Author Topic: Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...  (Read 44647 times)

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Online tom66

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Re: Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...
« Reply #175 on: August 13, 2022, 09:19:10 am »
So suppose I ditched all my cars and signed up for your perpetual SDC service.  What productive and paying uses would I have for my garage and driveway?  I don't live in SF or Manhattan where you can sell parking spaces for $100K+.  And being able to acquire and store a larger oscilloscope collection does not count as a paying use!

Long term?  You might turn that into a larger front garden, or you might build an extension there if permitted.   Or use it for a project car, instead of a day to day car (people will still drive/use private cars for a long time.)   Depends what you're into.

Over time, properties with driveways have no more value than properties without them, if SDCs take off in the manner described.  Larger properties can be built without the need for parking.  Streets become safer when they're not lined with car parking.
 

Offline Cerebus

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Re: Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...
« Reply #176 on: August 13, 2022, 01:56:46 pm »
And being able to acquire and store a larger oscilloscope collection does not count as a paying use!

Go and wash your mouth out with soap!  :)
Anybody got a syringe I can use to squeeze the magic smoke back into this?
 

Online bdunham7

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Re: Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...
« Reply #177 on: August 13, 2022, 02:31:39 pm »
You have paid for that garage space, but you refuse to apportion any cost to the car parking when you talk about the cost of owning/operating a car. Perhaps the purchase of the car should be "zero" as you already have it and aren't planning on selling it? Equally stupid.

For people who have access to car sharing, they dont buy a garage in the first place. Hence the significant cost savings that you and others are trying to pretend aren't there. You're putting car parking "off the books" which is plainly incorrect as there is a cost.

The difference between an economist and an accountant is that the economist will theorize that if something has value, the 'market' dictates that it must have an appropriate cost.  The accountant will realize that both value and cost can be positive, zero or negative and that value and cost can be uncorrelated.  Swimming pools are a good example here in SoCal.  As I said already, your ideas may work for urban areas and new development where eliminating a drive and garage will actually result in a reduction of cost.   But for my situation, there's no evidence that I actually paid for my driveway (meaning that an equivalent house sans parking could have been purchased for less) nor that if I did I could recover any value by not using it.  In any case, unlike my car which I certainly could and would sell for cash, there's no reasonable cash recovery possible for my parking.  You're proposing to save me money that I'm not spending in the future and am not certain that I spent in the past. 

There's all sorts of other reasons that your SDC-replacement theories are unworkable for the foreseeable future.  Take the amount of non-revenue mileage as the car drives empty to get to the next pickup, vs my car that goes where I go.  Again, in an urban environment that can be managed, but it is much harder in a suburban scene and impossible in rural areas.  Your SDCs will be driving 40-100% more miles than private cars for equivalent use in my area. 
A 3.5 digit 4.5 digit 5 digit 5.5 digit 6.5 digit 7.5 digit DMM is good enough for most people.
 
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Offline sokoloff

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Re: Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...
« Reply #178 on: August 13, 2022, 04:33:40 pm »
I feel like other ways to reduce transportation in general, like increasing efficiency of existing modes (not in terms of fuel but eliminating single-passengers in 5 ton vehicles, more carpooling, store deliveries, pooled shipping, lighter/smaller 1-2 passenger vehicles like weather-covered e-bikes, etc) will have more impact.
Who the hell is driving around in a 5-ton vehicle today?!
 

Online bdunham7

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Re: Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...
« Reply #179 on: August 13, 2022, 05:18:15 pm »
Who the hell is driving around in a 5-ton vehicle today?!

Well it isn't 5 tons, but a Tesla Model X has a GVWR of over 6700lbs and qualifies for a significant tax credit (Section 179) for being over 3 tons.
A 3.5 digit 4.5 digit 5 digit 5.5 digit 6.5 digit 7.5 digit DMM is good enough for most people.
 
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Online tom66

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Re: Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...
« Reply #180 on: August 13, 2022, 05:35:44 pm »
Who the hell is driving around in a 5-ton vehicle today?!

Well it isn't 5 tons, but a Tesla Model X has a GVWR of over 6700lbs and qualifies for a significant tax credit (Section 179) for being over 3 tons.

