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Why Generation Y Is Causing The Great Migration Of The 21st Century

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Re: Why Generation Y Is Causing The Great Migration Of The 21st Century

#111

Post by waterlesscloud »

learc83 wrote: post #88
waterlesscloud wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about driverless cars will make them inherently cheaper than taxis?

The lack of a driver. You need at least 5 employees to drive a cab 24/7 year round. Say around 40k a year per once you add in benefits, taxes, and insurance. That's works out to $200K a year. That's around 10 times the cost of a car, and a quick google search shows that the average taxi in San Francisco uses $20,000 per year in gas (down to only 7k for hybrid taxis). So in short, the largest cost (other than in place…

It's around 10 times the cost of a car with a driver.

Driverless cars will not be as cheap as cars which require drivers.

There will be ongoing operational and maintenance costs which cars with drivers do not have.

Liability insurance will likely be lower for driverless cars, but damage and theft insurance will likely be higher.

Not every cab needs to be operated 24/7, there are clear peak and non-peak times which allow for fewer than #Cabs x 5 drivers for full practical coverage.

And, of course, there's no guarantee that any savings in operation would be passed on to the consumer (see electronic publishing).

So I don't think it's automatic to say driverless cars will result in cheaper transportation costs. It's possible , but it's far from guaranteed.

Re: Why Generation Y Is Causing The Great Migration Of The 21st Century

#112

Post by randomdata »

learc83 wrote: post #27
batista wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Additionally the rise of the self driving car is going to completely torpedo 90% of the advantages of living in a city. The rise of what? We've seen some experimental designs, but I don't see the "rise" coming any time soon. Plus, the price of oil is more important factor --as for them "coordinating with other vehicles to increase efficiency" (as someone writes in a comment below), well, that seems marginal, especia…

>but I don't see the "rise" coming any time soon. Nevada already implemented regulations to allow companies to test drive self driving cars on its roads, and all it will take for the rest of the nation to follow is for Google get California on board. The technology is already here. It's all about regulation and politics now, and there is so much money to made that it's just a question of when not if. If I can't buy a…

The technology is already here.

The current state of the technology is really impressive, but there are still real technical problems to solve before it is something that is ready for you to buy. As far as I know, nobody has successfully driven a driverless car in snow, for example.

Re: Why Generation Y Is Causing The Great Migration Of The 21st Century

#113

Post by learc83 »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #111
learc83 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of a driver. You need at least 5 employees to drive a cab 24/7 year round. Say around 40k a year per once you add in benefits, taxes, and insurance. That's works out to $200K a year. That's around 10 times the cost of a car, and a quick google search shows that the average taxi in San Francisco uses $20,000 per year in gas (down to only 7k for hybrid taxis). So in short, the largest cost (other than in place…

It's around 10 times the cost of a car with a driver. Driverless cars will not be as cheap as cars which require drivers. There will be ongoing operational and maintenance costs which cars with drivers do not have. Liability insurance will likely be lower for driverless cars, but damage and theft insurance will likely be higher. Not every cab needs to be operated 24/7, there are clear peak and non-peak times which al…

Labor is by far the largest cost here.

I have a pretty fair knowledge of the Google car and the Stanford cars that came before it. The equipment at scale isn't really that expensive and can be fairly easily retrofitted onto existing cars.

Even if it ends up costing 50k and an extra 20k per year in maintenance (which is probably too high for a computer and a few actuators and sensors) taking driver labor out of the equation results will result in vast cost savings as a percentage of total operation costs.

>theft insurance will likely be higher

Theft will be nearly impossible for an average criminal. Remove human controls and you've instantly defeated 99% of car thieves.

Re: Why Generation Y Is Causing The Great Migration Of The 21st Century

#114

Post by rory096 »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #111
learc83 wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lack of a driver. You need at least 5 employees to drive a cab 24/7 year round. Say around 40k a year per once you add in benefits, taxes, and insurance. That's works out to $200K a year. That's around 10 times the cost of a car, and a quick google search shows that the average taxi in San Francisco uses $20,000 per year in gas (down to only 7k for hybrid taxis). So in short, the largest cost (other than in place…

It's around 10 times the cost of a car with a driver. Driverless cars will not be as cheap as cars which require drivers. There will be ongoing operational and maintenance costs which cars with drivers do not have. Liability insurance will likely be lower for driverless cars, but damage and theft insurance will likely be higher. Not every cab needs to be operated 24/7, there are clear peak and non-peak times which al…

>And, of course, there's no guarantee that any savings in operation would be passed on to the consumer (see electronic publishing).

In this case it's likely that they would be. Book publishing is a rather unique case in that it's a million natural monopolies; if you want to read The Hunger Games, you're not going to be satisfied with a close substitute. Taxi services are fairly commoditized- excluding medallions, pretty much any automated taxi to show up at your door and bring you where you need to go is going to be acceptable. Thus you've got a much higher elasticity of demand thanks to this substitutability, so consumers capture more of the surplus. There's a low barrier to entry, so consumers can and will just switch to any cheaper option that comes along.

Re: Why Generation Y Is Causing The Great Migration Of The 21st Century

#115

Post by learc83 »

randomdata wrote: post #112
learc83 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but I don't see the "rise" coming any time soon. Nevada already implemented regulations to allow companies to test drive self driving cars on its roads, and all it will take for the rest of the nation to follow is for Google get California on board. The technology is already here. It's all about regulation and politics now, and there is so much money to made that it's just a question of when not if. If I can't buy a…

The technology is already here. The current state of the technology is really impressive, but there are still real technical problems to solve before it is something that is ready for you to buy. As far as I know, nobody has successfully driven a driverless car in snow, for example.

