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I’m looking forward to the day when the cost of taking one of these falls to somewhere 20% above the cost of fuel and wear and tear on the vehicle, making it in

I’m looking forward to the day when the cost of taking one of these falls to somewhere 20% above the cost of fuel and wear and tear on the vehicle, making it incredibly cheap to take a ride anywhere you’d reasonably want to be driven to.

freddie_mercury 11mo ago
How do you know it isn't already at that price? Uber estimated that it costs Waymo $2/mile to operate. Google says they charge $1.60 to $2.60 a mile, depending on location and demand, so Waymo is already almost certainly at the price you claim you'd be taking it. I think you dramatically underestimate how much it actually costs to operate a car. Most people think they pay $0 to garage their car, for instance, since the cost was rolled into the price of their house purchase and mostly invisible. But it isn't $0 to a business. Likewise, very few people depreciate their car over just 5 years. Or clean it inside and out every single day. Here's one attempt at costs for Waymo that finds it costs them about $60,000 a year to operate a single car. Also notice the comments talking about how the per vehicle price is high, how that flows into higher insurance, and all kinds of other things. https://www.reddit.com/r/waymo/comments/1il5d5i/unit_costs_per_revenue_mile_estimate/ https://www.reddit.com/r/waymo/comments/1il5d5i/unit_costs_p... Maybe someday there will be a discount AV taxi company using 10 year old beat up Honda Civics that only get cleaned once a month and provide extremely barebones support to pull the costs down to $1/mile. That's a 50% drop in costs from today, so hard to see it coming very quickly. But that's still pretty expensive to be using as a daily commuter! And note that the IRS per mile rate is $0.70/mile. It's not perfect but it is a decent third party estimate of the true cost of operating a car. Hard to see any taxi company charging anything less than that. So a 10 mile commute every day is still going to cost you $280/month in an AV taxi for the foreseeable future.
- tshaddox 11mo ago
  > Most people think they pay $0 to garage their car, for instance, since the cost was rolled into the price of their house purchase and mostly invisible. But it isn't $0 to a business. And on the other hand, each Waymo parking spot is probably a lot cheaper per unit time than 250 square feet inside a house in a residential area. And presumably they need a lot less than 1 parking spot per car. > Here's one attempt at costs for Waymo that finds it costs them about $60,000 a year to operate a single car. Doesn't that sound cheap? If a car can average 10 rides per day, that's $16 per ride.
- tobyjsullivan 11mo ago
  > Google says they charge $1.60 to $2.60 a mile That’s surprising. I’ve been trying to find data on rates and crowd-sourced data and anecdotes seem closer to $6/mile
  - AlotOfReading 11mo ago
    You get completely different numbers if you go by overall cost / distance vs taxi pricing models. In the latter, you separate out the flag drop fee (~$10 for Waymo) from the mileage and time process. Here's an experimental Waymo price tracker trying to estimate these numbers: https://waymo-pricing.streamlit.app/ https://waymo-pricing.streamlit.app/ $2 is a good target for the AV mileage rate. It's actually somewhat high if I put my industry hat on for a second. It's not a good estimate for the number you'll get from doing total_price/distance.
- skinnymuch 11mo ago
  I’ve never seen a Waymo ride be even close to $2/mile
- maxerickson 11mo ago
  Is it clear that they are decommissioning them when they are done depreciating them?
- cyberax 11mo ago
  > Uber estimated that it costs Waymo $2/mile to operate. Waymo costs are immaterial right now. Their cars are not production cars, and they have spent billions on R&D that they can't even hope to recoup with the current fleet. That being said, $2 is super-low. The IRS rate for car depreciation write-off is 71 cents per mile. > But that's still pretty expensive to be using as a daily commuter! The true cost of a transit ride in NYC or Seattle is around $20-$30 per ride. People don't actually pay that much because it's heavily subsidized. Once self-driving matures, it'll also be subsidized and it will completely kill off transit. Maaaaaybe excluding subways in some areas.
- NewJazz 11mo ago
  Yeah 1bd condos with parking in my city are easily 20% more expensive. Something like 1.5-2k a year to rent a spot.

