Official LRC President Joseph R Biden Thread

Marietta Tar Heel wrote:

jumbo shrimp wrote:

Is there going to be a law that says I can’t get a Robotaxi to the city even if I have MY OWN cheap, reliable, long lasting personal autonomous vehicle that I can keep my own sh!te in at home.

You did a yeoman's work my friend. Your posts are...unique, I guess.

You are correct that robotaxis will not replace private ownership (it was hard to tell if that was one of your points). The projections for the cost differential are not high enough. Obviously, they will replace the current taxi service model since having a driver is far and away the primary cost. However, in areas where the cost of private ownership is substantially lower, the impact will be minimal on private ownership.

Projections I have seen show cost per mile to consumer for robotaxi will be $0.25 per mile. Cost for privately owned vehicle is about $0.70 per mile.

So it will be almost three times the cost to own your own car.

Electric vehicles will not be mainstream anytime soon.

The infrastructure is no where close to being ready or even started to support eliminating gasoline engine vehicles.

Fat Hurts,

Ford has been running national television ads recently talking about how they are going to have electric versions of their "iconic" vehicles.

Obviously this was coming anyway, but it is interesting seeing an American car company run those ads.

It will be interesting to see what happens when electric cars are the norm. Reliability and quality should be much closer between brands, and so form and function will likely be the defining qualities rather than reliability.

Fat hurts wrote:

Marietta Tar Heel wrote:

You did a yeoman's work my friend. Your posts are...unique, I guess.

You are correct that robotaxis will not replace private ownership (it was hard to tell if that was one of your points). The projections for the cost differential are not high enough. Obviously, they will replace the current taxi service model since having a driver is far and away the primary cost. However, in areas where the cost of private ownership is substantially lower, the impact will be minimal on private ownership.

Projections I have seen show cost per mile to consumer for robotaxi will be $0.25 per mile. Cost for privately owned vehicle is about $0.70 per mile.

So it will be almost three times the cost to own your own car.

https://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2020/2/22/saupload_Screen-Shot-2020-02-19-at-11.34.34-AM_thumb1.png

Nah. Research the analysis done on automous mobility services. Estimates are ~$0.09 - $0.13/Km differences. Not going to move the needle much. Small enough that the convenience factor will overcome it. Not every purchase decision is based solely on cost. And when the difference is as small as this will be and there are other factors involved, cost is not the determinant.

Look at how much cheaper it is to have an EV compared to an ICE. That cost difference hasn't moved the needle yet in that space even though consumers could save a lot of money.

I'm not getting into this with you since you are Flagpole 2.0. so good luck!

The drop in case counts has nothing to do with the small number of vaccinations so far

agreed - it's more the fear of the new variants, the disaster in LA county making the news, the end of trump telling people not to wear masks,etc. All that getting people to behave better.

Trump is responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. More of a butcher than those who sent men to Vietnam after knowing the war was lost.

agip wrote:

Hardloper wrote:

The drop in case counts has nothing to do with the small number of vaccinations so far

agreed - it's more the fear of the new variants, the disaster in LA county making the news, the end of trump telling people not to wear masks,etc. All that getting people to behave better.

Trump is responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. More of a butcher than those who sent men to Vietnam after knowing the war was lost.

In israel...I believe scientists there have linked the high vax takeup among 65 and older people to lower case counts in that cohort and lower death counts. I believe in Israel vaccines have moved the curve.

I don't see autonomous taxis ever becoming mainstream. Even if they are able to perform well in dry conditions (ever notice how the tests are being conducted in places like Arizona and Las Vegas), they will never work reliably in areas with rain, snow or mud. IR goes haywire when it is raining because the temperature of everything essentially looks the same when the wet bulb and dry bulb temperature are the same (not to mention the refractive indexes change when light passes through additional layers of material). Autonomous vehicles would likely have to be shut off during rain, snow, etc. If you think a fleet of human operated taxis would suddenly become available for the moments when AVs are not capable of operating safely, you are delusional.

That may be solved at some point. The larger issue with people thinking robotaxis will replace private ownership is the small difference in cost between the two options.

rejecting democrat nonsense wrote:

Electric vehicles will not be mainstream anytime soon.

The infrastructure is no where close to being ready or even started to support eliminating gasoline engine vehicles.

EV's are already mainstream dude. And Biden is putting in 500,000 new charging stations.

Look at what Norway has done:

The Norwegian plug-in car segment market share has been world's highest for several years, achieving 29.1% in 2016, 39.2% in 2017, 49.1% in 2018 55.9% in 2019, and 74.7% in 2020.

Norway had very few models to choose from and they got up to 75% in 2020.

If Noway can do it, we can too.

Yup - see the other "electric vehicles" thread. It's fun seeing the same script show up time and time again throughout history. "motorcars cannot replace horses" "airplanes will never have a purpose" "the internet will have same impact as fax machine"

Fat hurts wrote:

rejecting democrat nonsense wrote:

Electric vehicles will not be mainstream anytime soon.

