The biggest cost for gig driving economics right now is the driver time. This is a cost both for the individual and the organization — the driver only has a finite amount of time (in one car), and paying one individual per ride is causing rideshare apps to present some impressive losses (source and source). To hold market value, Uber rides are as much as half off in some cities (Uber cost tool and Uber San Francisco fees).
Mobility companies signal that removing the driver is a path to profitability, but what about the intermediate phase with few drivers for many cars?
This article shows you:
- the technology for teleoperated cars is near and intuitive.
- self-driving cars will be here soon in specific environments, and the implications economically.
Brief history of autonomous cars
Radio-controlled automobiles were first demonstrated in 1925, and only 5 years later, science fiction predicted full autonomy in Miles J. Breuer’s 1930 book Paradise and Iron.
From Robin R. Murphy’s “Autonomous Cars in Science Fiction,” 2020. Paradise and Iron predicted that every moving system on an island paradise was fully autonomous — there wasn’t even a steering wheel. This extends to more than cars, this means that cranes are autonomous, construction is person-less. Full autonomy systems will touch more than self-driving cars.
Self-driving cars are the case study we focus on because it’s what we spend most of our time in (and there’s been more than 270 million registered vehicles in the US alone in 2018). The story of self-driving cars crossed with engineering started with the DARPA Grand Challenge in 2004. A 150-mile long course through the desert.
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