Will Car Automation Disrupt the Personal Mobility market?...

[voyager]

... Possibly 'slash' car ownership?

Car ownership is more persistent than many industry watchers want us to believe, despite the high costs involved.
Tailoring cars to buyers’ individual taste, lots of gadgets, and the sort of performance unimaginable a few years ago,
is the latest in keeping a personal car high on people’s wish list.

That's not to say that there can be more types of catering to mobility needs. It is why ADS developers count on
‘mobility as a ride-service’ to replace carmakers’ wasteful hardware focus, which is aimed at selling as many cars
as possible, incl. Tesla.

Let's put them in perspective - car ownership vs robo-taxis:

Car Ownership pluses:
instant availability | customization | performance | privacy | manual Fahrvergnügen!

Robo-Taxi pluses:
availability | ease of use | no driver license | all-in priced | no responsibility | do some reading? | point-to-point

A lot may boil down to the question: if you you're not in control of the car (which is fun)...
why own the damn car?

IMO, we are heading, could be heading in an interesting direction, not quite yet foreseen by any provider.
More in my next posting...

 

[qdeathstar]

Of course. What’s self driving cars exist there will be no incentive to outright sell the software. Just like everything else has been shifting to “as a service” so will cars.

It maximizes revenue for companies and on average lowers the cost for the consumer.

 

[AndreP]

I definitely see it being useful in dense cities, just like regular taxis

All the other use cases will remain: sprawling cities and suburbs, rural settings, people who just want to own their vehicle


I've never even taken an Uber in my life and have used any taxi maybe twice in the last 15 years

 

[ATPMSD]

Keep mind we already have on-demand services like Uber and Lyft, the self driving robo-taxi is the same service without a human at the controls. At present the only group that see,ms ready to ditch their cars are millennials, probably because they did not grow up with fun cars like the Mustang, GTO, Camaro, etc.

 

[aronth5]

Significant challenge for any service will be families requiring a combination of multiple car/booster seats. Robo-Taxi will work for some and over time will address many issues but it's going to take a lot longer than Elon and fanatics like Whole Mars Catalog believe. I think FSD will find it's greatest short term value for owners who want to read/text/zoom meetings especially in suburban and rural locations where regulatory approval for FSD should be easier to obtain.

 

[voyager]

So, if you combine some basic facts in car travel:
1. average car occupancy is 1.2 person
2. average cab occupancy is 1.2 passenger
3. vehicle mass and size determine kWh needed
4. vehicle mass and size determine running costs
5. substantially smaller (sleeker) cars lend themselves better to ADS...

might a sleek-footprint AV be suited for both ride-hail purposes as well as make
(L4) driverless tech available to car buyers?

Personally I think that we still face years of AI simulations (Waabe) and/or
live pilots (Cruise and Waymo) before a reasonably failsafe AV will become available.

You may get a 'best of both' as schematically depicted below:

 

[ThomasD]

Other than dense urban areas there is no evidence that AVs will be cheaper than car ownership.

 

[voyager]

Other than dense urban areas there is no evidence that AVs will be cheaper than car ownership.

"No evidence"?? How should evidence be established?
Cruise says it will offer a ride at a fraction of the costs for manned ride-hailing (Uber).
I will look if I can find more concrete fees. I can remember Cruise having mentioned them.

Anyway, this all points more to a vehicle freely at anyone's disposal.
Better if this will fit average occupancy demand (1.2 person), because of costs and faster response and transit times.

Need something bigger, than there will be a bigger vehicle available.

 

[ThomasD]

Will Cruise operate in areas where there is no UBER/LYFT ride hailing? If I could one day get a subscription service for an AV to take me anywhere within a 50 mile radius of my house for 400 dollars a month I would sign up. I'm 10 miles from the nearest supermarket. 40 minutes to the nearest Super Walmart.

 

[voyager]

Will Cruise operate in areas where there is no UBER/LYFT ride hailing? If I could one day get a subscription service for an AV to take me anywhere within a 50 mile radius of my house for 400 dollars a month I would sign up. I'm 10 miles from the nearest supermarket. 40 minutes to the nearest Super Walmart.

Good points, and I have NO DOUBT some sort of provider program would be:
- way cheaper than owning a car that you maybe use 5-10 percent of the time
- way cheaper than a manned ride-hail taxi

Need a bigger AV, order one. Below the SF map. One can envisage having sleek AVs (with 3-passenger capacity)
strategically located for a fast response time, and a bigger one (will take a bit longer) in case you take the family
out for a trip. Cheaper this way for both subscription holders as well as providers.

I also have no doubt that the 1:8 big AV to small AVs ratio you see on the map will probably end up being
closer to 1:15 or so. Remember: average car occupancy is 1.2 person.

My next posting will be about "design is not just what it looks like, design is how it works" (Steve Jobs motto)...

