5 ms·
With driverless cars, the largest expense of taxis - the driver - disappears. The driver of a taxi needs to make enough in a day to cover the periods when ther
by EliRivers 14y ago
With driverless cars, the largest expense of taxis - the driver - disappears.
The driver of a taxi needs to make enough in a day to cover the periods when there are no fares, or travel from a low fare-density area back to the high fare-density areas (and in some regions with ridiculously constrained supply of taxis via "badges" or other such anti-competitive pro-monopoly legislation, to pay the ridiculous fee to just operate a cab).
With the drivers removed, you now have a fleet of taxis that can run 24 hours a day (minus maintenance etc.), cost zero to just sit and wait for a fare, and can be managed and coordinated easily to migrate across the changing fare-density regions throughout the day.
If the price and convenience goes down enough, various groups of people stop needing cars. They just use the "get me a cab" app on their smartphone (or just use the regular telephone) to get a cab when they need it. If this creates a positive feedback loop of cheaper & more convenient -> more people using it -> more taxis deploted -> cheaper & more convenient etc., then in some high-population areas, owning a car will become an unnecessary extravagance.
Operated automatically gives scope for further savings; heading from point A to point C via B, and someone in B is also going to C? You'll get offered a "share this ride for this discount" option.
All this leads, hopefully, to fewer cars needed to provide the same number of journeys, at lower cost. So, how do I go about shorting the car manufacturers? :p
- pdelgallego 14y agoYou forgot to mention another consequence, the return of the Luddites
- EliRivers 14y agoThe majority of Westeners know the following about cars; turn the wheel thing to pick a direction, push one pedal to go faster and one to go slower. Some of them also know how to operate the stick thingy. Removing this tiny scrap of knowledge is hardly returning to Ludditehood.
- pdelgallego 14y agoNot, but removing hundreds of thousands of taxi/truck drivers will do it
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- protomyth 14y agoThe licensing medallion is the largest expense of taxis in many markets
- georgemcbay 14y agoI'm fully convinced self-driving cars will be sold commercially within the next 10 years. However, it is going to be a very long time until they are allowed on the road sans human (even if they are self-driven 99% of the time, I'm positive legislation will require a human behind the wheel at all times and car makers will have to attempt to enforce this technically), which puts a serious dent in your taxi plan. You're right long term, but self-driving cars that are allowed to drive without any human behind the wheel is more like a 50 years out thing, IMO. Part of this is just cultural and political, and part of it is due to real technical challenges (there are still going to be extraordinary driving situations in which the obvious thing to do would be clear to any reasonable human but not an autonomous car without serious general purpose AI).
- EliRivers 14y ago"there are still going to be extraordinary driving situations in which the obvious thing to do would be clear to any reasonable human but not an autonomous car without serious general purpose AI" I believe that any such situation that could not be dealt with by simply coming to a safe halt is currently very badly handled by humans. I believe that they could be better handled with the _current_ state of the art, let alone advances we see over the next few decades. I'm not arguing that they could be perfectly handled; just that the machines can do better than the average meat-bag.
- georgemcbay 14y agoEven simply coming to a safe halt is problematic. What if some troll traps a self-driving car with a few empty cardboard boxes?
- Retric 14y agoIt stays still until someone removes them. If it's a cab it's more than likely to simply call for help.
- georgemcbay 14y ago