Like i said ,it wont happen as fast as portrayed in the video. As soon as you get outside urban areas ,people will elect to own or lease their own personal vehicle.
Like i said ,it wont happen as fast as portrayed in the video. As soon as you get outside urban areas ,people will elect to own or lease their own personal vehicle.
As noted this was posted earlier.
When I saw the OLD Seba video, I was skeptical of the transportation as a service TaaS model, and thought this new video did a better a job motivating it.
Having reflected a bit, I have come to a few conclusions...
--if TaaS is going to take off in a few years, it has to already exist in some form....and it does with Uber/Lyft/etc. As those services have grown, there are some obvious problems. Most notably congestion pricing. They're great when you get a cheap ride when you need it at an off time, but its not really great for commuting...congestion pricing (and traffic) make it a slow and expensive ride.
--Tony notes that (future) EVs can drive a lot more miles than existing ICE cars before they need maintenance or to be scrapped. But a car that goes 500k miles, and will be 'old-fashioned' (and thus undesirable) in a few years is oxymoron....how does a car get driven 500k miles in a few years? 100k miles/yr is 30 mph and running 30% of the time. Sounds like an urban Uber.
--The congestion problem is two-fold. If 'rush hour' is 10% of hours, and takes up more than 50% of TaaS miles, then the cars can't do more than a 20% duty cycle, limiting ROI. Moreover, Uber drivers don't want to work for 2 hours a day, 5 days a week, and if they did, you would need to enlist 10% of the commuting population as drivers. So you need autonomy to make the TaaS model work, and need to accept a low duty cycle in many markets.
--In this model, suburban/rural TaaS is more viable, since there are a of of unused cars that can be dispersed into the suburbs outside of rush hours.
People's thoughts?
But many of those people already dont own a car for various reasons .4 out of 5 Americans live in urban areas.
Haven't really thought this through, but would double duty vehicles fix the ROI issue? I mean a driver buying or leasing the self driving car, using it for private use and then letting it drive away when he/she doesn't need it to do its Uber work? Uber doesn't need to finance the vehicle so it doesn't need to come up with money up front, and the private owner helps to pay for the vehicle and maybe make some money on the side. I have never worked for Uber, but it always struck me that it is a vampire company, taking every little that it can from its drivers. People who work for Uber often have no choice so they can be squeezed.
I think you're onto something. I would want my ICE car to rack up miles and wear itself out (unless you paid me well), but if I knew my EV was low maintenance and would last way more miles than I needed...sure, I might.
More to the point, I suppose that the Car Share model could work here re congestion. You could buy a 'share' of an autonomous EV fleet that guarantees you rush-hour access, and the 'share' (plus per ride charge) would be cheaper than owning or leasing a car. Those not owning shares (or 'premium' status) would still be able to access the vehicles, but at a lower pecking order that precludes rush-hour use.
ICE vehicle 2000 moving parts. Electric V. 18 .Perhaps thats what the car companies were afraid of when they killed electrics in the 90s.
I still hold out hope that it becomes practical to swap a standardized battery pack quickly so extended range travel is far more user friendly but I don't see it happening soon.
Indeed WoodyIsGoody. Most lithium batteries can handle a 1.6 or even 2C rate, charging 0-80% in 25-30 minutes. Including my 2013 LEAF.
As batteries get bigger this will be less of an owner problem. If my current (~22kWh) LEAF drains the battery in 60 minutes on the highway (at 70mph), 30 minutes to recharge is a problem on a long road trip. If my next (40 kWh) LEAF is good for twice the range, and two hours on the road, and still recharges in 30 minutes, now its not such a big deal. The 60 kWh 2019 LEAF...three hours of freeway time and 30 minutes stopped.
Of course, the power of the HVDC charger will have to go up to boot. From 40+ kW today, to 80 or 120 kW in the future.
All true. But maybe you missed my point about the ability to charge at highway speed. The technology has already been demonstrated. New technologies are developing at warp speed these days.
I am aware of the highway wireless charging technology, but my understanding is that the cost is too high to make it practical. Its a lot of wiring and electronics per mile, and a lot of miles, when batteries and high speed charging can do the job just fine. Wireless charging in some parking spaces....already exists, but not a lot of people are willing to pay for it, when you can plug in in less than 10 seconds.
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