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Autonomous Car Progress
- Thread starter stopcrazypp
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- Autonomous Vehicles
SalisburySam
Active Member
SalisburySam
Active Member
Don’t most taxi drivers rent their taxis? If so, the driver isn’t a cost to the owner but the actual customer.
My whole point is that I'm not going to get rid of my existing car that works fine. But when it is time to replace it, and the service is available, if it's good enough, of course I would use it. 95% of people will be in the same boat.Only about 81% of the U.S. population are in urban areas. Only 71% are in urban areas with a population over 50,000 people.
So somewhere between 19% and 29% of the U.S. population are special, and have legitimate needs that can't plausibly be met with robotaxis, because they live in areas that aren't dense enough or populous enough to have taxi or ride share services, much less robotaxi services.
Remember that for every New York City, there are a hundred Bucksnort, TNs.
Also, you're ignoring commuters entirely. The longer the commute, the less likely it is that a robotaxi will be able to do something useful while waiting for you to return, and the more your trip will cost. In dense urban areas with people commuting single-digit miles, that probably isn't an issue, but even in semi-suburban areas like most of the Bay Area, it can be a problem.
If they have a car, why will they bother paying more money for the service that's less convenient than having their own car there? Just to not have to drive? I mean for some people, maybe, but I think a lot of people will say, "Yeah, or I could spend $45k on a Model 3 and have the best of both worlds."
If you can actually make it that cheap, it might be the majority of people who live in areas that can practically be served by such a service. That still leaves out almost a third of the country, though.
People rent cars all the time and drop them off in a different city/state. There is no reason why someone couldn't get into a robotaxi commute 1 1/2 hours. Work, and then do the same commute on the way back home.
You could set your departure time, and it will be waiting for you in your driveway ready to go. If you pick up groceries, it will will wait for you, then take you to get your nails done, and wait for you there, then drive you home.
You cite statistics of how few people live in urban areas, but how about 53.6% of household incomes are less than 75k a year. The less you make, the more important saving the extra money would be over having a car that sits there 95% of the time unused.
Everyone that has a website could host it on a server in their house, but 99.9% of people don't do that because it's much more cost effective to share those resources.
Yeah, I've done it. The cost depends on whether they need more cars where you're going or fewer.
On the flip side, people in urban areas tend to make more than people in rural areas, so the people who would benefit most from a cost perspective would be unable to benefit at all from a logistical perspective, because the lower the density, the more the autonomous vehicles will have to drive around sans-fare, and the more per fare-mile they will cost. At some point, it becomes cheaper to just own a car and leave it sitting around 95% of the time.
And in urban areas, public transportation is usually available, which will almost certainly be way cheaper than any robotaxi.
The only places where I would expect robotaxi service to be a huge benefit over owning a car for lower-income people are in suburbs, where public transit isn't practical and car ownership is expensive. That's maybe 10% of the population.
It actually isn't. A Mac Mini server, averaged over the expected life of the server (5 years), costs $11.65 per month, which is about the same cost as the cheapest usable hosting plans. And for that, you get hundreds of gigabytes of storage instead of hundreds of megabytes. Shared hosting is way more expensive than owning your own server.
99.9% of people don't run their own servers because so many ISPs have rules about hosting servers and because most people don't want to fool with administering a server.
In a utopian science-fiction world, maybe. In the real world it will be nothing like that at all. In a free-market economy you do not get utopian service at bargain-basement prices. If robotaxis are actually cheaper to operate than Uber, the difference will go into the pockets of the owners, not into lower fares for riders. And if they are more expensive to operate, they'll be an expensive option for people who can afford it. I'd pay quite a lot to ride in one once, for the experience. And if they turn out to be safer, as I expect they will be, I'd pay the premium on the occasions when, for some unusual reason, I needed a ride.
I like having my truck for when I need to use it as a truck. When I add the cost of a truck rental and fuel for the rental vehicle it would be over 500 a month Cheaper to own a truck for me. I'm going to assume people will weigh to cost and convenience of owning a car over calling for a robotaxi
Zip car charges 10 dollars an hour and 83 dollars a day. The fee is 7 dollars a month and 70 dollars a year. What would be the hourly/daily rate of a robotaxi
Doggydogworld
Active Member
I hate sped-up videos, but this one hour driverless Yandex trip in Ann Arbor (7:30 viewing time) shows pedestrians, cyclists, construction zones, etc. They did driverless demos in Las Vegas a couple years ago. Most of their testing is in Russia, including some without safety drivers. They claim 7 million kms, I assume mostly with safety drivers but don't really know.
scottf200
Well-Known Member
Going to skip the stats but there are many elderly in small and large towns that can no longer drive, many folks withs substance abuse, etc that can't just go to a dinner or to a friends house due to the difficulties. Even in urban areas if I have to walk 3 blocks to get a metro to go 20 mins, to get a bus to go 20 mins than I might just skip the trip. Public transport is great...but the lack of door to door service is a hinderance to wider use. Despite that, pre covid, many public systems were at capacity when they were really needed.Yeah, I've done it. The cost depends on whether they need more cars where you're going or fewer.
On the flip side, people in urban areas tend to make more than people in rural areas, so the people who would benefit most from a cost perspective would be unable to benefit at all from a logistical perspective, because the lower the density, the more the autonomous vehicles will have to drive around sans-fare, and the more per fare-mile they will cost. At some point, it becomes cheaper to just own a car and leave it sitting around 95% of the time.
And in urban areas, public transportation is usually available, which will almost certainly be way cheaper than any robotaxi.
The only places where I would expect robotaxi service to be a huge benefit over owning a car for lower-income people are in suburbs, where public transit isn't practical and car ownership is expensive. That's maybe 10% of the population.
