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Comment by astrodust | Hacker News Reader

> Cars are usually much faster, provide much better shelter from the weather...

If only there was such a thing as a car that you could call on-demand, make use of when you wanted it, and then got rid of it when you were done.

Even better, what about one that comes with a driver?

A crazy idea, I know.

If you live in the right neighborhood, a car is a nuisance. I can go somewhere and just walk right in. I don't have to spend time finding a parking spot, paying for parking, dealing with parking tickets, and all that related nuisance. Having owned a car, I found it shapes your decisions a lot. Things are only convenient if they're convenient to get to in a car.

Considering how much money I'm not spending on a car, a cab is a bargain. If I need more than that, rent a van by the hour.

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The following page estimates the true cost of car ownership at approximately $1.38/mile: http://commutesolutions.org/external/calc.html

That's still quite a bit cheaper than taxi fares or the minimum $2.75 that Uber charges. Assuming that you spend $20k on purchasing the car, you'd make up for the cost of the car in just under 15,000 miles driven compared to taking Uber at the quoted rate.

Yeah, I don't really understand why people figure that self-driving cars/taxis/Uber/ZipCar would ever be cheaper per mile. They pay to operate their vehicles same as you do, except they also need to have some profit on top.

High fixed costs and economies of scale.

Cars are high fixed cost capital goods. A taxi will be driven far more over the course of its lifetime than a personal car, so the fixed cost per mile is much lower.

Also, economies of scale make purchases and maintenance and repair cheaper.

These are two reasons to believe taxis should be cheaper than personal ownership.

Finally, let me point to airplanes. It makes far more sense to rent an airplane than buy one because almost no one travels enough to justify the purchase. Cars are analogous.

Edit: When I say cars are analogous, I mean that there are analogues between the situations. Both are vehicles with high fixed cost that can be either bought or rented. The situation is comparable, though obviously not the same. All I'm saying is that it's conceivable that someday the conditions could change so that it's more sensible to rent than buy.

>Cars are analogous.

No they aren't. Many people need a car every day. Almost nobody needs a plane every day.

I don't want to argue pointlessly, but while your conclusion may be right, I think your logic makes some leaps. Why is day the natural time scale? No one needs a plane every hour and no one needs a car every hour either. By that time scale, they are the same. Also, everyone needs a plane every year and needs a car every year too. On that time scale they are also the same. Only in a cherry-picked intermediate time scale are they different. :) I think your answer would be improved if you could justify why the daily time scale is most relevant.

You are being overly pedantic. Try s/every day/frequently/g and see how you go...

Pardon me, but what is s/g?

"s/every day/frequently/g” is a UNIX-y way of saying “substitute ‘frequently’ in place of ‘every day’ in the entire document”.

(See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sed#Substitution .)

Thanks!

The time scale in fact can go the other direction and still favor cars. It's about cost per use.

If you drive every day like many Americans, it's cheaper to own a car than to use a cab. The number of people that fly enough to need their own plane is effectively zero.

Most people are in a situation where they're forced to use a car every day. This situation could be resolved through smarter planning, better urban design, and alternative methods of transportation.

Two hundred years ago nobody needed a car because it didn't exist. Now people need it because parts of society are so entangled with it that it's nearly impossible to pull them apart.

If somehow planes had wrangled their way into our lifestyle the same way, then yes, people would need a plane every day. How else would they get home to their chalet in an inaccessible part the woods six hundred miles from the office at the end of a work-day?

These are two reasons to believe taxis should be cheaper than personal ownership.

Well, could be. But the cabbie's wages quickly eat into those gains.

It makes far more sense to rent an airplane than buy one because almost no one travels enough to justify the purchase. Cars are analogous.

Hardly. A 737 lasts for decades and spends nearly a full half of that time in the air; of course no one flies that much. Cars on the other hand, if driven slightly over the US average- say, 20,000miles/year- will hit 200,000 miles in just 10 years, and most cars are _done_ by 200k.

There are some interesting value engineering issues where car parts are designed to fall apart more or less simultaneously at a certain point under normal commuter operating conditions, whereas aircraft are designed to last "forever" more or less.

Its going to be a very strange maintenance challenge. I suspect one will never be totaled by having the heater core rot out after 16 years, like my last car.

You could probably find a car value engineered for long distance taxi/commercial type service. I imagine it would be somewhat different than a normal car, internally, although I don't know enough automotive engineering to tell exactly how.

I imagine it would be somewhat different than a normal car

Usually beefier in every regard, more expensive, and less performant. (Power/MPG/etc all directly conflict with durability/longevity) Longer chassis & softer suspension to reduce vibration & impacts. Just think of the Crown Vic. There's a reason it has been the commercial estate car for so long.

Didn't Ford cancel the Crown Victoria line?

I think the point is that you can live near transit and take advantage of cabs as needed and still come out ahead. When we lived in Chicago, my wife and I would take cabs all the time, especially on weekends or when the weather was bad. I think we spent maybe $100-200/month on cab fare. Now I have a car, and spend $150/month on insurance, $200+/month on parking, $300/month on gas. Averaged over the year, consumables (tires, brakes) and maintenance probably cost $100/month. And it's a paid off car, so I'm not even counting the car payment!

The indirect auto costs are paid by everyone (and pollution is attributable to the bus riders as well), so it gives an incentive to own a cheap reliable car that isn't depreciating much. If I take my kid to someplace 1 mile away it's $3.75 and 15 minutes by bus, or ~$0.80 and 5 minutes by car. I do prefer to walk if it's only a mile.

What if you only travel maybe fifty miles by car per month?

If you don't have a car all the time, you don't use it nearly as often. I do not spend anywhere near $20K per year on cab fare, and can't imagine coming even close.

I'm an avid cyclist and motorcyclist. I've gone skydiving and SCUBA diving. Yet some of the most frightening moments in my life have been in the back of San Francisco taxis.

The sooner robots replace taxi drivers, the better. And the taxis will probably still feel gross inside.

That's the thing that worries me about self-driving taxis replacing my car. Taxis are relatively gross and designed to be easy to clean. I don't see shared vehicles having the comfort of a privately-owned vehicle.

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