Hacker News Reader

Comment by trillup | Hacker News Reader

The only thing I'd like to add is that if the car is used this often the utilization rate of the car would significantly increase thus causing the car to go in for maintenance more often. Average mileage on a car is 13,000 per year and if a car is being used to drop the whole family off and then do rides on its own you are looking at 70,000-100,000 on a car per year. You are encouraged to get an oil change every 6,000 miles. Not only that but power trains are engineered with a half life of ~250-300,000 before they become unusable

View on HN

>Not only that but power trains are engineered with a half life of ~250-300,000 before they become unusable

This makes me think of an interesting side effect.

Will there be pressure on automotive engineering teams to significantly increase drivetrain half-life in consumer vehicles due to automated-driving?

I imagine there are trade-offs made at present that limit the drivetrain half-life simply because there isn't a great deal of pressure to increase the life of a consumer car beyond 300,000 miles ( 300,000 mi * 1 yr / ~10,000 mi = 30 yr old cars).

Semi-trucks may be a nice example where a similar engineering pressure currently exists. A mechanic friend once told me semi's can drive a million+ miles.

Those services will be able to take place at low-peak times (overnight). Currently getting my car serviced is a chore. When using a car in the future, that process will be invisible to me. And the costs will be absorbed into whatever per-use or subscription fee I choose to pay.

Great point, however if these autonomous vehicles are electric (and I'm not saying they would be), they'd require much, much less maintenance than a fossil-fuel based autonomous fleet.

If you look online you will see that most batteries have a estimated mileage of 100k-150k before total replacement is needed. Most Lexus hybrids warrantees end at 100k.

If you are running a fleet of cars or ride sharing yours all day when you are at work, its going to get 100k miles put on it a year. Expect a new battery ($5k-$10k) annual replacement, in addition to the other 80% of the car that isn't hybrid like suspension, electrical system, interior and body.

The fuel savings often goes into battery maint/replacement, if you plan on keeping the car for extended mileage/time.

No argument about the batteries themselves, but self-driving cars require substantially less overall maintenance -- oil changes, timing belts, fuel pumps, transmissions, and even things like brakes all either are unnecessary in all-electric vehicles or maintenance is substantially reduced.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com