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I want it delivered to my door on demand. To schedule a slot in car pool or book a rental I need to pick-up somewhere is out of the question. (Also the whole “p

I want it delivered to my door on demand. To schedule a slot in car pool or book a rental I need to pick-up somewhere is out of the question. (Also the whole “pool” things sounds way to social, just want to pay someone and get going) I don’t live in a city, so would need to take the train or bus to the city to pickup a cheap rental as it is. Don’t think we have Uber or Lyft here but my assumption was that they are mostly useful as a taxi replacement to get around within a city. My use case are more focused on removing the need to have a car in the garage but keep the freedom drive on short notice to run errands and take trips. Perhaps drive to work but take the train home after a beer in the evening. Having remote controlled cars was simply a way to optimize costs. Should be cheaper to have drivers located offshore somewhere than tied to a particular car.

mdorazio 7y ago
Ok, I see. You've basically described a business model that is completely non-viable. The overhead of owning the car, getting it to you, then getting it back to a central hub would force the price past a point people in your situation are willing to pay. Remote control is not much cheaper than having an actual driver in terms of operating cost (they need to be close enough that latency is not an issue), and much more expensive in terms of hardware, software, and liability insurance. You'd have to price the service high enough to cover at least an additional $50k in hardware, software, and data per vehicle, lowest minimum wage within 500 miles for the time required to get it to and from you, vehicle operating costs for the distance to get it to and from you, and added insurance because few companies are going to say remote control driving is safe. There's also the regulatory component since I don't think most places allow remote driving.
- CuriousSkeptic 7y ago
  For me it’s competing with leasing a car. If it can be cheaper than that I’d consider it. But yeah, perhaps I’m overestimating the cost of real drivers

mdorazio 7y ago

Ok, I see. You've basically described a business model that is completely non-viable. The overhead of owning the car, getting it to you, then getting it back to a central hub would force the price past a point people in your situation are willing to pay. Remote control is not much cheaper than having an actual driver in terms of operating cost (they need to be close enough that latency is not an issue), and much more expensive in terms of hardware, software, and liability insurance. You'd have to price the service high enough to cover at least an additional $50k in hardware, software, and data per vehicle, lowest minimum wage within 500 miles for the time required to get it to and from you, vehicle operating costs for the distance to get it to and from you, and added insurance because few companies are going to say remote control driving is safe. There's also the regulatory component since I don't think most places allow remote driving.

CuriousSkeptic 7y ago
For me it’s competing with leasing a car. If it can be cheaper than that I’d consider it. But yeah, perhaps I’m overestimating the cost of real drivers