We're going commercial
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In both cases someone else is driving for the customer. With a human driver (plus driver assist breaking and collision warnings) you have the most flexible, sophisticated intelligence on Earth driving. With a robotaxi you have something inferior. But maybe it's a lot cheaper, right? The robotaxi can only compete on price because that's apparently the only advantage.
The idea of a robotaxi seems popular among people who don't like being around other people... a population perhaps over-represented here on Hacker News. Personally I don't see the point and I know I'm not alone in wondering.
If you own a car (e.g., a Tesla) that drives itself, that's a different story. Everybody can see the value proposition.
Would you pay a little more to have the most flexible, sophisticated intelligence on Earth (human brain + driver assist) or would you want to save a few dollars and risk having some dumb piece of software strand you in the middle of the road somewhere?
We all use Google Maps or Apple Maps when driving and most of us have seen these systems do boneheaded things. Just imagine the dumb things a robotaxi could do.
So robotaxis are perhaps mainly attractive to the very low income parts of population, people who might buy an inferior product to save a dollar or two. People who buy store-brand ketchup instead of Heinz ketchup even though it doesn't taste as good.
It's hard for a normal person to be excited about this.
Anyway, I think we can all agree that the only benefit of a robotaxi is that it's cheaper. And we don't know how much cheaper. So it's not surprising that most people aren't excited about them.
I don't know a single person who cares about robotaxis. In my experience, if you talk to people about robotaxis they just don't see it as big step forward. "What's the point?"
Conservatively, suppose the car lasts 100k miles, and costs $50k including maintenance. Suppose it gets 10mpg, and each trip is 5 miles. Gas is $6/gallon.
100k miles = 20k trips. 20k trips for $50k cost = $2.50 per ride + $3 gas = $5.50 fixed cost per ride, which is significantly cheaper than pretty much anything.
If my city had better public transport, I would use it more often. I don't like driving around everywhere. It's labor. While I am also pushing for better public transport, robotaxis can also fill that gap, provided it is cheap enough
Additionally there's the problem of the market tolerating current prices. Like gasoline, even if the cost comes down it doesn't mean price goes down. Profit margins will increase if the market can sustain current prices.
Ultimately there's profit, drivers wouldn't do it if it weren't profitable.
> Additionally there's the problem of the market tolerating current prices. Like gasoline, even if the cost comes down it doesn't mean price goes down. Profit margins will increase if the market can sustain current prices.
I see a lot of competition in the space and the history of taxi services has been one of very low prices so I see the trend to continue in self driving.
For non-us markets it’s also integrity. No more shenanigans like calling rider and asking to cancel the ride bc the driver didn’t like it
With cars all communicating p2p in a local mesh to avoid collisions and improve throughput, apart from reducing accidents even further, you could safely turn all highways into autobahns with much higher speed limits.
Even if it’s a long way off, I welcome any progress in this direction.
We’re all very used to it, so it seems normal, but the status quo of high stress traffic and casually risking death and disfigurement on a daily basis is completely insane.
If there is sufficient surge coverage that I can get an autonomous vehicle within 10 minutes of hailing one 90% of the time and 15 minutes 100% of the time for example, and the fares are reasonably based off of amortizing across 24x7 operational hours. Then the financials flip for a lot of people who either do not want or cannot afford the capex much less opex of owning and operating their own private vehicle.
Furthermore, if the AV companies work with municipalities to share ride data in the form of urban public transit planning data in exchange for a small passive income slice of the parts of the data turned into actual implemented public transit routes, it is a win for everyone. The AV company gets to expand territory with a more efficient capital stream to replace old territory mostly ceded to public transit without burdensome capex, and everyone else gets empirically-tested public transit routes with little of the usual route planning risks.
With software-driven coordination, I really hope to see vehicles as just the leading edge of a trend to amortize the capex of expensive items across more people, leading to more Buy It For Life/Generations quality of those items, and less environmental impact of a throwaway items per individual orientation in the current market.
I'm serious.
I think that automated taxis will be a boon to women who want to go somewhere at night but don't want to go there by means of an unscrupulous stranger.
A driverless car has no time to be racist! Also for women this will be a brilliant option!
What would be any of the advantages of it?
I have yet to see an autonomous vehicle that could cope with anything other than a completely unobstructed road with everyone behaving themselves, and I can't see a way for autonomous vehicles to progress beyond that.
If you don't think taxis are available 24/7, you haven't met anyone that drives a taxi. Someone is always up and about.