3 ms·

Sure — it’s looking at the unit cost. There are 2M semi-trucks in the US, so if half are automated (1M), you can spend $1B per year for $1k per truck per year.

Sure — it’s looking at the unit cost. There are 2M semi-trucks in the US, so if half are automated (1M), you can spend $1B per year for $1k per truck per year. Which doesn’t substantially change my calculations. That’s my point: the unit costs are so ridiculously good that pulling $10k/yr in tech overhead, or $10B/yr total, you’d still come out ahead in 5 years. Phrased another way: we can spend $100B across a decade to develop automated trucking, and the consequence would be our automated trucks break even in three to five years instead of two to three years, after amortizing the R+D. I didn’t assess the operations because I couldn’t find a good metric on how much that costs now - and hand waved fleet maintenance, testing, regulation, etc as approximately the cost of the current burdens for those things.

jfim 4y ago
Oh, I agree with you, the numbers are mind boggling. Just in the US, there are 3 trillion miles driven per year, so even capturing a small part of that (be it through automating long haul trucking, goods delivery, or robotaxi applications) and getting any kind of per mile/per hour revenue makes some pretty large numbers. It's just that the AV players absolutely need to operate at scale, as their fixed costs are really high compared to a traditional trucking company.
- zmgsabst 4y ago
  I’m not sure that R+D needs to be at the operator versus manufacturer level. For instance, manufacturers not operators bear the R+D cost of better diesel engines. You can retain (relatively) small fleets if the manufacturer is amortizing the cost of technology across vehicles sold.
  - jfim 4y ago
    It really depends on whether the AV companies decide to focus purely on manufacturing and developing AVs as a product (profit at the point of sale), offer them as a service (similar to "power by the hour" in aerospace), or decide to become robotaxi/truck fleet operators to capture more profit.

jfim 4y ago

Oh, I agree with you, the numbers are mind boggling. Just in the US, there are 3 trillion miles driven per year, so even capturing a small part of that (be it through automating long haul trucking, goods delivery, or robotaxi applications) and getting any kind of per mile/per hour revenue makes some pretty large numbers. It's just that the AV players absolutely need to operate at scale, as their fixed costs are really high compared to a traditional trucking company.

zmgsabst 4y ago
I’m not sure that R+D needs to be at the operator versus manufacturer level. For instance, manufacturers not operators bear the R+D cost of better diesel engines. You can retain (relatively) small fleets if the manufacturer is amortizing the cost of technology across vehicles sold.
- jfim 4y ago
  It really depends on whether the AV companies decide to focus purely on manufacturing and developing AVs as a product (profit at the point of sale), offer them as a service (similar to "power by the hour" in aerospace), or decide to become robotaxi/truck fleet operators to capture more profit.