Comment by oblio | Hacker News Reader

Comment by oblio | Hacker News Reader

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> Oh man, another "never" statement. An autonomous car that doesn't have a driver, doesn't need to take breaks to eat or sleep, that doesn't need to be parked, can in fact become cheaper than public transport. I invite you to do some research on that.

I love how you sideskipped my phsyics argument like it was nothing.

You're still moving 1.5 tons (and constantly increasing!) of metal everywhere, to move 1 human being weighing 80kg.

The physics just don't work.

> That's exactly my point, and why in presence of a price competitive option such as a self driving taxi, no one would want to catch a bus or a train with many people and dirty seats.

Price competitive how? It's impossible. The only way this works is by offloading a ton of externalities on everyone else, including people without cars. Roads, parking lots, highways, high capacity bridges, tunnels, charging infrastructure/gas stations, exhaust pollution, tire wear pollution, road degradation pollution, noise pollution, light pollution, manufacturing and construction pollution, ...

By what logic can't you clean a bus for 100 people but you can thoroughly clean a taxi for 1, AND make the taxi cost competitive?

> I love how you sideskipped my phsyics argument like it was nothing.

My bad.

> You're still moving 1.5 tons (and constantly increasing!) of metal everywhere, to move 1 human being weighing 80kg.

True.

> Price competitive how? It's impossible.

OK, you can transport at least a factor of 10x more people with the existing number of cars on the road. People who drive to work and back use their cars for a fraction of time in a day. If those cars were out moving people around the clock, they would add a huge capacity to the taxi fleet.

Now, who pays for the car? The owner. They have paid for it whether it's sitting in the car park or driving people around. The only difference is running cost of the car: electricity and mostly tire wear. That becomes the cost of transporting people with margin added for Tesla and the car owner. That's it!

Now I just realized that perhaps in your hometown, cost of public transport may be so dirt cheap. But where I live, it cost $40 AUD a week to travel 2 stations back and fourth once a day. The same trips over the same period with my car costs me $2.40 AUD in electricity and about $2.80 AUD in tyre wear (assuming $2000 AUD per 25000km which is way too aggressive). That's a total of $5.20 vs $40. Even if you double the cost to account for margin, it's still 4 times less expensive than public transport.

EDIT: even if it's exactly the same as public transport, it'll still be the preferably mode of transport, because it's door to door and you don't have to deal with anyone. Imagine someone who's happy to share with one other person, now you have bonker economics.

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