In Part 1 of this series, we addressed the anticipated impact of robotaxis on the regular taxi market. In case you missed it,explore the impact of Transportation as a Service on the general automotive market and the transportation landscape in general. This is a long article, so grab a coffee.
The cost/mile for the purchase price of the vehicle, for example, is simply the new purchase price divided by the number of miles the vehicle will last. A vehicle that lasts longer will therefore have a lower cost per mile than one that does not last as long. Some costs are quite “fixed,” and others are more “variable.
Please note it doesn’t matter if this table is perfect, as it is the trend that we are interested in. Also, I should note that the middle group in this table is not the simple average — since the math returned nonsensical results when I tried to use the average as the middle. I suspect the real-world miles driven for the middle group is probably a bit lower, and the upper 20% is probably a little higher than shown.
The goal of the table below is to outline vehicle cost/mile for these different types of owners based on how much the person drives.Vehicle purchase price was set at $45,000, with financing at 6% , for all except the robotaxi. I set the cost of the robotaxis at $25,000 but I also added the $400/month TASS charge that we expect TAAS companies to charge for using this technology.
Fuel : This is based on national average fuel prices of about 12 cents/kWh for electricity and gas at $3.50/gallon. Total Cost: As mentioned earlier, the benchmarking study I am using as a reference suggested it costs $12,000/year on average to own a. Likewise, the weighted average cost in the table below matches this study at 89 cents/mile across all groups, with the BEV average 59 cents/mile.While these numbers can not describe any one driver’s specific situation, they do describe trends. The trend is clear — low-mileage drivers spendLow mileage/year ICE drivers today spend over $1/mile.
As we discussed earlier, most people do not make transportation choices based on cost alone. Our choices consider three things — cost, utility, and personal benefits. Utility includes things like vehicle type, class, having it always available, etc. Personal benefits include things like cleanliness, ability to store things in your vehicle, etc. This next section will look at the pros and cons of personal vehicles, busses, taxis, and robotaxis based on their cost, utility, and personal benefits.
Robotaxis vs privately owned vehicles: While we do not know how much TAAS operators will charge/fare, this analysis suggests that robotaxis can be priced cheaper than all gasoline vehicles and between 30–70% of BEVs. The analysis suggests only higher mileage drivers will have a cost advantage over robotaxis.
Today, 90 million cars are produced yearly, and each vehicle has an average lifespan of 160,000 miles. If you multiply 90 million × 160,000, you get 14.4 trillion miles of potential “service” from each year of production. As long as this production rate remains stable, and older vehicles are retired at the same rate new ones are made, this 90 million/year production rate would meet 14.4 trillion miles of demand.
It would be reasonable to assume the people who will move to TAAS will be those who drive their cars the least, and those who pay the most for parking and/or insurance. That said, I very much doubt all drivers in these mid to lower mileage groups will drop their personal vehicles since utility and personal benefits are clearly very important to people. As consumers, all of us buy low-use items all the time for their utility and convenience without caring much about the cost.
Since automobile production is currently geared toward privately owned vehicles, the impact of TAAS, from the perspective of the world’s automobile manufacturers, is world demand will drop from 90 million vehicles/year to just 24.5 million . Robotaxis in turn will be seen as a new market segment/opportunity with a demand of about 10.5 million units/year.
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Source: cleantechnica - 🏆 565. / 51 Read more »