IMHO this is how self driving applications should start. Driving on the US freeways (say between LA and SF) isn't about your driving skills. It's mostly just about trying not to fall asleep. And machines are way better than humans at this!
Even outside the US, there are many areas (like UAE), which have amazing highways, sparse traffic and there isn't rail/air connectivity to some places. Self driving "shuttles" seem perfect for those applications.
In general, highways seem like a pretty logical starting point. There are some potential complications like car accidents and debris but they seem far more tractable than random pedestrians, cyclists, and all the complex driving behavior on city streets resulting from traffic lights, trucks stopped to make deliveries, etc. etc.
It doesn't enable end-to-end autonomous taxis, so you need a sober, licensed driver in the driver's seat even if they don't need to be able to take over on a second's notice.
Handling long distance highway driving would actually be a big win. It just doesn't stir imaginations the same way that completely eliminating a driver door-to-door does--especially among people who really want to get out of car ownership and driving entirely.
> especially among people who really want to get out of car ownership
I have brought this up before and I still do not understand how or why this idea is so tightly coupled to fully autonomous vehicles. I don't see how removing a human driver from a car service is going to change the dynamics enough to drive legions of people who own cars to get rid of them if they haven't done so already. The only friction a human driver adds right now is cost, but I don't see the cost savings of removing the driver being high enough to move the needle.
There seems to be an implicit assumption that autonomous driving would somehow make the cost of effectively renting cars by the mile (and have them come to your door) almost too cheap to meter. Whereas, especially for transportation options that involve multiple people in a vehicle, the cost of a driver isn't really all that much relative to the overall cost of operating a vehicle.
For any imagined scenario involving autonomous vehicles ushering in new modes of sharing, renting, etc., a useful question to ask is: "Why don't we have this today?" And, if the answer is anything other than "$10/hour for a human driver makes it too costly," then you should probably reconsider.
> Whereas, especially for transportation options that involve multiple people in a vehicle, the cost of a driver isn't really all that much relative to the overall cost of operating a vehicle.
Do you have a source on this? It’s my understanding that most mass transit systems in the US spend a huge amount on operator compensation. BART, the one I’m most familiar with, spends $500m of its $691m operating budget on salary and benefits [0] despite the fact that BART trains already drive themselves!
First off, you cannot ignore the $876mm capital portion of the budget; that money needs to come from somewhere.
Second, that $500mm covers every employee of BART. The administrators, maintenance personnel, police, and other non-operator functions do not go away. Without knowing what portion of that line item goes to operators one cannot make a judgement on how much cheaper the system would be without them.
Of course you're right; my comment was mostly tongue-in-cheek. Actual train operator salaries probably cost BART about $50m annually, not $500m. In both the cases of BART and private cars, the money to pay for tracks or roads comes from taxpayers. The trains themselves are now 40+ years old, and are finally being replaced at a cost of ~$300m this year. Grandparent post specifically talked about operating costs though.
All that said, trains are basically the most efficient mode of transport from a (number of drivers) / (number of passengers) perspective.
But speaking seriously for a moment:
- Lyft charges riders about $2/mile in the Bay Area [0] before fees.
- The IRS lets you depreciate your vehicle at a rate of $0.545/mile.
- A reasonably efficient car burns ~40 mpg on freeway, at $3.50/gallon that's ~$0.09/mile.
So, of the $2/mile the riders pay, about 1/3 of that is costs associated with purchasing and operating the vehicle (according to IRS estimates) and fuel.
If we eliminate the rest via autonomous driving, and taxis became 65% cheaper, I suspect many people would make much more use of them.
Utilization rates are 50-58% for Uber or Lyft. When you take it into account that a taxi is not en route 100% of the time, and add the cost (interest, depreciation) of a much more expensive vehicle, I think your 65% savings go up in smoke.
Sorry, I'm not smart enough for this comment to stick with me. Could you walk me through how 50% utilization means the savings go up in smoke?
The most compelling thing I can pull from your comment is "autonomous cars will be 3x as expensive as regular cars (at least), so you won't save anything". That may be short-term true, but is almost certainly long-term false.
A 50% utilization compared with 100% utilization makes almost no difference in vehicle cost structure -- if anything, it actually increases the labor fraction of taxi cost.
If you're driving your car 50% of the time, then wear and milage is the dominant depreciation factor (rather than age). But a human sitting around doing nothing but waiting for that 50% of the time doubles the labor (time) cost of the service, suggesting an even greater savings from eliminating the human driver.
I was assuming humans and self-driving cars both get revenue from riders, but don't get paid in between. And I'm interpreting utilization as the percentage of the time that riders are paying.
For renting cars there is a big advantage. You may notice that different drop offs have different fees associated. This is because people tend to collect around certain areas. This creates the need for company drivers to redistribute the cars. Being able to do that dynamically and automatically has a huge advantage. It also allows you to make the rental locations more sparse and efficiently packed.
So yes, it does lessen the cost of renting cars. But it doesn't make it anywhere near too cheap to meter.
The more "mass" the transit the harder it is for the vehicle to go exactly where all the people on it want to go. Subway, maybe walk a 1/2 mile, bus somewhat less but lots of stops, individual road transport, very close.
