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The biggest issue for all of the self driving taxi service ideas is fleet maintenance. First of all, you need to own and insure a fleet of rolling depreciating

by breput 5y ago

The biggest issue for all of the self driving taxi service ideas is fleet maintenance. First of all, you need to own and insure a fleet of rolling depreciating assets. Maybe not as much these days with the crazy used car prices, but still, you have put these cars on the books. You can't even really lease the vehicles because of all of the LIDAR and other self driving modifications that are required. Next you have to keep these vehicles fueled - either gasoline or electricity, so you are going to need to pay people to handle that. And you have ongoing maintenance for brakes, fluids, etc. And space to park them overnight and in low demand times. And you also have the interior maintenance. Someone has to clean up the puke and garbage and just general messiness of having humans in the backseat of this car. Throughout the day, every day. And this has to be repeated in every single city while competing against Uber and Lyft and traditional taxi companies that already know that the driver is probably the least expensive part of this whole system.

_vertigo 5y ago
Yeah, can't agree more. The main thing stopping self driving taxi services is maintenance and cleaning.
woofcat 5y ago
Aren't these all issues that car rental agencies have? Somehow they turn a profit on renting you a car for $80/day which I imagine is less than a tax takes in for fares per day.
- breput 5y ago
  They do, but they buy or lease ordinary unmodified vehicles for a year or two then flip them at auction. Zero overhead here except for the buying/disposing of vehicles. $80/day is probably a decent estimate, but once you include the optional insurance upsells and other add-ons (full tank of gas?) I bet they make way more than $80/day per car. They also have very limited liability for what the driver does in their car while Waymo basically has unlimited liability.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    I’m sure the costs Uber offer are accurate and not incredibly subsidized: https://www.uber.com/us/en/drive/vehicle-solutions/ https://www.uber.com/us/en/drive/vehicle-solutions/ So $260-270/week? Not sure if they have any extra fees applied, however.
    - breput 5y ago
      Did you miss the /s tag? You are actually trusting Uber's calculation, especially when they recently had to spend $250 million[1] to try to recruit new drivers? [1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/uber-spending-250-million-to-lure-drivers-back-to-work-as-pandemic-restrictions-ease-11617835211 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/uber-spending-250-million-...
      - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        I’m not sure what your piece of data has to do with how much Uber says you can rent a car for to drive for them. It seems like you want to really really believe that rental car prices advertised anywhere are complete fiction.
        breput 5y ago
        I clicked on the link and got "Sorry, there are no offers available in your area. Please try again later". So their rental business is limited, at best.
        seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        Now is a horrible time to rent a car since there is an industry wide shortage.
      - aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 5y ago
        > Did you miss the /s tag? My browser’s search function spotted only one instance of that string, and it was this question.
zone411 5y ago
All of these maintenance issues exist with regular taxi fleets driving equivalent miles, though. The main difference is the taxi driver salary vs the cost of the self-driving tech plus some support and extra interior cameras and this should be in favor of self-driving cars. From the customer's point of view, self-driving cars might be slower but safer.
- breput 5y ago
  It depends on who owns, maintains, and is paying for the vehicle and license/medallion to operate. The whole system - whether Uber/Lyft drivers who "relied on their unfamiliarity with capital depreciation calculations"[1] or traditional cabbies who, let's be honest is not a glamorous job, is tenuous at best. Cutting out the lowest cost factors and replacing them with technology and also incurring the fleet costs doesn't really seem like a great business. [1] https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/10/unter/#bezzle-no-more https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/10/unter/#bezzle-no-more
seanmcdirmid 5y ago
> Next you have to keep these vehicles fueled - either gasoline or electricity, so you are going to need to pay people to handle that. I don’t understand how someone who could solve the self driving problem could solve the “plug the car in via simple robotics after it parks itself” problem. They are also able to park near the city where parking is cheaper, though I guess it could also turn out like it does in China (if anyone is out at 2AM and see all the taxis pushed over to the side of the road with sleeping drivers). Anyone who lives in a city with a heavy taxi presence already isn’t going to be deterred by these challenges, just the Americans and some other drivin heavy countries will need to adapt.
- breput 5y ago
  There have been modern electric cars available for, let's say, 15 years now and I haven't seen a single practical automated charging system. There have been plenty of proposals, like Tesla's snake robot or inductive undercar charging plans, but no actual production-ready solutions. But even if you had the magical autocharging robot that will not help with gasoline powered vehicles (like all of Waymo's) and you still would need dedicated real estate and charging stations to recharge these vehicles.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    I’m pretty sure once self driving cars are really a thing for all consumers, it will coincide with the move over to EVs en masse (2030?). The only reason no one finds automated plug-in charging necessary right now is simply because those cars don’t really need it yet.
eatporktoo 5y ago
I'm not sure why you think having a large fleet of vehicles is problem. Rental car companies already exist. As far as fueling/charging- Even if you had to pay a few people in the short-term to do the work, it isn't a high-skill job. Being generous, I can't fathom a situation where it could cost more than $2 per car in physical labor. Assuming you could drive more than 200 miles on a charge, that is less than a penny per mile in cost. Also, there are already gas stations in some states with people that will fill your gas tank for you. I am also sure an autonomous solution would be devised if that became a limiting factor. You could pretty easily design a purpose-built system for it. I agree that regular maintenance needs to be performed, but I don't agree that the companies themselves need to solve the problem on their own. This seems like it would be something to easily contract out to a local company to handle. For standard maintenance and cleaning, there are plenty of companies that clean cars and plenty of companies that perform maintenance on cars already. It should just be a matter of getting contracts in place and making sure that they have software to do their jobs. I didn't do the math to figure out the cost of a human driver vs the total taxi cost, but even if true the cost isn't trivial. Truckers, for example, can make upwards of $80k per year and that's not even at 50% utilization for the vehicle. If you assume a taxi driver would make $40k/year and they have 50% utilization of the car (I'm making up numbers for the sake of discussion), that is still a significant amount of cost. I would be surprised if maintenance and fuel would be $40k per year regardless of vehicle.
- breput 5y ago
  Rental car companies do not need to either pay for the labor or the fuel to power their vehicles, and actually make a lot of extra money with "prepaid" or "return it empty" schemes. By churning their vehicles on a regular basis, they avoid many of the ongoing maintenance issues that would impact Waymo with their customized vehicles. You're right that a Waymo would probably outsource the interior and (probably) mechanical maintenance to local providers, but they would need to deal with that in every city and with the additional technology involved in self-driving, you're probably not going to trust that the local shade tree mechanic will be able to handle that. So you have at least two problems now. Over The Road drivers do make surprisingly good money, but that is a skilled job with a significant amount of training and regulation. In-town cabbies are often people with few other opportunities and are easily exploitable. The taxi cab business is notorious corrupt and is a big part of how Uber/Lyft could easily replace these services.