It's a ridiculous tax rule where trucks are exempt, and SUVs get classified as light trucks.  It needs to go.  I mean fair enough for a pickup if it's a legitimate business expense as in the bed is full of gravel or tools all the time, but an SUV...
 
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Offline Someone

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Re: Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...
« Reply #181 on: August 13, 2022, 10:52:19 pm »
Again, in an urban environment that can be managed, but it is much harder in a suburban scene and impossible in rural areas.  Your SDCs will be driving 40-100% more miles than private cars for equivalent use in my area.
You can keep picking out unusual/corner cases all you like, I put forward some very average figures and explicitly stated as such.

For example:
I can give you simple numbers for our very-low-usage vehicle that we only use for long trips.  2010 Honda Accord, we've had it 12 years and driven it 42k miles. All maintenance including a set of tires has been less than $2400.
....
Maintenance 200
That is an unbelievably low maintenance cost including tires. I can't even get an oil change for $200 (the oil wholesale is $100 already). Brand new cars with their "free" servicing don't even get that cheap on average:
One of the auto associations here puts out a broad (but somewhat shallow) analysis:
https://rac.com.au/car-motoring/info/buying-a-car/running-costs
All this kicked off with what I was (again explicitly) responding to:
My car (reasonably sized station wagon) costs me around 0.21 euro per km all in while not skimping on any maintenance. Next car is going to be cheaper due to lower fuel consumption.

Are you truly including all of the other costs of a car?

- Space to park it, either on a driveway or an area with sufficient street parking, which influences where you can afford to live
- Opportunity-cost and actual cost from servicing (take it in for a service, emissions test etc.)  or if you do as much of this yourself, the time cost
- Cost of a breakdown, like a large repair bill if something expensive goes wrong
- Taxes and disincentives towards driving (parking fees, toll fees to enter city centres)
But do keep trying to argue my referenced figures are "wrong", under your entirely different set of assumptions and accounting (that you haven't been making explicit).
 

Offline Someone

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Re: Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...
« Reply #182 on: August 13, 2022, 10:55:25 pm »
Who the hell is driving around in a 5-ton vehicle today?!
Well it isn't 5 tons, but a Tesla Model X has a GVWR of over 6700lbs and qualifies for a significant tax credit (Section 179) for being over 3 tons.
It's a ridiculous tax rule where trucks are exempt, and SUVs get classified as light trucks.  It needs to go.  I mean fair enough for a pickup if it's a legitimate business expense as in the bed is full of gravel or tools all the time, but an SUV...
The US consumer vehicle market is completely distorted, and the majority of their consumers are happy with the cheap inefficient trucks that it produces. Leave them to it. But do fight if they try and push that in your country (Australia is now wash with US style "trucks" after the local manufactures died off).
 
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Offline nctnico

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Re: Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...
« Reply #183 on: August 13, 2022, 11:30:37 pm »
My car (reasonably sized station wagon) costs me around 0.21 euro per km all in while not skimping on any maintenance. Next car is going to be cheaper due to lower fuel consumption.

Are you truly including all of the other costs of a car?

- Space to park it, either on a driveway or an area with sufficient street parking, which influences where you can afford to live
- Opportunity-cost and actual cost from servicing (take it in for a service, emissions test etc.)  or if you do as much of this yourself, the time cost
- Cost of a breakdown, like a large repair bill if something expensive goes wrong
- Taxes and disincentives towards driving (parking fees, toll fees to enter city centres)
Yes. The majority of the costs (over 60%) are fuel costs anyway. After that tyres and suspension parts (I don't skimp on safety so I change the tyres long before they are at the wear indicators and I have the shock absorbers changed every 150k km). My previous car was even cheaper per km (around 0.18 euro per km) but that ran on diesel and the fuel prices where lower when I drove around in it. But again: I very very carefully select the car I buy -used- for low TCO.

An expensive repair -say 800 euro- gets lost in the noise completely due to the large number of kilometers I drive with a car before buying another one. Basically I drive a car until it becomes uneconomical to have it repaired. For my next car I want it to have a 30% lower fuel consumption so I can keep hitting the 0.20 euro per km mark. Maybe even go below it depending on how many km I manage get out of the car.
« Last Edit: August 14, 2022, 12:12:07 am by nctnico »
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Online bdunham7

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Re: Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...
« Reply #184 on: August 13, 2022, 11:32:26 pm »
I can't even get an oil change for $200 (the oil wholesale is $100 already)...

