4 ms·

If we assume that people continue to drive the same number of miles per year, the robotaxi concept won't actually reduce the number of cars being produced* . (n

by swimfar 12y ago

If we assume that people continue to drive the same number of miles per year, the robotaxi concept won't actually reduce the number of cars being produced* . (number of cars produced/year=number of people * average number of miles driven per (person* year) * (1/average life of a car in miles) ). But it would do two other things. It would reduce the number of cars in existence at any given time potentially freeing up space (garages, driveways, parking garages, street parking, etc.) for other things. Also, cars would wear out faster (in time) which means you would shift the average age of cars on the road down. So on average it would also increase the safety and efficiency of cars on the road as well. Imagine 10 people who drive 10k miles per year who own cars that last 100k miles (just for the sake of simplicity). Right now, those people would each own one car for 10 years. In the system you suggest they would all share one car which would be replaced every year. So they would be driving a (technologically) new car every year. Of course this assumes that none of them ever want/need to drive at the same time. Perfect usage like that is not likely, but you can see that shared usage would still have this effect (even if it is not as large). * Neglecting the damage to cars which is not due to driving wear, e.g. corrosion. Taking this into account we would expect to see a reduction in the production due to being able to get more miles out of a car before it "can't" be driven anymore.

nkoren 12y ago
Your formula is incorrect; time is more of a factor than mileage, when it comes to vehicle deterioration. This is why you routinely see taxis with more than 300,000 miles on their engines. Furthermore, automation itself will reduce wear-and-tear. I worked on the driverless pod system at Heathrow Terminal 5. One of the things we found was that wear-and-tear on the system was almost negligible -- probably less than 10% of what you would see in a human-driven vehicle. This was partially due to the fact that it was driving on a smoother surface than an ordinary roadway -- but also due to the extremely conservative and consistent acceleration/braking behaviour which the vehicles achieved, which put much less stress on many parts of the system. Although those are essentially hand-built prototype vehicles, I expect them to last ~400,000 miles before requiring significant refurbishment. Based on these observations,I feel quite comfortable predicting a dramatic decline in the rate of vehicle sales within the next several decades.

by swimfar 12y ago

nkoren 12y ago

Your formula is incorrect; time is more of a factor than mileage, when it comes to vehicle deterioration. This is why you routinely see taxis with more than 300,000 miles on their engines. Furthermore, automation itself will reduce wear-and-tear. I worked on the driverless pod system at Heathrow Terminal 5. One of the things we found was that wear-and-tear on the system was almost negligible -- probably less than 10% of what you would see in a human-driven vehicle. This was partially due to the fact that it was driving on a smoother surface than an ordinary roadway -- but also due to the extremely conservative and consistent acceleration/braking behaviour which the vehicles achieved, which put much less stress on many parts of the system. Although those are essentially hand-built prototype vehicles, I expect them to last ~400,000 miles before requiring significant refurbishment. Based on these observations,I feel quite comfortable predicting a dramatic decline in the rate of vehicle sales within the next several decades.