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from the I'm-sorry-Dave,-I-can't-do-that dept.
[...] some experts believe as much as 95% of passenger miles could be electric, autonomous by 2030, thanks to some basic economics. Because electric vehicles cost a whole lot less to drive and maintain—but more to buy—and because autonomous vehicles greatly reduce the cost of commercial driving, a combination of the two technologies will make autonomous Transportation as a Service exponentially more cost competitive than either owning a car, or hiring a car and driver. It's also exponentially more profitable for car companies, who have long feared the loss of maintenance and service profits associated with a transition to electric cars.
This question will come up more frequently as self-driving technology advances. Will perfection of that technology make a difference, though, in the face of social behaviors that have been deeply ingrained over the past century?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:46PM (1 child)
You're going to be paying the cost of buying, maintaining, and insuring a car regardless; those costs don't go away, the vehicle's owner passes them on to you, with the addition of his profit.
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(Score: 2) by jcross on Wednesday July 26 2017, @05:44PM
But those are fixed costs that get smaller as the car gets closer to full utilization. Most people probably drive their cars 10-20k miles per year, but a taxi racks up 5-10 times that, so imagine taking out the cost of the driver and splitting the rest 5-10 ways, and it starts to look a lot cheaper. Sure, insurance might scale up with the number of miles, but my guess is this will be balanced by a much lower rate of incidents caused by self-driving cars. Maintenance might also scale up, but fleet managers will be balancing that by optimizing the cars for long service life and maintainability, and taking advantage of economies of scale. Seems like it wouldn't be hard to run the numbers for taxis, and see how much of the revenue goes for the vehicle, fuel, and profit vs what's paid for the driver, dispatcher, and medallion. My guess is the cost is mostly labor and if a ride were to cost a dollar or two it would start to look like a really sweet deal.