[ccc3]

A couple of comments:

And if cars are receiving 20 times more actual use, that would imply that there would be 20 times less cars sold

Actually, no it wouldn't. If cars are getting 20 times more use they will wear out much more quickly than they do now. That means cars will have to be replaced much more frequently. There would be fewer cars sold than there are now, but it wouldn't be 20x fewer.

The operating percent of a car will go from 4% to that 96%

This seems wildly optimistic to me. The driverless cars may be capable of driving around 96% of the time, but that doesn't mean they can be carrying people 96% of the time. No matter how efficient the system, if there are enough cars to handle peak traffic during the day, then a lot of those cars will be sitting around doing nothing at night.

[frankus]

If cars are getting 20 times more use they will wear out much more quickly than they do now.

Existing cars, if driven 20 times as much, would wear out 20 times more quickly, like taxicabs do now.

But it's also possible that cars would simply be built with more reliable components and more durable materials, like current aircraft and public transit vehicles are.

It's not cost-effective to build an ultra-reliable car that's sitting idle 96% of the time, but the economics would surely change if the utilization rate is much higher.

[bigiain]

The thing is, taxis _don't_ wear out as fast as you'd think.

I remember talking to an old-school cab driver a while back, when I noticed his odo had ~650,000km (~400k miles) on it. We chatted a bit about it, and when I asked "So how long do cabs last" he said "3 good crashes." It doesn't which of the locally popular cab models you buy and it doesn't matter how far you drive them - you might need to fit a reconditioned diff or gearbox or even motor, but all of that is "routine maintenance" from his point of view. Its after the third time you've crunched it hard into something that it's time to get rid of it...

[maaku]

Yeah, but if you replace the diff, gearbox, and motor, how much of the cab is really left (mechanically speaking)? Replacing the engine is, from an engine-maker's perspective, the same as buying a new car.

[bigiain]

Yeah, but from the cab owners perspective, $600 for a reconditioned diff or $1200 for a reco motor is a lot less hassle/expense than $40k for a new car, then getting all the cab-specific fitout done to it...

(Yeah, that's what the base model cars used for cabs cost here. Google Holden Commodore or Ford Falcon prices. New car prices in Australia seem stupidly high to people used to American car prices...)

[maaku]

Expect prices for diffs and motors to increase by an order of magnitude if the OP's vision comes true.

[maaku]

Why the downvotes? I'm serious. If cars start lasting 600k+ miles and are shared by multiple drivers and families, car companies will ‘need’ to recoup their losses. Expect prices of car components (the stuff that wears out) to skyrocket, and patent litigation to get rid of the after-market/3rd-party compatible components.

[bigiain]

Maybe. Keep n mind these's a lot of parts of a differential (or motor) that _dont_ need replacing when reconditioning. In a diff, there's maybe 9 bearings, the pinion and crownwheel, and maybe the 4 spur gears. If you start with an undamaged but worn out diff, replacing those parts effectively gives you a brand new diff. The bearings are standard industrial parts worth maybe $40 or $50 ( at retail prices) and the auto manufacturers can't affect the cost/margin on them. The crownwheels, pinions, and spur gears are already all available from aftermarket manufacturers for any model likely to be used as a cab (at least here in Australia).

[snowwindwaves]

cars wear out from two things 1) age 2) use A car, left sitting in the driveway for 30 years, unused and unmaintained, is unlikely to work very well or for very long. Rubber components like hoses, wire insulation, weather stripping etc become brittle and break.

As some other posters mention, cabs with 650,000 miles are not unheard of. I had a Toyota Landcruiser with 450,000km on the second engine, over 900,000km on the body.

A car that got 20x use would not wear out 20x as fast because a large part of a car wearing out is just age, not miles.

[arundelo]

Here's a story about a guy (a friend of my brother) who put a million miles on a Honda accord:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2199&dat=20021117&...

He took extremely good care of it.

[GFischer]

There's a Volkswagen Gol here in Uruguay with a million kilometers, and it's not an unheard-of amount

Cars are the most expensive in the world here, so we tend to keep then way long past their expiration date - as an example, I own a 1994 Maruti with 200.000 km, they aren't designed to last that long ! Japanese cars are the most coveted because they do last a million kilometers if cared for properly.