by breput 5y ago

_vertigo 5y ago

Yeah, can't agree more. The main thing stopping self driving taxi services is maintenance and cleaning.

woofcat 5y ago

Aren't these all issues that car rental agencies have? Somehow they turn a profit on renting you a car for $80/day which I imagine is less than a tax takes in for fares per day.

breput 5y ago
They do, but they buy or lease ordinary unmodified vehicles for a year or two then flip them at auction. Zero overhead here except for the buying/disposing of vehicles. $80/day is probably a decent estimate, but once you include the optional insurance upsells and other add-ons (full tank of gas?) I bet they make way more than $80/day per car. They also have very limited liability for what the driver does in their car while Waymo basically has unlimited liability.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  I’m sure the costs Uber offer are accurate and not incredibly subsidized: https://www.uber.com/us/en/drive/vehicle-solutions/ https://www.uber.com/us/en/drive/vehicle-solutions/ So $260-270/week? Not sure if they have any extra fees applied, however.
  - breput 5y ago
    Did you miss the /s tag? You are actually trusting Uber's calculation, especially when they recently had to spend $250 million[1] to try to recruit new drivers? [1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/uber-spending-250-million-to-lure-drivers-back-to-work-as-pandemic-restrictions-ease-11617835211 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/uber-spending-250-million-...
    - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
      I’m not sure what your piece of data has to do with how much Uber says you can rent a car for to drive for them. It seems like you want to really really believe that rental car prices advertised anywhere are complete fiction.
      - breput 5y ago
        I clicked on the link and got "Sorry, there are no offers available in your area. Please try again later". So their rental business is limited, at best.
        seanmcdirmid 5y ago
        Now is a horrible time to rent a car since there is an industry wide shortage.
    - aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 5y ago
      > Did you miss the /s tag? My browser’s search function spotted only one instance of that string, and it was this question.