An auto-car just sitting costs almost nothing per hour (capital cost, but very little other cost), so you can have lots of them everywhere. Pickup time can be very short. I almost never used taxis in my town because of long and unreliable pickup times. Use uber all the time now. I still own a car, but if I did not have off street parking like many in my neighborhood, getting rid of it would be a no-brainer.
> An auto-car just sitting costs almost nothing per hour (capital cost, but very little other cost)
I'm not sure it's fair to dismiss capital cost parenthetically as part of "almost nothing". Maybe if the auto-cars were retrofitted 10-15 year old vehicles and the retrofitting cost a fraction of the vehicle's value, I'd agree. However, if they're all brand new (and even electric, where the TCO is weighted toward capital and away from operating costs), I say it's far from almost nothing.
Additionally, you go on to point out:
> if I did not have off street parking like many in my neighborhood, getting rid of it would be a no-brainer.
Therein lies a cost of "just sitting" that is routinely brought up in any car vs public transit (or other alternatives like bicycles or walkable designs) conversation.
The denser the area, the higher the cost. I suspect that if you did not have off street parking due to density, the parking portion of the "just sitting there" cost included in the pricing of the auto-car would make it no longer a no-brainer.
Where auto-cars could at least gain some space efficiency is in being able to park bumper-to-bumper and with minimum side clearance, since there would be no need for a human to enter or exit while it's in storage.
Auto cars can also drive away from expensive parking when not in use. Lots of Uber drivers live in Sacramento but work in SF 80 miles away.
Maybe if interest rates go up capital costs will be an issue, but using a 100k car paying 4% interest is $4000 a year or about $0.50 per hour. When not moving there is basically no wear and tear or fuel costs. Almost nothing compared to paying a driver.
> Auto cars can also drive away from expensive parking when not in use.
Driving away is, of course, not standing still. That increases the cost, but, perhaps more importantly, increased latency (or, rather, jitter).
They need not be stored in the most expensive, densest areas, but, for those who want to get rid of car ownership, that non-zero cost (especially if borne by the public with free on-street parking) isn't likely one they're willing to ignore.
> about $0.50 per hour.
A car sitting idle for 9 hours per day and averages 30mph while driving adds 1 cent per mile. A car sitting idle for 18 hours adds 5 cents per mile.
The former may be almost nothing, but the latter isn't.
Depreciation and utilization rates need to be incorporated.
If interest + depreciation is about $9K/yr, that's $25 a day, which means if you drive 8 hrs a day and have a 58% utilization rate, is $5.38/hr which is not all that far from what Uber drivers net. At 30 mph, it's 18 cents added per mile.
A self-driving car could perhaps operate more than 8 hours a day, but that doesn't mean that customers will be equally available at all hours.
I strongly suspect that when you do a proper analysis, self-driving cars are just competitive and not hugely cheaper.
> Depreciation and utilization rates need to be incorporated.
That's tough to do, since we don't know either one. I suspect there's also a (perhaps incorrect) assumption that an unused auto-car will be "just sitting there" rather than moving, in which case utilization is, effectively, 100%.
That's not possible with a human driver in at least the case of a long one-way trip. However, with auto-cars, this could end up merely increasing the capital cost at the expense of unpaid/empty trip cost.
The extra cost is something I mentioned in my latency/jitter comment, wrt cheaper parking.
> $5.38/hr which is not all that far from what Uber drivers net
I didn't check your arithmetic, but, if so, it's is quite far from the fair/livable wage of $15/hr that at least I've been assuming for this conversation.
The fact that rideshare services are currently, effectively, paying much less is certainly an indication that even that may not be enough to lure people away from ownership.
Utilization rate means percentage of time that is billed to a customer, I believe/presume. Whether a car is moving is not the same thing. The issue is whether it is on the clock or not, and given that computers already are used to match passengers and route cars, I'm not clear on why we would expect a drastic increase. Currently, we see 50-60%. Even a perfect routing algorithm can't make it 100%, because there are only so many customers, so things like how many cars there are per customer matter. If you reduce the cars per customer, service suffers. If you increase the number, utilization falls.
> given that computers already are used to match passengers and route cars, I'm not clear on why we would expect a drastic increase
It depends on what the denominator is.
If it's only the time between when a driver/auto-car "accepts" the ride and the end of the ride, there's little reason [1] to expect a drastic increase.
However, if the denominator is the total time the driver is "on duty", which is, I believe, what is generally used to calculate rideshare drivers' effective hourly compensation, then my original point stands. That is, an auto-car can be "on duty" even while just sitting in storage.
The current algorithm also doesn't tell rideshare drivers where to be while on duty, only routing them once a ride is requested. In the auto-car scenario, the computer has complete control, so a predictive algorithm could increase utilization, even if the denominator is time-in-motion.
Whether any increase would be drastic is debatable, but there's opportunity for something.
[1] Currently, the computer routing algorithm has an incentive to optimize for time at the expense of distance (since it's the driver who bears the expense of the unbilled distance, AFAIK). In the case of an auto-car, that perverse incentive would be absent, but I don't expect the difference to be huge.