...But do keep trying to argue my referenced figures are "wrong", under your entirely different set of assumptions and accounting (that you haven't been making explicit).

Perhaps $AUD are weaker than I thought?  A 5-quart bottle of very high grade synthetic oil runs me $40, but I could cut that in half if I went with a cheaper brand.  A set of good tires was $550.  I suppose I could spend more on maintenance, but with very low usage this car has been pretty repair free.  Yes, I do most of the work on my own, but if you want to count that as a 'cost', I want to add back in the time that I wait for your SDC service every time I summon it. 

I never said that your or your tax agency figures are 'wrong', just that individual costs can vary significantly.  There may be some disagreement as to what 'costs' are, but my accounting is simple--if it goes on my credit card it is a cost.  Otherwise, not so much. However, should you disagree, you can triple my costs if you like and you still won't be over the actual cost of any existing ride share service for the same trips and uses.  So for it to work for me, your plan first requires a drastic cost reduction over a current money-losing model and then requires me to accept a service that has some shortcomings over having my own car.

As for corner cases--what? All of rural and suburban USA is a 'corner case'?  There's no way to avoid deadheading if you are using a reasonable number (not too many) of vehicles.  I have and use the Uber app and I even get $15/mo in free Uber cash every month from a CC promotion, so it isn't as if I haven't tried it or am unaware of the costs and utility.  Rideshare has its uses, such as when parking is problematic at the destination, or where I need to leave or pick up a car for service.  But that doesn't help me recover any costs by losing any cars.  There are probably at least a hundred million Americans who are situated similarly or worse when it comes to using their own cars vs rideshare.  I don't know their per-mile costs, but I suspect most of them drive more miles than I do. 
 
A 3.5 digit 4.5 digit 5 digit 5.5 digit 6.5 digit 7.5 digit DMM is good enough for most people.
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...
« Reply #185 on: August 14, 2022, 12:07:37 am »
I can't even get an oil change for $200 (the oil wholesale is $100 already)...

...But do keep trying to argue my referenced figures are "wrong", under your entirely different set of assumptions and accounting (that you haven't been making explicit).

Perhaps $AUD are weaker than I thought?  A 5-quart bottle of very high grade synthetic oil runs me $40, but I could cut that in half if I went with a cheaper brand.
Prices are similar over here. An oil change with full synthetic oil and filter sets me back almost 80 euro. Not worth doing it myself.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline Someone

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Re: Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...
« Reply #186 on: August 14, 2022, 02:06:26 am »
Yes, I do most of the work on my own, but if you want to count that as a 'cost'....
how much more clearly do we have to say this....
Are you truly including all of the other costs of a car?
do as much of this yourself, the time cost
Keep talking off in the other direction, its just you making noise at this point. The argument has been carefully framed and explained, unlike your meander up the garden path to some backwater.

Yes, I do most of the work on my own, but if you want to count that as a 'cost', I want to add back in the time that I wait for your SDC service every time I summon it.
The US has had (driven) rideshare wider/longer than other western countries, its nothing new. You dont think "oh I'd like to do something" and wait while staring at the wall. Like anything else (buying a car, fuelling/maintaining/storing it) you think ahead, order a ride share to turn up when you are planning to need it. But this is your corner case of rural/dispersed living.... which isn't representative of the majority of people living on the planet, who live in cities where a distributed transport system is minutes away just like taxis. Shared cars are fairly easily available here, you can walk around the corner and pick one up.

The basics are already there and routine/well known. It is the economics that will change it over. While people keep imaging cars are cheap to run because they ignore/discount all the fixed costs and only look at the incremental cost of fuel it massively distorts that. So yes, I'll keep pushing back and pointing out how the private motor centric viewpoint is blinkered, misleading, entrenched, and against most individuals financial interest.
 