The infrastructure is no where close to being ready or even started to support eliminating gasoline engine vehicles.

EV's are already mainstream dude. And Biden is putting in 500,000 new charging stations.

Look at what Norway has done:

The Norwegian plug-in car segment market share has been world's highest for several years, achieving 29.1% in 2016, 39.2% in 2017, 49.1% in 2018 55.9% in 2019, and 74.7% in 2020.

Norway had very few models to choose from and they got up to 75% in 2020.

If Noway can do it, we can too.

Flagpole wrote:

Fat Hurts,

Ford has been running national television ads recently talking about how they are going to have electric versions of their "iconic" vehicles.

Obviously this was coming anyway, but it is interesting seeing an American car company run those ads.

It will be interesting to see what happens when electric cars are the norm. Reliability and quality should be much closer between brands, and so form and function will likely be the defining qualities rather than reliability.

It's also interesting how another American car company, Tesla, has never run a single ad at all. Yet they are selling cars as fast as they can make them.

Yes, it's nice to see the ads. But it's stupid. Ford's Mustang Mach E is a really good EV and they have sold out the first production run without any ads.

People want these cars already. The ads are just a waste of money.

agip wrote:

Hardloper wrote:

The drop in case counts has nothing to do with the small number of vaccinations so far

agreed - it's more the fear of the new variants, the disaster in LA county making the news, the end of trump telling people not to wear masks,etc. All that getting people to behave better.

Trump is responsible for tens of thousands of deaths. More of a butcher than those who sent men to Vietnam after knowing the war was lost.

What a pathetic shill you are. Go send another check to Planned Parenthood so they can kill a few more babies to make you and your disgusting Democrat friends happy.

Dementia Joe will Make China Great Again!

Where did you get your estimates from? Mine came from Ark Investments, a company whose research is practically worshiped in the investment community.

Yes, it is much cheaper to have an EV than an ICE car in total cost of ownership. But at the moment, the sticker price is higher on the EV.

But if you think it hasn't moved the needle you aren't paying attention. Auto makers are falling all over themselves to build EV's as fast as possible.

Believe it or not, the engineers who work on self-driving know about rain, snow, and mud.

First off, autonomous vehicles don't use IR. They use some combination of Lidar, cameras, radar, and sonar. Tesla famously does not use Lidar. All of the sensors together are able to deal with inclement weather.

It's true that Waymo has avoided bad weather by running their first test system in Pheonix. They made a conscious choice to do that so they could work on other parts of their system and tackle bad weather later.

Tesla primarily relies on "computer vision". It is able to interpret video from its 8 cameras and combine it with the other sensors to decide what to do using neural nets. Unlike humans, it can see in all directions at all times. So it will actually see much better than humans in bad weather and will be several times safer.

If you want to see Tesla's autopilot system tackle rain, snow, and mud, got to the YouTube channel called "Dirty Tesla". He has lots of videos on that.

Marietta Tar Heel wrote:

Nah. Research the analysis done on automous mobility services. Estimates are ~$0.09 - $0.13/Km differences. Not going to move the needle much. Small enough that the convenience factor will overcome it. Not every purchase decision is based solely on cost. And when the difference is as small as this will be and there are other factors involved, cost is not the determinant.

Look at how much cheaper it is to have an EV compared to an ICE. That cost difference hasn't moved the needle yet in that space even though consumers could save a lot of money.

I'm not getting into this with you since you are Flagpole 2.0. so good luck!

This kinda proves the robotaxi's point tho.

Everyone in this thread agrees that EV's are going to steamroll ICE in ~ 10-15 years maximum. The cost difference + everything else is winning.

Considering most people only use their car a fraction of the day, it seems impossible for private ownership to compete with a robotaxi-style service for the average American. It may take time for the economics to work out but it seems inevitable. Why pay $$$$ for something you only use (at most) a few hours a day?

Only it doesn't.

As costs for AV EVs for robotaxis keep going down, so will the costs for AV EV ownership. Musk says that his AV EVs are going be able to last 1 million miles and cost $25K. That's one car per lifetime for most people in terms of miles. I hope to God that whichever company wins the robotaxi war profits more than $25K in a vehicle's lifetime.

The cost of vehicle ownership over a lifetime will go down with EVs making them even more affordable. Just because there is a marginally more economical alternative (robotaxi) doesn't mean people will move in that direction when other attractive factors are present.

And who knows, when their AVs are idle they can always rent it out on a network to help defray the costs of ownership. I could easily have my AV drive me to work and then while I'm working, so is my AV.

Harambe wrote:

Why pay $$$$ for something you only use (at most) a few hours a day?

Like my house, kitchen, bed, toilet, TV, internet, washer/dryer, toothbrush, personal PC/laptop, clothes, treadmill, shoes? ;)

Greg wrote:

All Americans should be graduating from high school able to read, write and communicate well.

. . . Excercise and diet is important, espeically for those who are on the fringes of society.

So reading, writing, and communicating, but presumably not spelling?