It actually isn't. A Mac Mini server, averaged over the expected life of the server (5 years), costs $11.65 per month, which is about the same cost as the cheapest usable hosting plans. And for that, you get hundreds of gigabytes of storage instead of hundreds of megabytes. Shared hosting is way more expensive than owning your own server.
99.9% of people don't run their own servers because so many ISPs have rules about hosting servers and because most people don't want to fool with administering a server.
I would hope robotaxis fulfill a valuable niche in both rural and urban life making humanity more..humane. if a small town had just 2-3 robotaxis popping around to take some families to crackerbarrel or to the local diner or dinner or the kids house..it would be great.
Even if robotaxis turn out to be cheaper to operate than Uber (which I very highly doubt) the basic economics don't change. Areas that have no taxis or Ubers today, will not suddenly get robotaxis. Yes, it would be great if they did, but the basic principles of economics are not going to suddenly turn upside down: A service doesn't exist if it cannot pay for itself. And all the arguments for robotaxis turn on the assertion, devoid of evidence, that they will magically be cheaper than Uber, which has zero up-front capital cost for cars because drivers supply their own car, insurance, and fuel.
Robotaxis will compete for riders in places that have taxis and Lyft and Uber. They will not enter the market in places where there is too little potential ridership to justify the up-front capital cost of the cars. And to the riders, robotaxis will not be significantly different than Lyft or Uber, to the extent that once people get used to them riders won't care which they get. Most people who use Uber will select the button that says "I don't care whether I get a human-driven car or a self-driving car."
So no backup drivers? When they deliver to multiple Homes how do they ensure that someone won't take goods meant for someone else?
FloridaJohn
Member
I would imagine each vehicle will contain individual lockers for each stop, and only unlock the locker for that particular address.
I don't know how they plan on doing it, but there was a video from another outfit that was planning on doing robo-deliveries, and that's how they did it. Separate lockers. You got a code that would only open the one with your stuff.
Looks like the vehicles will be manned
Ford Motor and its autonomous driving affiliate, Argo AI, have teamed up with Walmart to begin testing the home delivery of groceries and other items by self-driving cars in three cities this year.
The service will start in Miami, Washington and Austin, Texas, and will be limited to specific areas but is intended to expand over time, Argo said in a statement on Wednesday. The service will start operating with a half dozen vehicles equipped with Argo’s technology, although two trained test drivers will be in the car for safety.
“Our focus on the testing and development of self-driving technology that operates in urban areas where customer demand is high really comes to life with this collaboration,” Argo’s founder and chief executive, Bryan Salesky, said. “Working together with Walmart and Ford across three markets, we’re showing the potential for autonomous vehicle delivery services at scale.”
Ford and Argo, which also counts Volkswagen as an investor and a partner, have also formed an alliance with Lyft to begin offering rides in self-driving cars. They aim to start the service in Miami this year and expand to Austin next year. Argo has been testing about 150 autonomous vehicles in six U.S. cities.
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Continue reading the main story
Waymo, the autonomous-driving company owned by Google’s parent, Alphabet, has been testing a limited driverless ride-hailing service in Phoenix for several years.
Just a few years ago, automakers and technology companies expected self-driving cars to take off quickly, but found that developing the technology was more complex and difficult than they had thought.
In 2019, Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, said his company would have one million self-driving taxis on the road by 2020. But it has yet to demonstrate vehicles that can pilot themselves without humans behind steering wheels.
Times.
Ford Motor and its autonomous driving affiliate, Argo AI, have teamed up with Walmart to begin testing the home delivery of groceries and other items by self-driving cars in three cities this year.
The service will start in Miami, Washington and Austin, Texas, and will be limited to specific areas but is intended to expand over time, Argo said in a statement on Wednesday. The service will start operating with a half dozen vehicles equipped with Argo’s technology, although two trained test drivers will be in the car for safety.
“Our focus on the testing and development of self-driving technology that operates in urban areas where customer demand is high really comes to life with this collaboration,” Argo’s founder and chief executive, Bryan Salesky, said. “Working together with Walmart and Ford across three markets, we’re showing the potential for autonomous vehicle delivery services at scale.”
Ford and Argo, which also counts Volkswagen as an investor and a partner, have also formed an alliance with Lyft to begin offering rides in self-driving cars. They aim to start the service in Miami this year and expand to Austin next year. Argo has been testing about 150 autonomous vehicles in six U.S. cities.
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story
Waymo, the autonomous-driving company owned by Google’s parent, Alphabet, has been testing a limited driverless ride-hailing service in Phoenix for several years.
Just a few years ago, automakers and technology companies expected self-driving cars to take off quickly, but found that developing the technology was more complex and difficult than they had thought.
In 2019, Elon Musk, the chief executive of Tesla, said his company would have one million self-driving taxis on the road by 2020. But it has yet to demonstrate vehicles that can pilot themselves without humans behind steering wheels.
Times.
8 years ago, Elon:
www.wsj.com
6 years ago, Elon:
Hmmm, what happened in the span of 18 months when Elon went from "fully autonomous is a bridge too far" to "a solved problem" that "isn't all that difficult to achieve?"
www.autoblog.com
Tesla’s Elon Musk Says Autonomous Driving Not All That Hard to Achieve
Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk says a fully autonomous vehicle isn’t all that difficult to achieve.
www.wsj.com
Hmmm, what happened in the span of 18 months when Elon went from "fully autonomous is a bridge too far" to "a solved problem" that "isn't all that difficult to achieve?"
Tesla raises $738M in stock sale - Autoblog
Tesla made nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars in its latest stock sale, moving a total of 3.1M shares. That result is a million more than originally announced.
www.autoblog.com
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