>As far as I know, nobody has successfully driven a driverless car in snow, for example.

Snow is really the last technological problem left. Rain is fine, but heavy snow completely blocks almost all visual indicators.

That being said, it's not an insurmountable problem and there are plenty of places where snow is almost never a problem.

If you look at the DARPA grand challenge. In 2004 the farthest anyone got was 7 miles. Yet one year later 5 vehicles successfully completed the 150 mile course, and all but one of the 23 finalists surpassed the 7 mile best from the previous year.

If California said that beginning in 2015 it would be legal for private citizens to own and operate a self driving car, I have no doubt there would be several companies with commercial products the first day they were legal.

The obstacles are almost totally political at this point.

Re: Why Generation Y Is Causing The Great Migration Of The 21st Century

#116

Post by sliverstorm »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #109
sliverstorm wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a freeway drive, I assure you, energy spent maintaining speed is the primary investment by great lengths. This is an over-generalization. Yes, city mileage is generally lower than highway, and yes, it is because of stop-and-go. But markedly different? My old car got 32 freeway, 29 city. My current car gets 27 freeway, 25 city. Cars with a large difference, like your BMW, suffer either from poor aerodynamics or eng…

Poor aerodynamics would make the difference smaller, not larger. We can drastically increase fuel efficiency by making our cars out of carbon fibre, and it doesn't have to be more expensive or less safe. Check out Amory Lovin's concept car for one example. We believe lighter = less safe, despite evidence to the contrary (in reality it's smaller = less safe, lighter = safer). Perhaps computer controlled cars will allo…

Poor aerodynamics would make the difference smaller, not larger.

Whoops, you're right, that is a silly mistake on my part.

Re: Why Generation Y Is Causing The Great Migration Of The 21st Century

#117

Post by jsolson »

learc83 wrote: post #5

There's plenty of truth in that article, but I can't help but think that this trend is almost purely a product of demographic changes. People wait longer to get married and have children, so there way more 25-30 year olds who worry more about living within walking distance to a bar and less about a backyard and a nice school. Many of the urban Gen Y the article talks about will move back to the suburbs when they have…

As mentioned elsewhere in the comments, not all cities are created equal. I spent a decade or so in Atlanta (ages 18-28), and I agree that if I were to have kids there I'd almost certainly move out to the suburbs (probably Decatur, certainly not something like Roswell or Alpharetta). Now I live in Seattle, though, and here I'm likely to stay in the city. Everything here feels denser, and there are a number of nice neighborhoods within the city where you can buy a nice (albeit obscenely expensive) home. I hear the schools aren't bad either. I see a lot of families around town made up of people that seem a lot like me. I never saw that in Atlanta.

Re: Why Generation Y Is Causing The Great Migration Of The 21st Century

#118

Post by egypturnash »

I must be ahead the curve, or refusing to "grow up". I was born in 1971 which may or may not qualify me for "Gen X" and living in a revitalized urban area is the best thing ever to me.

Of course I have also never learnt to drive despite now being 40. I can NOT thrive in a suburb. It also helps that I found a damn nice area to live.

But honestly I think this owes as much to deliberate urban planning efforts in the 80s/90s to "revitalize downtown" as it does to anything GenY wants. It is now easy and fun to live in the city again, instead of it being a desperate scary place; all the poor people now largely live way the fuck out in the burbs and have nightmare commutes to their shitty city jobs.

Re: Why Generation Y Is Causing The Great Migration Of The 21st Century

#119

Post by philwelch »

philwelch wrote: post #95
TheFuture wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The self driving car will be much more energy efficient, especially if they can communicate with each other to optimize traffic flow

You're using 2500 pounds of steel to carry a 200 pound human. Even if you assume 100% efficiency and power it with pixie dust that's too energy intensive. You're also using a 6 foot by 12 foot cage to convey that human being, which isn't scalable regardless of how much you optimize traffic flow. And that's if you're driving a Mini Cooper .

Not sure what I said wrong here. If someone could explain so I can improve I'd appreciate it.

Re: Why Generation Y Is Causing The Great Migration Of The 21st Century

#120

Post by hkarthik »

_delirium wrote: post #86
Lewisham wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You sound like you're describing the LA area (with the exception of the city center gentrifying). It seems that what has happened is that, for the majority of American cities, they grew as an either/or option: you're either in the city, or you're in the suburbs, and the car enabled that in cities where it could. The cities which were geographically constrained, such as NYC or SF, were unable to sprawl outwards, and h…

Yeah, I think that's the correct analysis. Having lived in Houston a few years, one thing that I think happens is that without geographical constraints, and with the way things are currently funded, it's easier to just keep moving out. Where I lived in the 1990s was a "new" suburban area of Houston, but already by the 2000s there were abandoned stores, because if a store moved out of a building, sometimes another sto…

We've got nearly the same problem in Dallas. For decades the development has moved further north into the Ex-burbs and bedroom communities.

The interesting component is how the development gets financed in a Ponzi-esque scheme. Suburbs are built out with municipal bonds, which subsidize the build outs of services (schools, police, fire stations, roads) while keeping property taxes low. Once the suburb is completely built out, the taxes double or triple to pay back the bonds. Then the next suburb just north or south of it is built with more new bonds and the cycle continues.

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