at no cost). But for the industry and the long term, the entire concept could be destroyed by a relatively small but tragic number of safety failures. A few high-profile passenger deaths will probably be covered in the volume of terrorist attacks, and even if the actual risk is still small, give the impression of horrible widespread risk. I'd like to hope that all the players are responsible and far-sighted, but the experience with Uber killing the cyclist in Arizona does not bode well -- they had many lapses and corner cutting, only reforming a bit when they killed someone.