People in the industry and those who support it are excited because of the positives impacts it can make. Not because its scifi tech.
At scale the cost per mile of an AV will be below that of an equivalent personal car because of all these factors
- High utilization means you are not paying for a car that spends 80% of its life parked and removes the costs associated with that
- Insurance, maintenance, and parking costs are reduced because of efficiency gains in a fleet configuration vs personally handling all those things
- Fixed upfront cost that goes down considerably as number of vehicles increases
Testing is happening in SF probably because the data shows that SF residents are high utilization users of vehicles and don't use public transit as much as you think. Ex Uber and lyft to 200k trips in SF alone everyday. SF is a difficult city to drive in so it shows real capability and a lot of the people working on this tech happen to live in and around SF.
Autonomous cars are here today. The things you are suggesting will require all car companies to align on new standards and develop tools for the government to interface with there new standard equipment and than deploy that infrastructure. That will require years more of work. AVs use the infrastructure that is there already.
New equipment is not free. It will add costs to vehicles and someone will pay for it. More fees (ex for speeding) are always a bigger burden on the poor.
At scale the cost per mile of an AV will be below that of an equivalent personal car because of all these factors - High utilization means you are not paying for a car that spends 80% of its life parked and removes the costs associated with that - Insurance, maintenance, and parking costs are reduced because of efficiency gains in a fleet configuration vs personally handling all those things - Fixed upfront cost that goes down considerably as number of vehicles increases
Testing is happening in SF probably because the data shows that SF residents are high utilization users of vehicles and don't use public transit as much as you think. Ex Uber and lyft to 200k trips in SF alone everyday. SF is a difficult city to drive in so it shows real capability and a lot of the people working on this tech happen to live in and around SF.
Autonomous cars are here today. The things you are suggesting will require all car companies to align on new standards and develop tools for the government to interface with there new standard equipment and than deploy that infrastructure. That will require years more of work. AVs use the infrastructure that is there already.
New equipment is not free. It will add costs to vehicles and someone will pay for it. More fees (ex for speeding) are always a bigger burden on the poor.