4 ms·

Driverless cars are not "public transit". At best, they're slightly cheaper taxis.

piaste 3y ago
Mass taxis would still be an improvement over individual cars, which are idle 90% of the day and require parking space in the most valuable parts of the city.
- duskwuff 3y ago
  > Mass taxis would still be an improvement over individual cars No, they'd actually be substantially worse. Personal cars are poorly utilized, but they at least spend all of their time carrying at least one person (the driver), and stay off the roads when they aren't in use. A taxi will, necessarily, spend less than 100% of its time carrying a passenger; if it's being used primarily by commuters, it's likely to spend at least 50% of its time with no passengers at all (because it's deadheading back into a city to take workers home, or vice versa). Having everyone drive cars everywhere isn't sustainable, but making those cars into taxis isn't the solution either.
  - piaste 3y ago
    Good point. I was already thinking that taxis have an issue with peak demand, but I was only thinking of the capacity, I didn't consider the return trip. One option is to mix public transport with driverless taxis - consolidate public transportation into fewer, bigger routes (knocking down costs), then use driverless taxis for short trips to the station. A little inconvenient to add 1-2 extra transfers to your trip, though. There's also the opportunity to automate carpooling, but that's not quite the same - it's just moving a little further on the flexibility <-> efficiency scale of transportation (where individual vehicles are furthest left and trains are furthest right). Even if you're just sharing a taxi with 2-3 other commuters, you're still sacrificing the convenience of leaving at the time of your choice and having privacy during the trip - though of course for a big price discount.
badpun 3y ago
Dunno about "slighlty". In a typical taxi, the driver's salary/profit is most of the cost.
- harambae 3y ago
  While this is true, the typical taxi’s vehicle doesn’t cost a quarter million dollars (radar, LiDAR, high performance compute system, special calibration). I am curious how much cheaper the robotaxis will actually be for the user (right now they’re all at a loss)
  - inhumantsar 3y ago
    The median annual income for cab drivers is about $35k. Assuming a car is shared across three shifts a day, 7 days a week, then you're looking at about $105k/yr in savings.
    - duskwuff 3y ago
      > Assuming a car is shared across three shifts a day, 7 days a week Assuming that a cab can make the same income in the dead of the night as it does during peak periods is a rather bold assumption.
      - inhumantsar 3y ago
        What? How do you get that from what I wrote? My entire comment is about the cost of operating cabs averaged out over the course of a year. How much revenue a cab, whether human-operated or autonomous, generates at 1am vs 1pm is entirely irrelevant.
        duskwuff 3y ago
        > My entire comment is about the cost of operating cabs averaged out over the course of a year. And you're assuming that all cabs are operated 24 hours a day, in three shifts. They are not.

Mass taxis would still be an improvement over individual cars, which are idle 90% of the day and require parking space in the most valuable parts of the city.

duskwuff 3y ago
> Mass taxis would still be an improvement over individual cars No, they'd actually be substantially worse. Personal cars are poorly utilized, but they at least spend all of their time carrying at least one person (the driver), and stay off the roads when they aren't in use. A taxi will, necessarily, spend less than 100% of its time carrying a passenger; if it's being used primarily by commuters, it's likely to spend at least 50% of its time with no passengers at all (because it's deadheading back into a city to take workers home, or vice versa). Having everyone drive cars everywhere isn't sustainable, but making those cars into taxis isn't the solution either.
- piaste 3y ago
  Good point. I was already thinking that taxis have an issue with peak demand, but I was only thinking of the capacity, I didn't consider the return trip. One option is to mix public transport with driverless taxis - consolidate public transportation into fewer, bigger routes (knocking down costs), then use driverless taxis for short trips to the station. A little inconvenient to add 1-2 extra transfers to your trip, though. There's also the opportunity to automate carpooling, but that's not quite the same - it's just moving a little further on the flexibility <-> efficiency scale of transportation (where individual vehicles are furthest left and trains are furthest right). Even if you're just sharing a taxi with 2-3 other commuters, you're still sacrificing the convenience of leaving at the time of your choice and having privacy during the trip - though of course for a big price discount.

badpun 3y ago

Dunno about "slighlty". In a typical taxi, the driver's salary/profit is most of the cost.

harambae 3y ago
While this is true, the typical taxi’s vehicle doesn’t cost a quarter million dollars (radar, LiDAR, high performance compute system, special calibration). I am curious how much cheaper the robotaxis will actually be for the user (right now they’re all at a loss)
- inhumantsar 3y ago
  The median annual income for cab drivers is about $35k. Assuming a car is shared across three shifts a day, 7 days a week, then you're looking at about $105k/yr in savings.
  - duskwuff 3y ago
    > Assuming a car is shared across three shifts a day, 7 days a week Assuming that a cab can make the same income in the dead of the night as it does during peak periods is a rather bold assumption.
    - inhumantsar 3y ago
      What? How do you get that from what I wrote? My entire comment is about the cost of operating cabs averaged out over the course of a year. How much revenue a cab, whether human-operated or autonomous, generates at 1am vs 1pm is entirely irrelevant.
      - duskwuff 3y ago
        > My entire comment is about the cost of operating cabs averaged out over the course of a year. And you're assuming that all cabs are operated 24 hours a day, in three shifts. They are not.