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by mvhvv
1598 days ago
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Is it reasonable to assume AV will be lower-cost than rideshare? The key thing that makes Uber more affordable than a taxi is that vehicle purchase/maintenance/depreciation/liability are all externalised. In a full-self-driving situation you no longer have to pay your driver, but you do have to pay for all of the above. With the inevitably higher standards of maintenance required for AV fleet vehicles I can't really imagine it being cheaper than it currently is. Sure the sensor/cv/vision tech will get cheaper, but machines still wear down. |
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That's what the industry is betting on. I think it's reasonable in the steady-state: labor costs are expensive as hell.
> vehicle purchase/maintenance/depreciation/liability are all externalised.
These aren't 100% externalized with Uber, as they show up in the labor cost. They're only externalized with Uber to the extent that drivers do the math wrong on the costs they're paying[1]. Most of the analyses I've seen of this choose every possible pessimistic assumption, and still end up with net wages that are very high. They're of course low relative to "a living wage", which is what the analyses are focusing on, but that's precisely the point of what we're talking about: even the floor of labor costs is very high, when you're looking at expenses.
[1] Completely tangentially, but also note that this ignores the extent to which people derive value from being able to convert assets around. It's hard to imagine for us SWEs making 1% salaries and sitting on mountains of wealth, but liquidity is a constant and pressing concern for a large portion of the country. See also: payday lenders, where there's a stark difference between the opinions of those who've actually studied the economics of the industry and the midwit affluent John-Oliver-watcher.