[bduerst]

This is trivial.

Driverless cars are "always on" so it's not an apt comparison because you're going to always get more from less. Besides, ridesharing is already subsidized right now, so bottom line isn't an issue in the market.

Likewise, ride-sharing with self driving cars is even easier since if you own a self driving car it can work on it's own while you are not using it, which is most of the time. There's no reason a similar asset sharing model won't spring up after economies of scale.

You could also argue that it's cheaper to pay workers with their own textile equipment, rather than spend the CapEx on a weaving loom, yet here we are.

[asdff]

It's not trivial when we don't even know what sort of regulation will be required to maintain these vehicles' road legal status, let alone banking on future economies of scale. Would it be a simple license fee? Perhaps an inspection? An age requirement on the vehicle? Or perhaps the worst (and very possible) outcome, mandating that an undistracted driver be sitting behind the wheel at all times, ready to take control.

It would take one trivial piece of legislation to turn this technology into a souped up cruise control rather than the world changing technology that its backers insist that it is. How could you even fight that sort of regulation without your argument boiling down to 'we promise we don't need human oversight.' One lazy 'think of the children!' retort later, and it's banned faster than mango juul pods.

I don't understand the investor confidence here. To me this seems like basic research, critical for future technological developments, but a cash sink with no guarantee for profitability. Is this just a rat race between the giants throwing cash at this?

[swagasaurus-rex]

The likelihood of such a legislation on a national level is unlikely. Instead, you will have cities that refuse to adopt self-driving, maybe because they were burned with a tragedy (with no regard to statistics), maybe to protect human jobs.

Large companies can adopt in other cities, or if need be, other countries eager to change their quality of lives.

[bduerst]

Precisely. Regulatory adoption won't be much different than how government has responded to ridesharing today. Highly fragmented but typically open.

[throwawaymath]

If this is trivial to you, what do you consider moderately difficult? What's sufficiently difficult that you have to spend a single day thinking about it? How about an open problem requiring careful planning and months of effort?

It's like the word "trivial" has no meaning anymore. All I can tell from people using it these days is that they're very confident in what they're about to say.

[bduerst]

What I consider non-trivial is tangental to comparing the cost/benefits between autonomous driving and ride share services. The non-trivial part of this is [nearly] solved, as is evident by this Waymo soft launch.

[lkbm]

The self-driving cars may be available to give rides 24/7, but if 90% of the demand is 0800-0900 and 1600-0200, they may end up sitting idle for twelve hours each day anyway.

You probably need over 100x the vehicles at 5pm as you do at 4am. You have to find a balance of how much CapEx is worthwhile -- probably more than you need to cover the 4am shift, but far less than needed for the 5pm shift.