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0 pointsstretchwithme7y ago0 comments

The distance traveled will be a bigger part of the cost of robotic travel. That's what happens when you are sharing the capital cost with many other users.

And that is a big part of why AVs will be cheaper. Paying 1/10 of $500 a month is better than paying $500.

The cost will also depend on how big a vehicle you need. For many people going to work, they only need room for one person and a little space for cargo. Paying for 1/4 of a vehicle is cheaper than paying for a whole vehicle.

So even the variable cost of your transportation will go down.

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ghaff7y ago

But there is no $500/month. There is some Time Value of Money involved, yes, when I plop down $30K for a vehicle that will last for 150K miles or whatever. ADDED: It would be silly to let it sit for 5 years before using it because that $30K could hopefully have been earning money elsewhere. The "$500/mo" is just the financing vehicle you've chosen to purchase the car.

But mostly there is $0.50 / mile or so which is reasonably constant whether I put 10K miles on my car per year or 50K.

There's some savings in provisioning for average usage rather than peak usage as to type of vehicle and so forth. But I'm skeptical how significant this will be beyond city dwellers who are on the cusp of not owning their own vehicles (or their own second vehicles) anyway.

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