4 ms·

>Driverless cars will help almost all of those. Think how much more viable zip cars would become if you didn't have to get to the car in the first place. If you

>Driverless cars will help almost all of those. Think how much more viable zip cars would become if you didn't have to get to the car in the first place. If you could just call a car with a smartphone app and it would show up. Congratulations: You've just described taxi cabs.

noonespecial 15y ago
Taxis are expensive and severely supply side limited. Interesting things happen when things that were previously limited become much less so. People had "internet" when they dialed it at 56kbits, but things like youtube were impossible. I'd guess that self driving zip-cars would be at least as big a paradigm shift.
- waterlesscloud 15y ago
  What about driverless cars will make them inherently cheaper than taxis?
  - learc83 15y ago
    The lack of a driver. You need at least 5 employees to drive a cab 24/7 year round. Say around 40k a year per once you add in benefits, taxes, and insurance. That's works out to $200K a year. That's around 10 times the cost of a car, and a quick google search shows that the average taxi in San Francisco uses $20,000 per year in gas (down to only 7k for hybrid taxis). So in short, the largest cost (other than in places like New York where it cost a million for a taxi license) is labor, which driverless cars remove.
    - waterlesscloud 15y ago
      It's around 10 times the cost of a car with a driver. Driverless cars will not be as cheap as cars which require drivers. There will be ongoing operational and maintenance costs which cars with drivers do not have. Liability insurance will likely be lower for driverless cars, but damage and theft insurance will likely be higher. Not every cab needs to be operated 24/7, there are clear peak and non-peak times which allow for fewer than #Cabs x 5 drivers for full practical coverage. And, of course, there's no guarantee that any savings in operation would be passed on to the consumer (see electronic publishing). So I don't think it's automatic to say driverless cars will result in cheaper transportation costs. It's possible , but it's far from guaranteed.
      - learc83 15y ago
        Labor is by far the largest cost here. I have a pretty fair knowledge of the Google car and the Stanford cars that came before it. The equipment at scale isn't really that expensive and can be fairly easily retrofitted onto existing cars. Even if it ends up costing 50k and an extra 20k per year in maintenance (which is probably too high for a computer and a few actuators and sensors) taking driver labor out of the equation results will result in vast cost savings as a percentage of total operation costs. >theft insurance will likely be higher Theft will be nearly impossible for an average criminal. Remove human controls and you've instantly defeated 99% of car thieves.
        waterlesscloud 15y ago
        But as I mentioned, 5 drivers per car is overestimating considerably the actual number of drivers you need for practical coverage. You don't need your full fleet 24/7, the demand just isn't there for it around the clock. Call it three drivers for practical coverage. Now we're at $120k for labor (3 x40k). But we've added 50k to operations in other areas. So now we're saving 70k in overall costs. Which is good, but a long way from 200k. If you just needed 1 driver for the car, then there's a net loss with the driverless version (with these theoretical numbers anyway). Perhaps the most efficient method would be a base fleet of driverless cars that operated 24/7, with peak times adding in cheaper cars with human drivers....
      - rory096 15y ago
        >And, of course, there's no guarantee that any savings in operation would be passed on to the consumer (see electronic publishing). In this case it's likely that they would be. Book publishing is a rather unique case in that it's a million natural monopolies; if you want to read The Hunger Games, you're not going to be satisfied with a close substitute. Taxi services are fairly commoditized- excluding medallions, pretty much any automated taxi to show up at your door and bring you where you need to go is going to be acceptable. Thus you've got a much higher elasticity of demand thanks to this substitutability, so consumers capture more of the surplus. There's a low barrier to entry, so consumers can and will just switch to any cheaper option that comes along.
  - philwelch 15y ago
    Well, there's no driver, which reduces the labor costs involved.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- gradstudent 15y ago
  Taxis are expensive only for individuals. Share a cab with 2-3 other people and the costs plummet. Mix in some government subsidies and better integration with existing public transportation systems and you have a perfectly adequate cost-effective solution right now. Without any fancy robots.
  - Apocryphon 15y ago
    There's already Internet carpool services. I'm wondering why none have taken off like Zipcars have.

