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by ghaff 2899 days ago
Seems more likely to be a membership in the 50 cents to $1 per mile range which is what it currently costs to operate a car (including for any deadheading). Not sure why anyone would offer for a fixed fee unless it was for a very high number.
1 comments
mmt 2899 days ago
I suspect the assumption is that this cost will go down if insurance/liability (i.e. injury and property damage) costs are drastically reduced by self-driving cars and fuel and maintenance costs are also reduced by all-electric drivetrains.

Still, $200 seems far-fetched in light of the average American 1200 miles monthly. At under $.17/mi (not counting deadheading), that might not even cover depreciation/capital cost.

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gremlinsinc 2899 days ago
It'd be 400 for a family of 2, 1000 for a family of 5. Could be 300, or 400 per person I just pulled an arbitrary # out of my arse. It does assume more electric use, maybe not 100% electric, but maybe 100 mpg with electric assist.

People are more apt to buy into an 'unlimited' plan. Road trips would cost extra (because you're gaining unlimited full-multi-day access to a vehicle), maybe something like $30/day + gas.

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mmt 2898 days ago
> Could be 300, or 400 per person I just pulled an arbitrary # out of my arse.

That's part of my point, though, that what the number is (or at least its order of magnitude), actually does matter.

For something like a per-person charge, if that number is high enough, for large enough families, people are going to start looking at whether they could be saving by using the per-vehicle pricing of buying versus renting. I'm also saying that this number must be high enough to be attractive for the car company.

> maybe not 100% electric, but maybe 100 mpg with electric assist.

I'd say that's misguided, then, because fuel cost alone is too low a fraction of total operating cost.

> Road trips would cost extra

So like today's cellphone "unlimited" data? In that case, sure, an actually-limited subscription plan would easily be attractive to a car company, since they could write in any limits they want and change them any time, as well as vary the pricing at any time.

How many consumers would opt for that instead of outright buying is another matter.

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