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Comment by cornellwright | Hacker News Reader

I would love it if it cost me only $0.50/hour to operate my car. Conservatively I'd go with more like $5/hour (assume 10mph average at $0.50 per mile).

According to [1], median daily unreserved parking in SF is $29/day, so at 6 hours you break even. You can likely get much cheaper than this by driving a bit further away. Even at the $38 for New York and $42 for Honolulu you still break even around 8 hours.

[1] https://investinganswers.com/articles/most-ridiculously-expe...

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Straight from the article:

> "Even when you factor in electricity, depreciation, wear and tear, and maintenance, cruising costs about 50 cents an hour—that's cheaper than parking even in a small town," says Millard-Ball. "Unless it's free or cheaper than cruising, why would anyone use a remote lot?"

I don't have time to dig into it, but $0.50 seems like a wishfully low number.

Doesn't take too long to prove it is too low. Lets say this fancy self-driving car cost $50,000. Lets say it is expected to go 250,000 miles in its lifetime. That is $.20 per mile! If it cruises at only 25 mph, that is $5 in wear and tear alone! Even if you slash the price and up double the life of the vehicle, you are paying more than $.50 an hour.

That's a very simplistic analysis since it ignores the difference in wear and tear between cruising at low speed versus driving at normal speed.

A car that's built to last 250,000 miles of normal driving can likely go much farther at low speed cruising, especially for an EV.

I don't know, that low of a cruising speed suggest a lot of stop and go driving. Even if true, the analysis was meant to be a simple refutation of the $.50 per hour claim, and I really doubt you can increase durability enough to tip the balance. And that doesn't even include regular maintenance- lubrication, tires, brakes. It doesn't include electricity. It doesn't include damage, insurance costs, etc.

When the traffic lights can coordinate with cars, they can avoid the need to stop, at most they may just need to slow down, which can be done without brakes.

An EV doesn't need (much) lubrication, for example, the Chevy Bolt EV maintenance schedule has only tire rotations for the first 150,000 miles:

https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/chevy-bolt-maintenance-sc...

With low speed travel and minimal stops, there's not much tire wear.

Ubiquitous EV's should reduce the accident rate dramatically.

Realistically, the average speed of any car navigating an urban grid with stop lights/signs is usually going to be a lot less than 25 miles per hour. Maybe more like 5-10, even if it's not deliberately trying to drive slow.

The point is that 50 cents an hour is not an accurate representation of the cost of continuously operating a car for an hour. The IRS allows something near that per mile as a standard mileage rate. If the car is driving more than a mile per hour on average, it's significantly exceeding 50 cents/hour.

How in the world do you figure $0.50 per mile?

Even if you assume a modest 20 mi/gallon at $3/gal, you're looking at about $0.15 a mile. A $40 oil change every 5000 miles, and a more expensive maintenance job every 10000 miles isn't going to push you past $0.25/mi.

Are you amortizing the cost of the vehicle?

The IRS comes up with a roughly $.50/mile figure. It takes into consideration the physical wear on the vehicle as well as consumables and fuel costs, among other things I think (averaged nationally).

$0.50 per mile is pretty reasonable, the IRS reimbursement rate for distance drive in a business context is $0.58 (https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-issues-standard-mileage-rat...)

Electric car, so fuel cost is minimal given low speeds and no scheduled oil changes or other maintenance.

Fuel cost won't remain minimal in this envisioned all-EV future. Governments will need to make up the fuel tax revenue somehow.

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