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> If we get a self-driving Uber or Lyft we're going to have an entire generation of people who just have their phone summon transportation and never own a car.
by amyjess 11y ago
> If we get a self-driving Uber or Lyft we're going to have an entire generation of people who just have their phone summon transportation and never own a car.
This is going to be affected by cost. Let's look at the numbers.
A Lyft between work and home for me is about $10, plus tip (which is usually $2 for me, except in the rare case the driver's a creep), assuming Prime Time isn't in effect.
If I were to take Lyft both ways every day, that's about $24/day. If I work 22 days in a month, that's $528/month just on my commute. If I want to run errands and Lyft it to places outside of work, that's even more money. Oh, and until the beginning of this year, I worked much farther away from home than I do now, and a Lyft would've run me about $25 each way (possibly closer to $30), plus tip (which, by this point, would go up to $5). At $60/day, I'd be spending $1320/month on commute alone.
How does this compare to other methods of transportation?
Looking at public transport, a monthly pass here is $80. This is a great deal if you both live and work on a bus or train line, assuming you're willing to put up a longer commute. For example, public transit was perfect for my last job, because I lived and worked on the same bus line, and while my commute took an hour (going from the suburbs to downtown by bus takes a while), I didn't mind it because I could just spend the bus ride reading books and comics on my phone, or if I'd been sleep-deprived, I could just zone out in my seat. Also, the only benefit my last company offered was that they'd pay for employees' transit passes (or for those who drive, they'd pay for a parking pass at a local garage, but we could only pick one or the other), so I basically got to commute for free. If you're off the beaten path, however, public transport isn't an option, and if you're reliant on public transit, it limits the companies you can accept positions at.
How does this compare to owning a car? I don't know. I'm not joking here: I've never actually owned a car. Anyone else care to chime in? For the record, I live in North Texas, where cost of living is relatively low, so I'd especially like to hear from other people in my area. If owning a car is cheap enough, then Lyft and Uber will have to drop their prices like a rock to supplant cars for everyone.
- mahyarm 11y agoYou live in suburbia, where the distances are long because it's been designed for cars, parking, roads and huge highways. The parking & roads are also subsided. Also your transit is probably subsidized heavily. %80 of the cost is probably paid by your local government / tax dollars. Lets take the cost of owning a Prius V that drives 500 miles a day: - $260/mo car 'lease' ($8.6/day) [200'000 miles over 8 years] - $200/mo in repairs ($6.6/day) [Will probably be less in reality] - $200/mo in insurance ($6.6/day) [Will probably be less in reality] - $50/day in gas Now the shift employees, that you pay lets say $15/hr on average for 18 hours a day are $270/day. Their cost alone is 3.75 times greater than all of the other costs combined of $72/day. Even if the robot service costed a crazy $2000/month (which it wont be), that is still 4 times lower than employees. So if the corporation passes the robot savings to you your commute costs, they will be x2.5 lower even with my inflated estimates. Your $528 will become around $220, and that is less than the cost of owning a car currently. If we can convince governments to shift their subsidies to these robot cars to make it %20 of costs, it will be $44/month, which is about half of your transit ticket cost, for on demand travel. In all cases, the majority of the costs is human labor. By making cars shared, less cars will need to exist, so parking real estate can be reassigned to other more productive uses. There will be less congestion because these automated cars can synchronize properly. The total amount of cars that would need to exist would only be needed to serve peak base load, like a electrical utility. Also the speed of trains comes from the fact that they have a dedicated 'road' that only they can travel, so congestition doesn't exist and therefore the service is predictable. You can do the same thing with busses and roads.
- ChuckMcM 11y agoExactly this, and the fact that self driving cars can replace all of the other forms of transport (train, bus, taxi) and with electric versions of said cars amortize maximize energy utilization and reduce waste, the numbers just get surprisingly good all around. 80% of the population of the US lives in an "urban" area and they won't personally own cars any more. [1] http://www.citylab.com/housing/2012/03/us-urban-population-what-does-urban-really-mean/1589/ http://www.citylab.com/housing/2012/03/us-urban-population-w...