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A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

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Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#191

Post by CydeWeys »

BubRoss wrote: post #149
CydeWeys wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, once you don't need to drive it personally you can run a lot more errands, and thus will. See the linked article. And look at how much more random stuff people buy when a click of a mouse gets it delivered to your house vs having to go to stores looking for it.

If one car is going in a loop and delivering to lots of people it would be less time on the road than all the cars of the individual errands.

This doesn't seem to be the world we're headed towards though. People like owning their own personal vehicles and aren't likely to give that up.

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#192

Post by skinnymuch »

kjksf wrote: post #57
Someone wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

”The cars would no longer be an expression of personality and a status symbol” You’re not the only one claiming that, but I don’t think it automatically follows. People can currently afford to buy cars for themselves, so unless self-driving cars will be (much) more expensive, people still would be able to afford them. So, in this case, the question is what else, if anything, people would want to use their money on in…

When you use X and then a substitute Y arrives that is 10x cheaper and more convenient, you'll switch to it. Using robotaxi network will be much cheaper than total cost of owning a car, mostly because cars are dramatically underutilized. On average a car is used 1-2 hrs a day out of 12-16 hrs it could be used as a robotaxi. To start off we have 5-7x price difference. Then most use is not shared. Assuming robotaxis wi…

Why wouldn’t there be different classes of cars? If I’m going to work every day in an autonomous car and the price is not that expensive, there’s a chance I’ll decide to pay 25% or 40% more of what you say will be a dirt cheap price, to be in a nicer car with better seating and amenities. Especially if it becomes standard to pop open an iPad or laptop during your commute.

Others have already covered how any potentially profitable niche will be covered.

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#193

Post by yazaddaruvala »

jcranmer wrote: post #178
yazaddaruvala wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you believe Elon Musk the Model 3 currently sold for $50-60k USD will be worth $100k USD as a robotaxi. For us in 2019 it really is hard to imagine the worth of a car that is used 99% of the time rather than parked 95% of the time. When robotaxis have been real for a decade, car manufacturers will build and run robotaxi fleets. Unlike today, vertical integration of manufacturing, maintenance, recycling and operati…

> Rather than optimizing to sell cars (have them degrade and sell more) People often talk about cars being afflicted by this style of planned obsolescence, but the facts are that cars last far longer now than they did 50 years ago. What planned obsolescence does exist is in the form of trying to shame you for running an "old" car as opposed to knowingly making the manufacturing quality of cars utter shit.

I agree, as a non-professional driver the lifetime of the car is measured in years/aesthetics.

Meanwhile, a professional driver can put on 25k-50k miles per year[1]. Compared to 10k-15k miles per year on average[2]. Meaning professional drivers hit the car’s mileage limit, 200k-300k in 6-8 years. Already it would be better for them to have cars that are optimized for cleaning, maintainability, and longer lifespans. And this doesn’t even talk about lifespans of wheels or the expedited cost of maintenance.

Taking this math further: This is targeting 40 hour work weeks for professional drivers. If we targeted 75% (a lower bound) of the total hours in a week 168, we see robotaxis will drive 3-4x the miles of today’s Uber drivers. Setting lifespans of 2-4 years per taxi.

Large robotaxi fleet operators will likely become manufacturers but regardless they will change the mental model of how car manufacturing currently operates.

Robotaxis will not only absorb the profits of the taxi industry but also the profits from the car manufacturing industry, car maintenance industry, car rental industry, last-mile delivery (including food delivery) industry, rental housing industry, and more. The scale will eventually be unimaginable allowing the margins to be astonishingly low.

[1] https://www.quora.com/How-many-miles-does-a-full-time-driver...

[2] https://www.carinsurance.com/Articles/average-miles-driven-p...

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#194

Post by Supermancho »

CydeWeys wrote: post #144
Supermancho wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Drives back empty to pick up parent to drive to work. This implies there are no other people for which a rideshare would be suitable in either direction at any given time. This seems, like an unreasonable way to predict how mass AV would work. Again, demand is asymmetrical, which means there are opportunities for aggregation and overlap, when talking about mass adoption to the point that "the majority of cars on th…

We're not talking about rideshares, we're talking about autonomous personal vehicles. Most people are not likely to give up their personal vehicles; they'll just have self-driving ones.

> We're not talking about rideshares, we're talking about autonomous personal vehicles

> they'll just have self-driving ones.

That won't last long, because of market inefficiency. Why pay for maintenance and energy on a vehicle? It's just as unrealistic as saying we'll keep personal vehicles running on gasoline, to me.

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#195

Post by BubRoss »

CydeWeys wrote: post #191
BubRoss wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one car is going in a loop and delivering to lots of people it would be less time on the road than all the cars of the individual errands.

This doesn't seem to be the world we're headed towards though. People like owning their own personal vehicles and aren't likely to give that up.

What are you basing that on? In dense cities with good transportation infrastructure people don't own cars nearly as much and the people that do own cars use them less.

I think you are confusing necessity with desire.

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#196

Post by leetcrew »

Supermancho wrote: post #194
CydeWeys wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're not talking about rideshares, we're talking about autonomous personal vehicles. Most people are not likely to give up their personal vehicles; they'll just have self-driving ones.