Sadly, there's a ban on used car imports (The vice-president's campaign was funded by the new cars importer association).

[quanticle]

A million kilometers is considerably less than a million miles. A million kilometers is about 621 thousand miles. That's a lot, but it's much less than a million miles.

[sambeau]

Do you seriously believe there is any regular reader of Hacker News that doesn't know that a kilometre is less than a mile?

[nik_0_0]

(This is more in response to Sunbeam)

I did actually find this quite helpful, as a Canadian I usually gloss over the km/mile conversion with a nice 1 km ~= 1 mile, as with most things you talk about (speed < 60, distances less than 100) the difference is fairly miniscule (and handwavey!). I didn't realize 1million miles is only 621,000 km! Thanks from an ignorant Canadian :)

[philjr]

Whether urban legend or not, supposedly there's a mercedes "million miles" club. They did famously buy back a mercedes that had over 2 million miles on the clock that's in their museum now

It's not isolated to Mercedes either

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_longevity

[altcognito]

Rust qualifies somewhat under #2, but not completely. Rust isn't 100% preventable in some areas. I live in Michigan and because we use salt on our roads, if you're not washing the vehicle (along with the undercarriage in particular), you will inevitably get rust. On my last vehicle the engine mounts (which were part of the frame -- unibody) rusted. There was pretty much no way to fix the car soundly. If I had washed the underbody frequently enough I could have saved it, but there is a cost associated with that as well.

[nknight]

I recently saw something pointing out another wrinkle about taxis -- per mile, their engines go between hot and cold a whole lot less, so there's less stress from thermal expansion. Once they're on, they pretty much stay on for at least the driver's normal workday.

I don't know how much difference this actually makes, but common knowledge amongst the people I know seems to be that the most stressful time for a normal engine is starting up.

[brc]

It's not just common knowledge, it's the truth. And it makes a huge difference.

When an engine starts up, all the oil is sitting in the bottom. In a good condition engine, the oil pump starts giving meaningful pressure the moment the starter turns, and starts pumping fresh oil throughout the engine.

However, when cold, an engine has the wrong tolerances to account for when the materials heat up and the materials expand. So the oil pressure isn't quite right.

As the engine ages this problem gets worse, so each startup cycle gets progressively worse. This is why a car with a worn engine will show the 'oil pressure' light for an increasingly long time after it's started.

The length of service life for an engine will come down to a) operating hours (not just distance) b) operator abuse (revving while cold, excessive RPMs throughout use) c) service attention (oil changes, filter changes, coolant changes) d) duty cycles (how many times it heats up and down).

The worst thing you can do for a car is a lot of short trips with a big enough spacing to let the engine cool, and aggressive driving while the engine is still cold.

An F1 engine is seized when cold, it requires several hours of warm water and oil to be pumped around to bring up the metals to the operating temperature.

Modern engines can go a very long way if cared for properly.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

> Existing cars, if driven 20 times as much, would wear out 20 times more quickly

Citation needed. I don't think they would.

[frankus]

You're right, instead of "would" I should've said "might". I was taking the parent's assumption as a given for argument's sake.

[SideburnsOfDoom]

I think it's safe to assume that cars driven 20 times as much wear out somewhere faster then the normal rate, but less then 20 times as fast. Some of the wear is due to time, some due to thermal cycling (turning on and off, which happens a lot less for the high-use vehicle) and only some is linear with use.

[yason]

If cars are getting 20 times more use they will wear out much more quickly than they do now.

This is just a matter of the practical design choices. Any machinery that is in heavy use usually gets fitted, appropriately, with more robust set of parts which last many times longer before wearing out.

Current consumer cars have bearings, joints, and moving parts that are carefully optimized to match the expected usage pattern (which is mostly idle) for a designated period of time and nothing more. That's why older cars can sometimes run for ages. Decades ago we didn't know how to make extremely light-weight parts from least amount of steel with a calculable expiry time of, for example, 40 thousand miles so engineers had to fit cars with slightly heavier and more expensive parts to make sure they didn't break too easily. Think about fitting bearings and joints from a heavy van into a light Japanese small car. Or consider old 70's-80's Saabs and Volvos that can last nearly forever.

