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Comment by semi-extrinsic | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand "income from cars" - do you mean as autonomous taxis? Pretty sure you need to then take into account increased insurance, maintenance costs as well as taxes on that income.

Also if this autonomous taxi thing becomes a highly profitable gig (as you suggest), you'll quickly run into a big supply/demand problem. There's only a finite number of people who need mid-day cab rides.

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>There's only a finite number of people who need mid-day cab rides.

Yeah, it's a contradiction in the business model. Everyone will be able to afford to own a Tesla because everyone will be able to make money from the cars driving everyone around?

There will still be a barrier to owning a Tesla due to the upfront cost of buying one. The fact that it'll be able to pay itself off over time is immaterial to the affordability of at time of purchase.

Actually by the time full autopilot is acceptable insurance will actually go down since data will support that in full autopilot the probability of accident is lower than human driving.

Maintenance costs on an electric self driving car will actually be lower than a traditional car [1]

You are correct though that the income will have taxes applied to it.

[1] http://insideevs.com/ev-vs-ice-maintenance-the-first-100000-...

Maintenance costs might be lower for EVs, although as someone who gets his hands dirty on his ICE car I doubt it's going to be significant; most of the time I'm fixing stuff EVs also have (brakes, suspension, sensors, tires, paint damage, lights, wiper blades and fluid, trunk gas struts, indicator stalk, washing the car etc.). I'm also hearing from colleagues of decreased lifetime esp. on brakes of EVs since they get used too infrequently because of regenerative braking, so they get stuck due to rust.

But my point wasn't that but this: using your EV as a taxi will increase maintenance costs (and depreciation) vs. leaving it in the garage.

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