> We're not talking about rideshares, we're talking about autonomous personal vehicles > they'll just have self-driving ones. That won't last long, because of market inefficiency. Why pay for maintenance and energy on a vehicle? It's just as unrealistic as saying we'll keep personal vehicles running on gasoline, to me.

people who can afford it value exclusive ownership of an item. a good example is the vacation home. it's possible to defray the cost of ownership of the second home by a lot if you are willing to rent it out to others while you aren't using it, but most people don't seem to do this. [0]

I suspect that unless it gets banned outright, wealthy people will be happy to pay whatever it costs to guarantee strangers can't leave a bad smell in the vehicle that takes them to work.

[0] only about 30%, according to https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/07/12/study-mor...

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#197

Post by masonic »

whoisthemachine wrote: post #182
masonic wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'll optimize profit by being able to respond instantly to hails , capturing as much market share as possible. So, the entire idle fleet will orbit downtown all the time.

Is that necessary? Couldn't such companies also have many cars parked around downtowns, ready to be activated for a ride at any time? Remember, without a driver, there's no need for someone to "orbit", looking for riders, rather the riders call the cars themselves.

parked... where?

Urban parking is already expensive and often hard to find.

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#198

Post by yazaddaruvala »

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #193
jcranmer wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rather than optimizing to sell cars (have them degrade and sell more) People often talk about cars being afflicted by this style of planned obsolescence, but the facts are that cars last far longer now than they did 50 years ago. What planned obsolescence does exist is in the form of trying to shame you for running an "old" car as opposed to knowingly making the manufacturing quality of cars utter shit.

I agree, as a non-professional driver the lifetime of the car is measured in years/aesthetics. Meanwhile, a professional driver can put on 25k-50k miles per year[1]. Compared to 10k-15k miles per year on average[2]. Meaning professional drivers hit the car’s mileage limit, 200k-300k in 6-8 years. Already it would be better for them to have cars that are optimized for cleaning, maintainability, and longer lifespans. A…

P.S. Fleet operators will also optimize the cars for most recycling ability.

Just look at the trend with a manufacturing company like Apple. Metal frames not only look good but also recycle better and are better for business as a whole.

Apple has an iPhone tradein program because recycling materials can be cost effective for them.

Apple has also added the subscription program where customers are always upgraded to the newest iPhones but somehow it’s better business for Apple than force them to use secondary markets to sell old phones and constantly buy new phones. It’s more cost effective for these type of customers and good business for Apple (in large part because of their effective recycling ability).

Robotaxi fleet operators

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#199

Post by dmitriid »

akadruid1 wrote: post #91
dmitriid wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spotify's central office in Stockholm has ~1000 employees. So, at 6pm a thousand people call up the efficient fast driverless cars to go home.... And that's just one office out of a dozen on that street.

Those 1000 people don't have to be served by 1000 privately owned single occupancy vehicles. When they are inputting their destination before departure, a robo taxi can deliver 6-8 people with similar destinations door-to-door for a fraction of the cost of a private vehicle, the same comfort level, but occupy hardly more road space then 70-80 seat transit buses.

So, those 1000 people have to:

- somehow find other people "with similar destinations"

- somehow synchronise the time they leave work

- figure out who calls and pays for the robo-taxi

How is that effecient?

And, once again, that's just one office on a street of a dozen or so office buildings. Across is a building that houses 10 or so different companies. So I guess those people should also somehow group themselves across companies?

Re: A Week with Chauffeurs Showed the Major Flaw in a Self-Driving Car Future

#200

Post by maremp »

neaanopri wrote: post #63
rrrrrrrrrrrryan wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're going to have to slowly shift to more usage-based pricing if we want autonomous cars to work. Start off charging tolls per mile for zero occupancy vehicles when they drive in congested areas, then expend it to single occupancy vehicles in congested areas, etc. A bit more controversial, but I personally love the idea of a congestion-free fast lane (say, 100+ mph) exclusively for autonomous vehicles, with prices…

Gas taxes are already effectively toll-per-mile, with a bonus incentive to get fuel efficient cars. If we start seeing enough EV adoption to dent gas tax revenues, that's a win.

If you’re talking gas tax in the US, I’d say that’s laughable. Using eia.gov[1] as a reference, the prices are half of what we have in the EU. We’ve observed a steady increase in the prices (mostly due to taxes). But it didn’t have the effect, people just deal with the higher price and carry on. There’s even more cars than there used to be. And the average living standard in the east/SE EU is lower of that in the US.

When I was in Göteborg, Sweden, I saw this system where the toll increases based on the time, and it’s highest (~30 SEK = ~3€) in the rush hour. There was no price in the off hours. Maybe if it costs more to drive in the rush hour, one might think about not doing it or finding someone else to split the cost.

To rely on the “tax system” to take care of the congestion/traffic pollution problem, we’d have to bump the taxes and tolls by 10x to see any effect. EV is a step in the right direction, but only by a small amount. We need incentive to drive less, something that forces everyone to think before they drive. And by everyone I have in mind the person who is driving and also the person who is making them drive to the office to have their physical presence to do the same work they can do from anywhere. Make it more expensive for a company to have car riders and make them count commute as part of the workday. I believe remote work is a part of the solution to this and making it more expensive to get everyone to the HQ every day might make more managers reconsider if it’s necessary.

[1]: https://www.eia.gov/petroleum/gasdiesel/

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