Online bdunham7

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Re: Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...
« Reply #187 on: August 14, 2022, 04:53:22 am »
But this is your corner case of rural/dispersed living.... which isn't representative of the majority of people living on the planet, who live in cities where a distributed transport system is minutes away just like taxis. Shared cars are fairly easily available here, you can walk around the corner and pick one up.

There are shared cars in select places here too, as well as those electric scooters laying around in random spots.  But I'd guess (by a fair amount of observation with local knowledge...) that fewer than 20% of the people in my state (an 0% in my county) could switch to rideshare or shared car services and eliminate their vehicles.  And that 20% would include the ones in urban areas that already don't have vehicles.  The remainder--just in my state--would be 31 million people, more than the entire population of Australia.  Not a corner case!  As for the rest of the world, yeah there are some populated spots where owning a car is a huge pain in the ass, but in most of those areas there is workable public transportation already.  In addition, driving can be miserable and dangerous, so lots of people already don't have cars.  People have already made those decisions based on circumstances, taxis have been around forever and I don't think an SDC service is going to move the needle either way.  You show me an SDC that works in Delhi and I might change my mind.

Quote
The basics are already there and routine/well known. It is the economics that will change it over. While people keep imaging cars are cheap to run because they ignore/discount all the fixed costs and only look at the incremental cost of fuel it massively distorts that. So yes, I'll keep pushing back and pointing out how the private motor centric viewpoint is blinkered, misleading, entrenched, and against most individuals financial interest.

I wonder what we are actually arguing about as we both came up with pretty low figures (less than $1 USD per mile) running costs for our cars even with entirely different methods.  However, when you are imagining how the SDC is going to change the blinkered, entrenched 'private motor centric viewpoint', remember that I and a lot of other people can easily afford our cars no matter how you figure the costs.  Indeed my low costs are just habit and happenstance--I may end up buying a much more expensive car and my costs may go way up and I won't care.  We like having our own cars that we're used to with the seats adjusted correctly and the beach chairs already in the trunk.  Even if you convince me that the SDC service will be 1/3 the price and you give me free oscilloscopes to fill up my garage, I'm not going to bite.  I'm pretty sure at least 30 million people here agree with me.
A 3.5 digit 4.5 digit 5 digit 5.5 digit 6.5 digit 7.5 digit DMM is good enough for most people.
 

Offline Someone

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Re: Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...
« Reply #188 on: August 14, 2022, 08:12:47 am »
But this is your corner case of rural/dispersed living.... which isn't representative of the majority of people living on the planet, who live in cities where a distributed transport system is minutes away just like taxis. Shared cars are fairly easily available here, you can walk around the corner and pick one up.
But I'd guess (by a fair amount of observation with local knowledge...) that fewer than 20% of the people in my state (an 0% in my county) could switch to rideshare or shared car services and eliminate their vehicles.
US has been car centric since the 50's, its part of the culture. That is one barrier, and something entirely different to density/distance/availability which is what you started brining up.

As for corner cases--what? All of rural and suburban USA is a 'corner case'?  There's no way to avoid deadheading if you are using a reasonable number (not too many) of vehicles.

However, seems you're just going to keep arguing to the ends of the earth about how your US car centric view is the "majority"....  :-//

Attached is an example density of the US, the majority (within the US, before considering the 95% of the world population outside those borders) live in dense suburbs or cities not the acre+ block per person you're imagining from the mass media representations. "Exploratory analysis of suburban land cover and population density in the U.S.A". The majority of the world live in cities, the majority of the US live in cities.
 

Online tom66

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Re: Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...
« Reply #189 on: August 14, 2022, 02:23:49 pm »
We've (almost, once the solicitors finish the paperwork) bought a house and we wanted somewhere with a driveway partially because we both plan to get EVs but also because we don't want to street park our cars.  Around here the average house with a drive seems to cost about £30,000 more than one without (I'm comparing to places where it would be impossible to install a driveway, due to no front garden for instance.)  I don't know how this varies across the world - I suspect places like the USA in suburbia land is so cheap it may have little impact but in denser areas it would have an impact.

If SDCs do come to pass while we still own the place we'd consider, within the realms of planning permission, extending the house into where that driveway is.  May not be possible now due to regulations, but in 20 years if everyone has empty driveways, it could be a big shift.
 