freddie_mercury 11mo ago

How do you know it isn't already at that price? Uber estimated that it costs Waymo $2/mile to operate. Google says they charge $1.60 to $2.60 a mile, depending on location and demand, so Waymo is already almost certainly at the price you claim you'd be taking it. I think you dramatically underestimate how much it actually costs to operate a car. Most people think they pay $0 to garage their car, for instance, since the cost was rolled into the price of their house purchase and mostly invisible. But it isn't $0 to a business. Likewise, very few people depreciate their car over just 5 years. Or clean it inside and out every single day. Here's one attempt at costs for Waymo that finds it costs them about $60,000 a year to operate a single car. Also notice the comments talking about how the per vehicle price is high, how that flows into higher insurance, and all kinds of other things. https://www.reddit.com/r/waymo/comments/1il5d5i/unit_costs_per_revenue_mile_estimate/ https://www.reddit.com/r/waymo/comments/1il5d5i/unit_costs_p... Maybe someday there will be a discount AV taxi company using 10 year old beat up Honda Civics that only get cleaned once a month and provide extremely barebones support to pull the costs down to $1/mile. That's a 50% drop in costs from today, so hard to see it coming very quickly. But that's still pretty expensive to be using as a daily commuter! And note that the IRS per mile rate is $0.70/mile. It's not perfect but it is a decent third party estimate of the true cost of operating a car. Hard to see any taxi company charging anything less than that. So a 10 mile commute every day is still going to cost you $280/month in an AV taxi for the foreseeable future.

tshaddox 11mo ago
> Most people think they pay $0 to garage their car, for instance, since the cost was rolled into the price of their house purchase and mostly invisible. But it isn't $0 to a business. And on the other hand, each Waymo parking spot is probably a lot cheaper per unit time than 250 square feet inside a house in a residential area. And presumably they need a lot less than 1 parking spot per car. > Here's one attempt at costs for Waymo that finds it costs them about $60,000 a year to operate a single car. Doesn't that sound cheap? If a car can average 10 rides per day, that's $16 per ride.
tobyjsullivan 11mo ago
> Google says they charge $1.60 to $2.60 a mile That’s surprising. I’ve been trying to find data on rates and crowd-sourced data and anecdotes seem closer to $6/mile
- AlotOfReading 11mo ago
  You get completely different numbers if you go by overall cost / distance vs taxi pricing models. In the latter, you separate out the flag drop fee (~$10 for Waymo) from the mileage and time process. Here's an experimental Waymo price tracker trying to estimate these numbers: https://waymo-pricing.streamlit.app/ https://waymo-pricing.streamlit.app/ $2 is a good target for the AV mileage rate. It's actually somewhat high if I put my industry hat on for a second. It's not a good estimate for the number you'll get from doing total_price/distance.
skinnymuch 11mo ago
I’ve never seen a Waymo ride be even close to $2/mile
maxerickson 11mo ago
Is it clear that they are decommissioning them when they are done depreciating them?
cyberax 11mo ago
> Uber estimated that it costs Waymo $2/mile to operate. Waymo costs are immaterial right now. Their cars are not production cars, and they have spent billions on R&D that they can't even hope to recoup with the current fleet. That being said, $2 is super-low. The IRS rate for car depreciation write-off is 71 cents per mile. > But that's still pretty expensive to be using as a daily commuter! The true cost of a transit ride in NYC or Seattle is around $20-$30 per ride. People don't actually pay that much because it's heavily subsidized. Once self-driving matures, it'll also be subsidized and it will completely kill off transit. Maaaaaybe excluding subways in some areas.
NewJazz 11mo ago
Yeah 1bd condos with parking in my city are easily 20% more expensive. Something like 1.5-2k a year to rent a spot.