Likewise for fluids and lubrication, it's easier to clock high mileages with a car that is mostly in use throughout the day rather than with one that is used a couple of times a day for commuting. The engine wearout is at its peak during the first miles after a cold start.

[rdl]

Also, the 1970s and 1980s were a low point for cars in general -- lots of new environmental regulations were kicking in (including a whale oil issue which was discussed on hacker news), causing objectively worse reliability for many cars in the 1970s and 1980s vs. the 1950s and 1960s. By the late 1990s the Japanese and German manufacturers seem to have resolved things, and by the 1990s, the US automakers.

[fleitz]

Yes, cars may still sit around doing nothing at night, but the number of cars for peak traffic will drop significantly because of the gains in utilization. Imagine you want to ride share with your friends, one car will ferry people to and fro the highway which will be almost impeccably timed with your friends arrival at a waiting area just off the freeway. You'll get in the car and continue to work, after you arrive at work that car will go pickup someone in the city who works a bit later and grab a couple of their friends on the way.

When you combine this technology with social networks and mobile the improvements to efficiency, cost, and quality of life will be astounding. This isn't going to be an overnight thing but I see this kind of thing becoming prevalent probably 5 to 10 years after the first driverless cars become publicly available.

Driverless cars would be worth it simply for the reduction in drunk driving.

[hessenwolf]

Driverless cars would be awesome simply for the increase in drunk driving. This is a really good point actually, you could go out for the night and still drive home.

Drink driving laws have had a huge negative impact on country living in rural Ireland, where the main social outlet is the local pub, and there isn't a taxi in the village.

[brc]

I was thinking along these lines on a similar thread recently. The particular thread implied that the cost would be much lower, because there was no driver involved. I agree that it would be lower, but not orders of magnitude lower, because the demand shape will be exactly the same - or even more pronounced.

My hypothesis is that the driver is probably about 10-20% of the cost of a fare, the rest is the capital cost of the vehicle + licensing fees + insurance, and the marginal cost of maintenance and fuel. Because inevitably cars sit around most of the time, then the price of 5-6 busy hours of the day has to make up for the rest of the time.

Further, with a disruptive business idea like this, I could easily see an auction-style interface for the vehicle booking, which would give a much better revenue curve (we are talking about Google). In that case, the peak-demand period would probably exceed the current (regulated) taxi fares. But the plus side of that is that a midnight ride would be very cheap due to lack of demand and simultaneous lack of a need to pay drivers more money to work nightshifts.

[Turing_Machine]

"that a midnight ride would be very cheap"

Except possibly around whatever local time the bars close.

[brc]

Well, if you make the mistake of simultaneous closing times, yes.

One other benefit would be that (hopefully) cheaper late night rides would cut down on drink driving.

[shasta]

Not to mention the immediate efficiency hit of the car driving empty between rides.

[bigiain]

I wonder what sort of population density and usage pattern you'd need before that worked in your favour?

If my apartment complex had a few dozen cars shared between a few hundred apartments, perhaps the car I take to go shopping could pick up the next door kid from soccer on the way back, then a different car might pick me up at the shops when I'm done, after dropping some other neighbour at the movies...

(I guess I'm now describing taxis. I wonder what the difference between this, and a taxi network of driverless cars is?)

[bigiain]

Responding to my own comment here...

Anybody got both Travis Kalanick and Elon Musk's numbers in their speed dial?

What if a "disrupt the cab industry" company got together with a "low moving part, high reliability electric car maker" to do an end-run around the expected auto industry opposition...

A fleet of driverless electric taxis, all routed by smartphone apps and behavioural prediction...

[bigiain]

Then, when everybody is impressed with how well they work, you start selling fleets of them to Apple/Google/Oracle/SouthBayTechFirmDeJour - every evening a train of autonomous cars starts arriving and emptying out your campus 4 people per car heading for nearby/on-the-way destinations, all of a sudden those 20 hectares of parking lot can become cube farms or data centres...