Online tom66

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Re: Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...
« Reply #190 on: August 14, 2022, 06:12:18 pm »
Pretty good video summarising ICCT findings.  Spoiler: battery EV or hydrogen EV (powered by genuine carbon-neutral hydrogen) are the ways we reach Paris agreement / 1.5C by 2050.

 

Offline nctnico

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Re: Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...
« Reply #191 on: August 14, 2022, 06:26:28 pm »
OMG  :palm: Another 'truth' video from Youtube  :horse:

You do realise that 2050 is still over a quarter of a century away? A lot, and I mean a LOT can happen during that time.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Online tom66

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Re: Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...
« Reply #192 on: August 14, 2022, 06:36:17 pm »
OMG  :palm: Another 'truth' video from Youtube  :horse:

Do you just react instinctively to things like this?  Is it like an area of your brain dedicated to "yuck, climate change stuff"? 

If you actually read the post or watched the video before you reacted (hard, I know right?) it is a summary of a scientific report by ICCT looking at the whole lifecycle emissions of ICE, EV, biofuel ICE, hydrogen, etc.  and modelling this in 2030 too.    It includes manufacture of the batteries.  Emissions from the power plant powering the EV.   It shows pretty conclusively there's no way to get to Paris goals without EV or hydrogen (but not natural gas derived hydrogen).

It's kind of scary how close 2050 is:  if the average car has a lifespan of say 15 years then 2030 is really the absolute last date that we can sell a new ICE car, and we should be getting rid of them for good from 2040 or so.
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...
« Reply #193 on: August 14, 2022, 07:16:33 pm »
OMG  :palm: Another 'truth' video from Youtube  :horse:

Do you just react instinctively to things like this?  Is it like an area of your brain dedicated to "yuck, climate change stuff"? 
No, it is a reaction to people pulling random videos from Youtube to prove some kind of point that doesn't exist. I wish people stopped doing that and stuck to actual science that can be verified. Every year KPMG puts together a nice report about what the automotive industry may look like in the near future. That is a far more interesting read (and it doesn't claim to be the truth; just a detailed report on what is going on).

There are so many wheels in motion that it is impossible to predict what the world will look like after 25 years. Just look at how the world has changed during the last 25 years. Mobile phones... flat TVs... internet... . The last few years alone have been quite a ride. Whatever long term plans are being made, these are going to be overtaken and obsoleted by technological and geopolitical developments.

BTW: your reaction is so typical for the 'cancel culture'. Suddenly I'm a climate change denier while there is absolutely no ground for that. You won't find any post from me on the entire internet saying that climate change doesn't exist because I never wrote something like that. I have been around long enough to notice the climate is changing by myself.
« Last Edit: August 14, 2022, 07:29:11 pm by nctnico »
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Offline Cerebus

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Re: Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...
« Reply #194 on: August 14, 2022, 07:31:15 pm »
There are so many wheels in motion that it is impossible to predict what the world will look like after 25 years. Just look at how the world has changed during the last 25 years. Mobile phones... flat TVs... internet... . The last few years alone have been quite a ride. Whatever long term plans are being made, these are going to be overtaken and obsoleted by technological and geopolitical developments.

Alternatively look how little the world has changed in 25 years. Twenty five years ago I had a mobile phone, I'd been running an ISP's network for two years, and flat panel TVs were starting to replace CRTs.
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Online bdunham7

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Re: Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...
« Reply #195 on: August 15, 2022, 12:07:34 am »
However, seems you're just going to keep arguing to the ends of the earth about how your US car centric view is the "majority"....  :-//

Actually, here's what I said on that subject:

Quote
Rideshares and taxis work well in lieu of personally owned vehicles in congested urban areas if other public transportation doesn't work well.  Suburban USA, not so much.  Rural USA, no way in hell.  I'm guessing it isn't so much different in other countries that I've observed, but I'd be happy to defer to those that live there. 

So I'll just speak on what I know well, the US.  My 'corner' of the world (California) accounts for ~0.5% of world population and ~3% of the worlds motor vehicles, IIRC.  And both electric vehicles and rideshare services  in modern form first appeared here in any significant volume.  So it isn't a minor player or a small, local anomaly. 