noonespecial 15y ago

Taxis are expensive and severely supply side limited. Interesting things happen when things that were previously limited become much less so. People had "internet" when they dialed it at 56kbits, but things like youtube were impossible. I'd guess that self driving zip-cars would be at least as big a paradigm shift.

waterlesscloud 15y ago
What about driverless cars will make them inherently cheaper than taxis?
- learc83 15y ago
  The lack of a driver. You need at least 5 employees to drive a cab 24/7 year round. Say around 40k a year per once you add in benefits, taxes, and insurance. That's works out to $200K a year. That's around 10 times the cost of a car, and a quick google search shows that the average taxi in San Francisco uses $20,000 per year in gas (down to only 7k for hybrid taxis). So in short, the largest cost (other than in places like New York where it cost a million for a taxi license) is labor, which driverless cars remove.
  - waterlesscloud 15y ago
    It's around 10 times the cost of a car with a driver. Driverless cars will not be as cheap as cars which require drivers. There will be ongoing operational and maintenance costs which cars with drivers do not have. Liability insurance will likely be lower for driverless cars, but damage and theft insurance will likely be higher. Not every cab needs to be operated 24/7, there are clear peak and non-peak times which allow for fewer than #Cabs x 5 drivers for full practical coverage. And, of course, there's no guarantee that any savings in operation would be passed on to the consumer (see electronic publishing). So I don't think it's automatic to say driverless cars will result in cheaper transportation costs. It's possible , but it's far from guaranteed.
    - learc83 15y ago
      Labor is by far the largest cost here. I have a pretty fair knowledge of the Google car and the Stanford cars that came before it. The equipment at scale isn't really that expensive and can be fairly easily retrofitted onto existing cars. Even if it ends up costing 50k and an extra 20k per year in maintenance (which is probably too high for a computer and a few actuators and sensors) taking driver labor out of the equation results will result in vast cost savings as a percentage of total operation costs. >theft insurance will likely be higher Theft will be nearly impossible for an average criminal. Remove human controls and you've instantly defeated 99% of car thieves.
      - waterlesscloud 15y ago
        But as I mentioned, 5 drivers per car is overestimating considerably the actual number of drivers you need for practical coverage. You don't need your full fleet 24/7, the demand just isn't there for it around the clock. Call it three drivers for practical coverage. Now we're at $120k for labor (3 x40k). But we've added 50k to operations in other areas. So now we're saving 70k in overall costs. Which is good, but a long way from 200k. If you just needed 1 driver for the car, then there's a net loss with the driverless version (with these theoretical numbers anyway). Perhaps the most efficient method would be a base fleet of driverless cars that operated 24/7, with peak times adding in cheaper cars with human drivers....
    - rory096 15y ago
      >And, of course, there's no guarantee that any savings in operation would be passed on to the consumer (see electronic publishing). In this case it's likely that they would be. Book publishing is a rather unique case in that it's a million natural monopolies; if you want to read The Hunger Games, you're not going to be satisfied with a close substitute. Taxi services are fairly commoditized- excluding medallions, pretty much any automated taxi to show up at your door and bring you where you need to go is going to be acceptable. Thus you've got a much higher elasticity of demand thanks to this substitutability, so consumers capture more of the surplus. There's a low barrier to entry, so consumers can and will just switch to any cheaper option that comes along.
- philwelch 15y ago
  Well, there's no driver, which reduces the labor costs involved.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
gradstudent 15y ago
Taxis are expensive only for individuals. Share a cab with 2-3 other people and the costs plummet. Mix in some government subsidies and better integration with existing public transportation systems and you have a perfectly adequate cost-effective solution right now. Without any fancy robots.
- Apocryphon 15y ago
  There's already Internet carpool services. I'm wondering why none have taken off like Zipcars have.