That's interesting. SoftBank invested a similar amount into their rivals Grab to head up against Uber. https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/23/grab-raises-2b-from-didi-c...
Also in Brazil's "99", Uber's biggest competitor over here.
Uber confirms SoftBank has agreed to invest
101–105 of 105 posts
Re: Uber confirms SoftBank has agreed to invest
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
My understanding is that in a reasonably stable state, an autonomous car would run on battery, charge itself and cost 40k. If a car has a life time of 5 years and electricity costs 4k/yr + 2k maintenance (lower for electric cars), we are looking at operational cost of 14k/yr per vehicle. Right now an Uber driver who is probably online 60 hours a week, needs to support a car priced around 25k (amortized over 5 years),…
Great comment. Let me take a stab at it as well, because I think it could be simpler. Let's assume the driver drives the exact same model as the autonomous one, except he saves $10k upfront on the sensors. So his costs are 12k/year. A decent alternate job would pay $10/hour, and a person could probably work 9 hours a day * 6 days a week * 50 weeks, which comes to $27k. So for the taxi driving gig to be worthwhile, th…
I have gone through a few different versions of these calculations and got similar results. Even if the driverless tech costs more it is still around half the costs of a human driven car.
On factor I have not seen fully addressed is the ability of driverless cars to run near 24/7. Given than demand is variable and human drivers could share cars like taxis what is the worth in practice?
Re: Uber confirms SoftBank has agreed to invest
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Great comment. Let me take a stab at it as well, because I think it could be simpler. Let's assume the driver drives the exact same model as the autonomous one, except he saves $10k upfront on the sensors. So his costs are 12k/year. A decent alternate job would pay $10/hour, and a person could probably work 9 hours a day * 6 days a week * 50 weeks, which comes to $27k. So for the taxi driving gig to be worthwhile, th…
I have gone through a few different versions of these calculations and got similar results. Even if the driverless tech costs more it is still around half the costs of a human driven car. On factor I have not seen fully addressed is the ability of driverless cars to run near 24/7. Given than demand is variable and human drivers could share cars like taxis what is the worth in practice?
I think having access to rides at all hours is helpful. You might not take many rides at 2am, but when you do, its something pretty important. Having a safe option that's available at any time of day or night will make self-driving equal to or better than actually owning a car and far superior to conventional taxi rides.
Re: Uber confirms SoftBank has agreed to invest
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whoever solved self-driving cars could buy 10,000 cars per city. Let's say each car costs $100,000. That's $1B if paid upfront which is never the case, but let's assume. Now, each of those 10,000 cars could work 24x7. Assuming each ride is $10, and you can do 50 rides in a day (2 trips per hour on average over the entire day), that's $500 per day less electricity and maintenance. That's $5M/day with no employee costs…
While I'm bullish that self-driving will happen in our lifetimes, I think there are a lot of challenges that many are underestimating. This includes the actual technology—this is one of the most important and challenging technological breakthroughs of all time. It's going to take time and be very, very expensive to produce at scale (ie all-electric self-driving cars at $100K a piece). Even putting that aside, I have…
Great points. The other thing I might add, which your points support, is that the longer the roll-out of self-driving cars takes, the less likely it is to be disruptive to TNCs.
Re: Uber confirms SoftBank has agreed to invest
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wouldn’t Running your own cars would mean incredible capital costs and marketing costs to get people to switch from uber? Additionally you need people maintaining them.
Whoever solved self-driving cars could buy 10,000 cars per city. Let's say each car costs $100,000. That's $1B if paid upfront which is never the case, but let's assume. Now, each of those 10,000 cars could work 24x7. Assuming each ride is $10, and you can do 50 rides in a day (2 trips per hour on average over the entire day), that's $500 per day less electricity and maintenance. That's $5M/day with no employee costs…
In the case of Tesla it is the customers that pay for the cars.