| > due to the lower average revenue, it needs to be cheaper It's unclear to me, but this may be tautological, or at least reversible (by being cheaper to be competitive, it reduces revenue). Perhaps I'm missing your point? > There's no way to move your self-driving car to the opposite side of the world for the night. Ah, but that's moot. Unlike with a human driver, an auto-car doesn't need to be moved to the opposite side of the world (or an approximation, like Sacramento from SF) for the night. > If self-driving cars are cheaper, it seems like that would lead to more of them driving longer hours than humans, which would lower the utilization rather than increase it. You're still confusing "driving" (in motion) with "on duty". Also, even if an auto-car is cheaper while driving, that doesn't matter if the different parties are bearing the cost of off-meter driving. In the auto-car case, it's the vendor (e.g. Uber), so there's a strong incentive to maximize utilization. In the human case, it's the driver, so the vendor has no such incentive (nor even the ability during "on duty" but not driving-for-that-vendor times). |