We’ve dropped a lot of virtual ink in the field of robot axis over the past few years. I have to admit that I was once more optimistic about them than I am now, even as technology advances and new milestones are reached. But in all that time, I feel like one side of the argument hasn’t often been expressed well or thoroughly. Well, it’s more of a “both things can’t be true” argument.
In a recent comment thread under one of my articles, the reader “citizenjs” wrote what i would say is a brilliant comment on this subject. It is clear and quite simple, but thorough and well explained. And it’s just written in such a way that I find it hard to disprove it. Here’s their comment:
By citizenjs
The way I see it, there’s something wrong with the statement that TAAS [Transportation as a Service] will be very, very cheap (some say cheaper than public transport) and at the same time be very, very profitable. If you look at Lyft and Uber, they’re cheaper than traditional taxi services, but they’re not nearly as cheap as TAAS expects them to be. And neither Lyft nor Uber is very profitable (in fact, both have lost much of their existence money). Now the easy answer is that TAAS would have lower labor costs, but Lyft and Uber already have quite low labor costs, and they have also outsourced all of the responsibility for vehicle purchase, fuel, maintenance, vehicle cleaning, etc. to the same under-compensated “independent contractors” (which in many markets incur very little costs anyway, especially if vehicle depreciation is factored in) And TAAS would benefit from lower vehicle operating costs than the current ICE costs, but those still won’t be trivial. So if TAAS really is cheap, where do the profits come from And if TAAS isn’t really cheap, where do all those extra riders come from?
If TAAS can undercut fare prices (and it seems likely it could, but again, by how much?), you’d think more people would choose to use that rather than own their own vehicles. But then again, TAAS will compete with personal vehicle ownership which is likely to be significantly cheaper than personal vehicle ownership is today (capital, energy and maintenance costs are all expected to be lower than ICE vehicles, although “refueling” may be less convenient for people without charging at home). So the breaking point in mileage at which personal property is cheaper than TAAS may not be much different than it is now with ICE ownership vs. ride-hailing, and if it does, TAAS won’t become a dominant choice, except perhaps in places like densely populated cities. where car ownership is unusually expensive and inconvenient.
Featured Photo: AutoX BYD roboticaxi fleet in Shenzhen, courtesy of NVIDIA & AutoX.
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