[yazaddaruvala]

Robotaxis should roughly drop the cost of “Uber’s” to 1/3.

Currently Uber only collects 25% of the fair for itself. The rest is for the human driving.

Robotaxis can also be used 24/7 so better capital utilization on the initial investment for the car.

Maintenance costs reduce with scale (+in house mechanics to improve margins). Maintenance costs reduce with electric drive trains. Maintenance costs reduce with better initial manufacturing (to optimize overall car costs rather than optimizing for initial sale costs to sell to individuals).

Increased scale can mean reduced margins i.e. Amazon.

And this is all before the tech is democratized. Once there is competition, Uber’s 25% cut of current fairs (for software engineering and support) starts to drop too.

[Spooky23]

Remember that Uber doesn’t make money. And they pay their drivers less than the driver is losing to depreciation. Also, the robot isn’t free. Software isn’t free — it’s really expensive actually.

All of the cost savings that you describe also don’t require a robotaxi to realize. The cost per trip of my wife’s Nissan Leaf is about 60% of the SUV.

Even the durability can be addressed by buying a Toyota or Honda vs a Jeep or whatever.

What will be an issue for the Ubers of the world is accounting. Without some sucker wasting his car away, Uber needs to invest billions in assets and infrastructure. That capital structure is more like an airline than Google. Not something Wall St rewards.

[yazaddaruvala]

> That capital structure is more like an airline than Google. Not something Wall St rewards.

This is the part we are disconnected on. It is the hardest part to guess about.

If the accounting works out like an airline, I agree with you that costs will remain high and will not change transportation significantly.

However, unlike an airline, the variable cost per ride is low. The way I see it, the economics will work out more like a data center (relative to an airline). Which is something Wall St does reward.

[desas]

> Currently Uber only collects 25% of the fair for itself. The rest is for the human driving.

Who pays for the car currently? In the UK it's not uber, it's the human as far as I've understood it.

[yazaddaruvala]

If you believe Elon Musk the Model 3 currently sold for $50-60k USD will be worth $100k USD as a robotaxi. For us in 2019 it really is hard to imagine the worth of a car that is used 99% of the time rather than parked 95% of the time.

When robotaxis have been real for a decade, car manufacturers will build and run robotaxi fleets.

Unlike today, vertical integration of manufacturing, maintenance, recycling and operating the fleet of cars creates a lot of consistent demand and can bring significant economic advantages even more than Musk’s current estimate.

Even the car manufacturers goals change. Rather than optimizing to sell cars (have them degrade and sell more), cars will be optimized for durability, maximum materials reuse, lowest variable cost per ride, ergonomic rides.

[jcranmer]

> Rather than optimizing to sell cars (have them degrade and sell more)

People often talk about cars being afflicted by this style of planned obsolescence, but the facts are that cars last far longer now than they did 50 years ago. What planned obsolescence does exist is in the form of trying to shame you for running an "old" car as opposed to knowingly making the manufacturing quality of cars utter shit.

[yazaddaruvala]

I agree, as a non-professional driver the lifetime of the car is measured in years/aesthetics.

Meanwhile, a professional driver can put on 25k-50k miles per year[1]. Compared to 10k-15k miles per year on average[2]. Meaning professional drivers hit the car’s mileage limit, 200k-300k in 6-8 years. Already it would be better for them to have cars that are optimized for cleaning, maintainability, and longer lifespans. And this doesn’t even talk about lifespans of wheels or the expedited cost of maintenance.

Taking this math further: This is targeting 40 hour work weeks for professional drivers. If we targeted 75% (a lower bound) of the total hours in a week 168, we see robotaxis will drive 3-4x the miles of today’s Uber drivers. Setting lifespans of 2-4 years per taxi.

Large robotaxi fleet operators will likely become manufacturers but regardless they will change the mental model of how car manufacturing currently operates.

Robotaxis will not only absorb the profits of the taxi industry but also the profits from the car manufacturing industry, car maintenance industry, car rental industry, last-mile delivery (including food delivery) industry, rental housing industry, and more. The scale will eventually be unimaginable allowing the margins to be astonishingly low.

[1] https://www.quora.com/How-many-miles-does-a-full-time-driver...

[2] https://www.carinsurance.com/Articles/average-miles-driven-p...

[yazaddaruvala]

P.S. Fleet operators will also optimize the cars for most recycling ability.

Just look at the trend with a manufacturing company like Apple. Metal frames not only look good but also recycle better and are better for business as a whole.

Apple has an iPhone tradein program because recycling materials can be cost effective for them.

Apple has also added the subscription program where customers are always upgraded to the newest iPhones but somehow it’s better business for Apple than force them to use secondary markets to sell old phones and constantly buy new phones. It’s more cost effective for these type of customers and good business for Apple (in large part because of their effective recycling ability).

Robotaxi fleet operators