> It's about 33% in dense areas and 55% in suburban areas. Which actually doesn't improve the driving situation.
Are the suburbs not one of the easier places for autonomous vehicles? I’d think the lower traffic, larger roads, and reliance on cars to get around (due to low density and lack of transit) would make them the ideal place for self-driving cars to succeed.
I don’t agree. The problem is suburbs have a lower cost-per-mile for trips than urban areas.
It’s way more common to take a taxi in the city than the ‘burbs. Behavior for car ownership and expectations around waiting on rides is different. Self driving taxis are an easy transition in cities. In the suburbs, you need to sell people on expensive vehicles that cost a lot per trip (whether owned or hailed).
Ultimately I think it’s the same city/rural (really dense vs less dense) divide between a lot of things.
In a suburban area, it could take 15 minutes for a taxi to get to you. In a rural area, 30 minutes to an hour. Inconvenient, especially since you could hop in the car you already have because of this situation, and probably already be where you want to go by the time they arrive.
In an urban area (especially a super dense city like Manhattan, Tokyo, Mumbai, etc.), you probably spend more time figuring out if you need a taxi than actually getting one (literally seconds in most cases), and god help you if you’re trying to park. It will not go well.
Two ways to get these numbers. Consider the total miles driven, divided by cost of the car. Or consider the cost of a taxi if you don’t own a car.
I believe uber says their average cost per mile is roughly $1. So maybe $2 in urban areas. Waymo is $3 they said.
I saw some statistic that said a new car costs $800 a month now. Since we’re talking about selling new manual vs self driving cars, we can ignore people buying used cars or particularly cheap cars.
If you own a car in a city, you might drive to get groceries once a week and you may drive to a furniture store once every few years, and you take a couple trips to the airport every year. Cost city dwellers walk or take transit. Cities are dense, so the grocery store may be 2mi a way, so roughly 200mi a year, and then maybe 200mi a year for everything else. That’s 400mi a year (or 8mi/wk) with a car that statistically costs $800/mo in America - or 200/wk, so it actually costs $25/mi.
In the suburbs, you may drive 20mi round trip to the grocery store. Then 20mi a day round trip to commute, then 5mi a trip to a restaurant… it adds up to a lot more miles total. I googled it and the average American drives 1200mi/mo. That’s $1.5/mi assuming the same average $800/mo cost of a new car.
That means it’s cheaper for an urban dweller to take uber or Waymo instead of buying a new car. It’s almost but not quite cheaper for a suburbanite to take an uber but definitely not a Waymo.
Are the suburbs not one of the easier places for autonomous vehicles? I’d think the lower traffic, larger roads, and reliance on cars to get around (due to low density and lack of transit) would make them the ideal place for self-driving cars to succeed.