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Comment by abeppu | Hacker News Reader

> With the Origin’s ability to drive day and night and last for more than a million miles, we’ll be able to cut up to $5,000 in transportation costs per San Francisco household, per year.

What counts as a transportation cost? Do average San Franciscan households have $5k of local (i.e. replaceable with a robocab) transportation costs? We're one of the US cities with the most households without vehicles [1].

But even looking at the US average, $5K would be a big promise.

E.g. a quick search finds claims [2] that average US households are paying $250 in gas per month (-> 3k per year). That same source says the household average for transportation (including planes, trains, ships, vacations) is $9k.

For comparison, an SF muni pass with bart within the city is $98/month.

[1] https://www.governing.com/gov-data/car-ownership-numbers-of-...

[2] https://www.valuepenguin.com/average-household-budget#transp...

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> that average US households are paying $250 in gas per month

Gas is definitely not the only expense to driving. Amortization of the vehicle value, insurance, and maintenance are all costs that you have to consider as part of vehicle ownership (or leasing).

If Origin were the difference between someone owning and not owning a car, it would be pretty easy to get to $5k. As you noted, $3k per year for gas. Another $1k for vehicle insurance. Another $1-2k for the value of the vehicle.

Calculated cost of purchasing and operating a used Ford Focus wagon for 7 years and 124600km, minus what I sold it for when it looked like it needed a new transmission: 36k EUR, or 0.29 EUR/km. Given Germany's allowed tax deduction of 0.30 EUR/km for long commutes or charity work, this was a relatively inexpensive car to operate. I could have optimized even more by dropping my high-deductible comprehensive/collision down to liability-only after the first two years. Despite Germany's really high fuel taxes, fuel was only 27% of the cost.

Details: https://mandie.net/2018/11/08/good-news-my-cars-transmission...

That's awesome! Thanks for the link.

I've been meaning to track my actual TCO for a vehicle, but I've always been too lazy. Appreciate you sharing.

Many thanks are due to my husband, who first started me thinking that way about cars when I was selecting this one, mapping out the estimated running costs of various used cars I was willing to consider, and then getting me into the habit of writing down the mileage for each tank.

Writing down the average liters/100km the car displayed for each tank gave me a good general feel for how much fuel it really used for various situations. Driving 220 km/h to Frankfurt for an emergency flight home? 14 l/100km (do NOT recommend, but hey, I got on that plane and had that last week with my mom). Normal Autobahn speeds down from the Austrian Alps? 5 l/100km. Speed or Stau (traffic jam) Autobahn traffic that's the usual situation in Germany and helped convince me that I really do prefer German trains, despite some schedule problems? 6.5 l/100km.

>E.g. a quick search finds claims [2] that average US households are paying $250 in gas per month (-> 3k per year).

Here are un-avaoidable things you are overlooking, at least for passenger vehicles people own/lease:

* Depreciation (with very few exceptions)

* Insurance

* Routine maintenance (brakes, tires, wipers, filters, oil, transmission fluid, coolant) and cleaning. Even on electric cars you have still have most of those.

* Parking (where applicable)

* Inspection (where applicable, minor)

* Registration (minor)

Transportation is very consistently a Top 5 expense for a given household, and for many households, Top 3. For people who go through cars like toothbrushes, usually second only to housing.

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For those taking commuter rail, pass costs are a lot higher based on zones. In most markets, Zone 1 and Zone 2 isn't the most common users, but Zones 3 and further out. That puts costs substantially higher than BART or MUNI, and will usually be a portion (not complete) transportation costs.

If you are able to take a metro system exclusively, you're fundamentally paying part of that cost through higher housing costs (not doing so is an exception). Not something that may be directly attributable as "transportation cost", but the increase is there and very material in terms of higher housing costs.

At no point do I claim that the sole cost of traveling by car is gas. The question is not whether a household can spend more that $5k per year driving, owning and maintaining a car. My skepticism is that the _per household_ savings for the city would be that high. Apparently about a third of households don't have cars, and from what I can tell, a bunch of people have cars that they drive very little (which both lowers the replacement opportunity for robocabs, and demonstrates that some people apparently just like having a car). Approached another way, is SF the best city to start with, or would a city that started with higher car ownership figures give them a larger savings impact?

Re your comments about commuter rail/muni: 1. If you live in the peninsula or the South Bay, are you a San Franciscan? Should you count towards such a stat? 2. Yes, people living in the city pay very high housing costs, and part of the value of that housing is convenient access to everything else. But I'm really not expecting robocabs to bring down the cost of housing by decreasing demand. Even if it's cheap and convenient, transportation will always take time.

> Average annual [transportation] expenditures among low-income households come to $2,164, while higher-income households spend an average of $6,569

https://www.ppic.org/press-release/transportation-affordabil...

This one however says the average household spends $13,350:

https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/good-luck-cutting-down-tran...

It really depends where you get your data and what the specifics of your particular city are. AAA estimates north of $9K in total ownership cost for vehicles in the US [1]. I have a feeling this might be lower in SF since fewer people own vehicles than in the wider US and people who do own cars probably drive less than 15k miles and are more likely to own them outright.

The $5k number from Cruise is probably a bit suspect since I doubt this could totally replace vehicle ownership for even the majority of current drivers, but it's probably not more than $1-2k off.

[1] https://newsroom.aaa.com/auto/your-driving-costs/

At first I thought they were giving me $5000 for signing up as an early testers.

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