During the middle of the day and all night, you lease the capacity to FedEx or UPS...

[slyn]

As long as we're hitting this one out the ballpark we can imagine all the online services getting in on the action: like the OKCupid speed date commute, the Yelp surprise me whats for dinner restaurant ride, or the Groupon deal of the day carpool.

[mediaman]

Limited range cars with long recharge times would be a poor operating fit for economics that favor high utilization. There'd be too much downtime during peak times of day.

Maybe it could be coupled with swappable battery pack stations that the autotaxis could visit to get a freshly charged pack. A geographically focused taxi company could have the financial resources to invest in the battery depot, which would also solve the standardization problem.

[anifow]

Sorry, that's been solved. There are efforts to implementing this exact network of fuelling stations (battery swapping) for electric cars, and Better Place is a shining example from Isreal:

http://www.ted.com/talks/shai_agassi_on_electric_cars.html

http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=10007...

[DennisP]

On the other hand, if you find yourself running low on juice, either because you're on a long trip or because you didn't plan ahead, it's not a problem. You just swap cars like the Pony Express swapped horses.

Lower utilization is balanced by lower energy costs than gasoline (but you're right, swappable batteries would help too).

[bigiain]

Perhaps a revenue opportunity for cash-strapped cities?

If we stop owning cars and the communal ones we use drive themselves home, we'll stop putting money in parking meters.

Replace the parking meters with charging stations...

[nathanhammond]

Bright Automotive is doing fleet vehicles, not a huge step away.

http://www.brightautomotive.com/

[ars]

And I assume you will install and deinstall the carseat each time? A huge portion of cars are used to transport kids, and it's not practical to remove the carseat each time.

You can't have a car with a loaner carseats either since they have to be individually adjusted to the kid.

Every single time people talk about cars, and public transportation they always forget about kids. I see it over and over. Come on people - expand your worldview a little.

[dolbz]

I would expect that eventually the safety of automated cars will far exceed current levels and therefore child car seats won't be required in the same way that no-one uses a car seat on a train (or even a bus actually, which is presumably much more dangerous than a train)

[svnv]

This just opens the market up to build a carseat that solves this problem. How about a regular seat that can be folded out or transformed into a seat suitable for children?

[icebraining]

Where I live, a certain percentage of taxis have big trunks, for people with baggage (they can request that when they call for it).

Why not have a percentage of driverless cars pre-equipped with carseats? You'd just have to configure once the age of your kids, then when you call a car (using e.g. a smartphone app), you just say for who it is ("Siri, I need a car for john, mary and me") and the right type will come.

[ars]

The car seat needs to be individually adjusted, especially for younger kids (different heights needs the straps in different slots, although the fine tuning can often be done on the spot).

And you're going to need every combination of ages, people have more than one child.

There are approximately 10 different car seat configurations for the various age ranges (5 actual car seats). And assuming up to 3 kids would require 1000 different cars.

There is rear facing (with 3 heights), front facing strapped (4 heights), front facing buckled, booster, and booster without back. (Although many car seats can handle 2 types in one seat. But it requires you to reinstall it.)

[cbr]

     5 actual car seats

Are current parents really buying 5 car seats as their kid grows up?

[DennisP]

So people with kids buy a car, and rent it out when they're not planning to use it for a few hours.

[XLcommerce]

this doesn't sound like a show stopper to me... simply an opportunity for someone to invent a one-size-fits-all car seat :)

[ars]

Considering that there are 5 different types of car seats, and they can be adjusted to about 10 different configurations that's not going to be an easy task.

[sethg]

The people who design car seats these days know that their customers would rather spend an hour rethreading/reinstalling their car seat every six months than spend over $200 on the seat. But if there were a large fleet of shared cars on the road, and if some entrepreneur came out with a $1000 car seat that could be readjusted in seconds for a child of any size, then the owners of the fleet would have an incentive to loan out those seats along with the cars.

[anabis]

> if there are enough cars to handle peak traffic during the day I got the image of cars migrating across the Eurasia, taking Chinese to work, then Indians, then Middle-easterns, etc.

[nt_mark]

(cough) Public transport (cough)