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Comment by endisneigh | Hacker News Reader

Too high. You can take a train from the edge of Manhattan to Harlem, about an hour trip for what, $2? How long would that same trip take during the day via car? 45 minutes maybe?

EDIT: clarified starting position

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That's metro to metro where economies of scale dictate mass transit, but what about rural to rural, or rural to metro where there are no mass transit? What about last-mile? Last-mile is the most expensive step for parcel carriers even.

FWIW, Harlem is a neighborhood in Manhattan, and depending on where you start from elsewhere in Manhattan it's ~5-20 minutes.

that's true. I clarified.

That doesn't even seem apples and oranges, though.

Today, if I want point-to-point, custom flexible timing and start/destination locations, with reasonable privacy and comfort, it'll cost me a lot more than either $2 or $8.5.

For example, a taxi from my home to airport is ~45min and typically costs me $75-$90CAD.

In Ottawa, a taxi trip from hotel to work is ~5-8min and is $11CAD.

So $8.5 for an hour is literally an order of magnitude less than what I'm currently paying.

But after going through the article I still don't 100% get what's the actual model - $8.50 total ad-hoc cost (essentially renting a service)? Or, as it appears, some implicit baseline hardware cost / traditional purcahse (buy a $xx,xxx.99 vehicle), in which case a subscription-based additional hourly cost would only serve to peeve me off?

Too high for me too. I’d consider the marginal utility of their self driving more at a price like that. The motor industry is in a interesting place with more of them considering subscriptions for feature unlocks. I think it’s a good thing if it means they can invest more to create better software. I don’t agree with it however and if i buy a car i want to know i own the car and won’t need a subscription to operate features. For example My Mercedes Me subscription lapsed a year or two ago i can’t be bothered to renew it… the features are just not that useful. Considering that many of the Mercedes Me features are free on a Tesla.

>”...in their cars...”

That’s key. It’s their cars and they want to charge them seven bucks an hour?

Yes, some people will be happy to sit back and sleep and pay that, but not Joe and Jill Six-Pack.

This is taking advantage of the fact that the metro charges a flat fee for trips of any length, when the average trip is much shorter. It also assumes that you are going between two places that happen to be right next to metro stations.

Exactly. That's why yellow cabs, black cars, and Uber have never been able to gain a foothold in New York City. Those $2 subway rides to Harlem.

You can't even take a train from Baltimore to DC for less than $10, which is only an hour drive between two travel hubs.

Self driving cars will never be as cheap as a train... Why would you compare the two?

They both transport you places?

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