"That is, an auto-car can be "on duty" even while just sitting in storage."
If you consider the robot to "work" for more hours than a human, that's great, but due to the lower average revenue, it needs to be cheaper in order to be competitive with humans. There's no way to move your self-driving car to the opposite side of the world for the night.
"Whether any increase would be drastic is debatable, but there's opportunity for something."
If self-driving cars are cheaper, it seems like that would lead to more of them driving longer hours than humans, which would lower the utilization rather than increase it.
> due to the lower average revenue, it needs to be cheaper
It's unclear to me, but this may be tautological, or at least reversible (by being cheaper to be competitive, it reduces revenue). Perhaps I'm missing your point?
> There's no way to move your self-driving car to the opposite side of the world for the night.
Ah, but that's moot. Unlike with a human driver, an auto-car doesn't need to be moved to the opposite side of the world (or an approximation, like Sacramento from SF) for the night.
> If self-driving cars are cheaper, it seems like that would lead to more of them driving longer hours than humans, which would lower the utilization rather than increase it.
You're still confusing "driving" (in motion) with "on duty".
Also, even if an auto-car is cheaper while driving, that doesn't matter if the different parties are bearing the cost of off-meter driving. In the auto-car case, it's the vendor (e.g. Uber), so there's a strong incentive to maximize utilization. In the human case, it's the driver, so the vendor has no such incentive (nor even the ability during "on duty" but not driving-for-that-vendor times).
auto-vehicle? I'll try to use that. A much better word especially since car=always bad for some people.
Bicycle parking is also a problem in many areas that have a high density of bicycle users. See Amsterdam train stations or apartment buildings where you have to store your bike in your 600sqft apartment.
Walking is really the best although these new electric skateboards seems to be almost totally portable and storable.
If the technology becomes commoditized, the cost reduction would be massive. A $30000 vehicle can drive 200K miles for the price of fuel and occasional cleaning. That's in the 30 - 50 cent/mile area, almost a full order of magnitude. Insurance premiums will depend on how safe they are - so they will be very low if self driving cars are to be allowed in any way on the road.
> A $30000 vehicle can drive 200K miles for the price of fuel and occasional cleaning.
That is significantly underestimating the operating costs of a vehicle, especially a vehicle that is used heavily. There is a lot of periodic maintenance required, and the frequency increases as usage gets more stressful. Then there is non-periodic maintenance, be it from accidents, vandalism, or just flawed parts.
It's true that most of these costs come in even if you own, but putting 200k miles on a car over eight years costs less (both per-mile and per-unit-time) than putting 200k on in two years.
> putting 200k miles on a car over eight years costs less (both per-mile and per-unit-time) than putting 200k on in two years
The per mile part sounds like a personal speculation. (Per unit of time is obvious and irrelevant here)
Quite the contrary, it's most efficient to put the load in a short span to minimize time-limited consumables like belts and seals, fixed costs like insurance and regulatory charges per vehicle, interest, depreciation of things like paint and esthetic appeal etc. The battery has an age induced wear also, the tech is moving fast and more efficient vehicles are always appearing and so on.
The IRS allows a 50 something cents per mile business expense deduction. And if you run some numbers that’s a pretty good ballpark for the cost of operating a car.
Considering that's more than a cab costs in some European countries, driver included, I would say we aren't talking about commodity tech, but a highly profitable initial phase.
Self-driving people talk about this because, even if the tech worked, the costs of the hardware involved is currently so prohibitively high (~$100,000s per car) that a taxi model is the only one that makes sense.
In which case the capital costs of the vehicle will wipe out a good chunk of the cost savings from removing a human. Therefore, there will be no mass shift away from car ownership.
A $300k robotaxi could still undercut conventional taxi/rideshare, but the costs will have to come down considerably before they challenge the economics of personal vehicle ownership.
The comment beside you says that a car has a useful lifespan of 200,000 miles, or 50¢ per mile for the tech. The internet suggests the average highway speed in the US is 70mph. That suggests that it will cost $35/hr. for the autonomy and probably that much again for the car itself.
At $70/hr., I expect people will still opt to own their own vehicle.
Certainly not, and in many cases it may even cost more than that to drive your own car. But the car comes with a huge advantage that taxis have fallen short on:
The cost is upfront. People sit down and budget $x for transportation and then they know that amount of money will get them anywhere they want to go. People hate having to decide in the moment whether they want to spend the money or not. I notice a similar phenomena when it comes to mobile phone service. People would rather pay extra for a plan that provides more than they could ever need than to have a lesser plan and pay overages when needed because the overages require thinking about it in the moment, rather than pre-planning how much they want to budget. $70/hr. isn't even going to have anyone thinking twice about changing their behaviour completely.
Maybe robs-taxi services will pioneer a pay ahead of time service that captures the necessary mindshare that will make ownership obsolete, but that won't have anything to do with the technology. There is nothing stopping a taxi service from doing that today with human drivers. It's just a tough business model to work with when providing services, so it is uncommon.
Even outside the US, there are many areas (like UAE), which have amazing highways, sparse traffic and there isn't rail/air connectivity to some places. Self driving "shuttles" seem perfect for those applications.