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Comment by andyxor | Hacker News Reader

and probably the most expensive, I see them going in circles all day long in my neighborhood, fuel alone must have cost a fortune

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It's the human driver that costs money. Fuel is a very tiny part of that, especially in the US (compared to the EU) where fuel is practically free.

I’m from the US and I don’t know why you’re saying that. Is EU fuel comparatively more expensive?

Assuming your question to be in good faith (because I'm surprised that it would come as a surprise that many EU countries tax the shite out of automotive fuel), gasoline seems to be approaching $7/gallon in some EU countries, whereas gas in AZ is under $3.

> approaching $7/gallon

7 USD is 5.99 EUR. That would be 1.58 EUR/liter. They aren't just approaching that, that is pretty much exactly the current price for gasoline with 10% Ethanol added in several German cities that I checked, with some fuel stations cheaper and some more expensive.

If you need E5 (older cars can't handle E10), you'll pay more than that.

Well in the US it is apparently 0.9 USD per liter. In Ireland for example it is 1.8 USD per liter.

https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/gasoline_prices/

Yes, cheaper than any EU country by a big margin.

Bloomberg have a nice visualisation tool : https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/gas-prices/#20202:United-...

$7/gal (converted from €1.60/liter), give or take, vs < $5, depending on where you are in the US. It's obvious hyperbole to say it's "practically free", but large parts of the economy would stop being functional at $7/gal.

Current petrol price in france is 1.60 EUR / litre, or almost $7 per gallon

They should switch their provider. That's prohibitive.

That's just the CO2 tax. Or at least that's the main source of the cost in Norway; France may break it down differently.

Yep, 50% of the price is taxes.

How does that help the single mother of two working shifts where public transit isn't an option?

What Waymo doesn't talk about is their human remote drivers and chase vehicles. I wonder what their ratio of humans to "autonomous" cars is.

There are no human remote drivers. There are many human monitors but there is never a human remote controlling a vehicle. Monitors can observe if there is a problem and direct the car to take an action like park.

Was it a Jaguar you saw? because those vehicles are electric.

Even an electric car costs 11¢ per mile according to AAA. So that's $11,000/week to drive 100,000 miles per week. This may be "fortune"-level spending by some standards.

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