zone411 5y ago

All of these maintenance issues exist with regular taxi fleets driving equivalent miles, though. The main difference is the taxi driver salary vs the cost of the self-driving tech plus some support and extra interior cameras and this should be in favor of self-driving cars. From the customer's point of view, self-driving cars might be slower but safer.

breput 5y ago
It depends on who owns, maintains, and is paying for the vehicle and license/medallion to operate. The whole system - whether Uber/Lyft drivers who "relied on their unfamiliarity with capital depreciation calculations"[1] or traditional cabbies who, let's be honest is not a glamorous job, is tenuous at best. Cutting out the lowest cost factors and replacing them with technology and also incurring the fleet costs doesn't really seem like a great business. [1] https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/10/unter/#bezzle-no-more https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/10/unter/#bezzle-no-more

seanmcdirmid 5y ago

> Next you have to keep these vehicles fueled - either gasoline or electricity, so you are going to need to pay people to handle that. I don’t understand how someone who could solve the self driving problem could solve the “plug the car in via simple robotics after it parks itself” problem. They are also able to park near the city where parking is cheaper, though I guess it could also turn out like it does in China (if anyone is out at 2AM and see all the taxis pushed over to the side of the road with sleeping drivers). Anyone who lives in a city with a heavy taxi presence already isn’t going to be deterred by these challenges, just the Americans and some other drivin heavy countries will need to adapt.

breput 5y ago
There have been modern electric cars available for, let's say, 15 years now and I haven't seen a single practical automated charging system. There have been plenty of proposals, like Tesla's snake robot or inductive undercar charging plans, but no actual production-ready solutions. But even if you had the magical autocharging robot that will not help with gasoline powered vehicles (like all of Waymo's) and you still would need dedicated real estate and charging stations to recharge these vehicles.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  I’m pretty sure once self driving cars are really a thing for all consumers, it will coincide with the move over to EVs en masse (2030?). The only reason no one finds automated plug-in charging necessary right now is simply because those cars don’t really need it yet.

eatporktoo 5y ago

I'm not sure why you think having a large fleet of vehicles is problem. Rental car companies already exist. As far as fueling/charging- Even if you had to pay a few people in the short-term to do the work, it isn't a high-skill job. Being generous, I can't fathom a situation where it could cost more than $2 per car in physical labor. Assuming you could drive more than 200 miles on a charge, that is less than a penny per mile in cost. Also, there are already gas stations in some states with people that will fill your gas tank for you. I am also sure an autonomous solution would be devised if that became a limiting factor. You could pretty easily design a purpose-built system for it. I agree that regular maintenance needs to be performed, but I don't agree that the companies themselves need to solve the problem on their own. This seems like it would be something to easily contract out to a local company to handle. For standard maintenance and cleaning, there are plenty of companies that clean cars and plenty of companies that perform maintenance on cars already. It should just be a matter of getting contracts in place and making sure that they have software to do their jobs. I didn't do the math to figure out the cost of a human driver vs the total taxi cost, but even if true the cost isn't trivial. Truckers, for example, can make upwards of $80k per year and that's not even at 50% utilization for the vehicle. If you assume a taxi driver would make $40k/year and they have 50% utilization of the car (I'm making up numbers for the sake of discussion), that is still a significant amount of cost. I would be surprised if maintenance and fuel would be $40k per year regardless of vehicle.

breput 5y ago
Rental car companies do not need to either pay for the labor or the fuel to power their vehicles, and actually make a lot of extra money with "prepaid" or "return it empty" schemes. By churning their vehicles on a regular basis, they avoid many of the ongoing maintenance issues that would impact Waymo with their customized vehicles. You're right that a Waymo would probably outsource the interior and (probably) mechanical maintenance to local providers, but they would need to deal with that in every city and with the additional technology involved in self-driving, you're probably not going to trust that the local shade tree mechanic will be able to handle that. So you have at least two problems now. Over The Road drivers do make surprisingly good money, but that is a skilled job with a significant amount of training and regulation. In-town cabbies are often people with few other opportunities and are easily exploitable. The taxi cab business is notorious corrupt and is a big part of how Uber/Lyft could easily replace these services.