I don't believe for one second that the Cruise Origin (see picture below) will be a viable
"one size fits all" driverless vehicle. It is simply too big and cumbersome. May I add that
several surveys already established that ride-hailing has added to the congestion in
cities like SF. Autonomous taxis sized like rolling real estate will only make this worse.

 

[FloridaJohn]

Will Cruise operate in areas where there is no UBER/LYFT ride hailing? If I could one day get a subscription service for an AV to take me anywhere within a 50 mile radius of my house for 400 dollars a month I would sign up. I'm 10 miles from the nearest supermarket. 40 minutes to the nearest Super Walmart.

Perhaps. But it might be a 3 hour wait for that car as it comes to you after dropping off the previous fare.

Even if there are robotaxis is rural parts of the country, there won't be many there. To have enough available for immediate pickup would mean having a fleet large enough where many are idle most of the day. Businesses don't make much money when there assets are mostly idle, so this will lead to few cars in a large geographic area. Which will result in lots of waiting around by customers.

 

[voyager]

Yup, car ownership makes much more sense in rural areas.
In cities like Amsterdam, where space comes at a hefty price: no to not really.

 

[aronth5]

Perhaps. But it might be a 3 hour wait for that car as it comes to you after dropping off the previous fare.

Even if there are robotaxis is rural parts of the country, there won't be many there. To have enough available for immediate pickup would mean having a fleet large enough where many are idle most of the day. Businesses don't make much money when there assets are mostly idle, so this will lead to few cars in a large geographic area. Which will result in lots of waiting around by customers.

Robotaxi services will certainly pop up but will be very limited and focused on very specific geographical areas for the next 5-10 years. A valuable but niche service very much like Uber is today. Reminds me of all the Popular Mechanic/Science magazines many years ago predicting new and exciting inventions/services " coming soon. Flying cars ring a bell? Vast majority never happened. Robotaxis will happen amd be disruptive just not as quickly and widespread as proponents want everyone to believe. Elon and Whole Mars Catalog included. Just look at Elon's predictions about Robotaxis that have been missed the his timelines.

 

[Unclepaul]

How will Robotaxi work for Costco runs, taking your bikes to the trails, going camping, enjoying a back country roads picnic?

How do you go exploring in a taxi?

 

[ThomasD]

Does the Cruise Origin have a ramp that moves out to transport someone in a Wheelchair?

 

[aronth5]

How will Robotaxi work for Costco runs, taking your bikes to the trails, going camping, enjoying a back country roads picnic?

How do you go exploring in a taxi?

It probably won't. Robotaxi won't be for everyone or every need. It will start off with a very narrow focus and expand over time. The enthusiasm for RoboTaxi will come to grips with reality over the next few years,

When Elon first talked about the potential for Robotaxi there were many on the forum who anticipated using their Tesla car to make money while they were at work. That would require driverless capability. I wonder how many still believe that their current vehicle will be capable of Robotaxi service now? I'm assuming very few so reality is already setting in.

 

[Supcom]

It remains to be seen how much cheaper, if at all, robotaxis will be. AFAIK, there are no robotaxis being operated as a profit making operation at this time. And although everyone seems to believe that the robotaxis will have cheaper lifecycle costs because there is no labor cost for a driver, the vehicles will have higher acquisition costs and higher maintenance due to the more complex equipment. In addition, there will likely be a monthly subscription fee for the autonomy software, which will almost certainly be higher for business use than for consumers.

I wonder how long it will take before laid off taxi drivers start putting stickers over robotaxi cameras to disable the vehicles.

 

[voyager]

1. Around 80-90 millon cars are sold each year globally
2. Catering to 1 in a 1000 prospective buyers would already make for a viable production (Tesla started out with way less)

I started this thread by saying that car ownership will remain popular, especially
if you can afford one and need one (rural areas etc.).

An AV will be handy in the many cities all around the world, where ownership, having yur own parking spot etc.
is out of the question or too expensive. People can resort to PT, ride-hailing (Uber) or have a subscription on an AV.

In most cities in the U.S. there is not really a limit to car ownership. For each car, there are 8 parking spaces.
In front of your house, close to office buildings, stores, etc.

The whole thing is that in the cities (like Amsterdam) that I am talking about, space also comes at a price.
Ergo: smaller AVs may come in handier than big ones.

 

[Dewg]

It remains to be seen how much cheaper, if at all, robotaxis will be. AFAIK, there are no robotaxis being operated as a profit making operation at this time. And although everyone seems to believe that the robotaxis will have cheaper lifecycle costs because there is no labor cost for a driver, the vehicles will have higher acquisition costs and higher maintenance due to the more complex equipment. In addition, there will likely be a monthly subscription fee for the autonomy software, which will almost certainly be higher for business use than for consumers.

I wonder how long it will take before laid off taxi drivers start putting stickers over robotaxi cameras to disable the vehicles.

Vive la resistance!

Seriously though, why do people always have to destroy what they don't like, don't understand, or just plain fear? Knowledge is power, but most are living in the dark.

 

[ThomasD]

Most of them will be rolling piles of filth