Quote
Attached is an example density of the US, the majority (within the US, before considering the 95% of the world population outside those borders) live in dense suburbs or cities not the acre+ block per person you're imagining from the mass media representations. "Exploratory analysis of suburban land cover and population density in the U.S.A". The majority of the world live in cities, the majority of the US live in cities.

So if I understand correctly, we are discussing the viability of an SDC service supplanting private cars to the point where users would willingly no longer own a car. As I said previously, newly developed areas or places where people already don't own cars would be different as SDC services would just be taking market share from taxis and other public transportation.  The city that I live in has a density of about 2k/km2, so right in the middle of that big peak on your graph.  LA County is about 1k/km2, but the majority of it is probably about the same as my city because there is a lot of undeveloped area.  In my estimation, almost everyone to the left (lower density) of me on that graph and probably a good chunk to the right--say up to 5k/km2--would absolutely not give up their cars for an SDC service, even if they might use the service on occasion.  So about 2/3 of the US population or nearly 200 million cars aren't going away.  That's based on my observations about how people use their cars, cost and convenience.  For some, cost would be the issue and those people will be the ones that manage their per-mile costs to be much lower than is achievable by a for-profit commercial service.  For some, like me, it would be convenience and the way I use vehicles.  Keep in mind that we've had Uber longer than anyone and I've used enough to evaluate its pros and cons. 

The core problem with these ideas, IMO, is that you are simply replacing a car with a different car.  My cost example, as low as it was, was my most expensive per-mile car.   We have a BEV that we use for the majority of our driving and the incremental cost of keeping it around is trivial.  Even when Uber was subsidized by investor cash and by drivers not understanding how much their (required) newer cars were depreciating and wearing, they were much more expensive than just driving our own.  And for me and a lot of others, cost isn't the primary factor--as I said, you could triple my costs and it wouldn't affect my decision nor that of any of my neighbors AFAIK.

So to sum it all up:  An SDC service as opposed to a privately owned car (which, b/t/w, could also be an SDC if they ever actually produce one) will always end up driving more miles simply because there is always at least some deadheading.  Because of that and the nature of a for-profit operation where there is always at least some overhead, staff, etc, the SDC service will always have a higher per-mile cost unless you try to add back in things like the cost of parking at home.  Thus your viable cases for an SDC service are where parking is unavailable or prohibitively expensive (on an incremental basis, not paid-in like mine) or the paid-in parking owner can somehow recover value from the unused parking and there are not good public transportation options already and the users don't mind other aspects of shared usage, like not being able to keep their beach chairs in the trunk.

A 3.5 digit 4.5 digit 5 digit 5.5 digit 6.5 digit 7.5 digit DMM is good enough for most people.
 

Online bdunham7

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Re: Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...
« Reply #196 on: August 15, 2022, 12:45:05 am »
I suspect places like the USA in suburbia land is so cheap it may have little impact but in denser areas it would have an impact.

It's about a million dollars an acre around here, but the plots were laid out long ago so there is little opportunity for change.  People have and do convert their garages to other uses, but the driveways remain.  Newer high-density developments can be more compact, but I haven't seen any without parking around here yet.  Typical new high-density single-family homes are 2 or 3  stories with an 18" side yard and a short driveway in the front yard.  You could convert the garages and park in the driveway if permitted (HOAs can be silly), and even if you didn't have a car the concrete driveway is just about as usable as anything else--so losing the cars still doesn't net you anything.

A 3.5 digit 4.5 digit 5 digit 5.5 digit 6.5 digit 7.5 digit DMM is good enough for most people.
 

Offline Someone

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Re: Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...
« Reply #197 on: August 15, 2022, 02:17:20 am »
As I said previously, newly developed areas or places where people already don't own cars would be different as SDC services would just be taking market share from taxis and other public transportation.
If you can't imagine how a share car (self driving or not) is different to a taxi or mass transit, then you're never going to get it.

the SDC service will always have a higher per-mile cost unless you try to add back in things like the cost of parking at home.  Thus your viable cases for an SDC service are where parking is unavailable or prohibitively expensive
We get it, you want to cost parking as zero. That's explicitly what we said is misleading, as parking has a cost. Private cars are parked up and doing nothing more than 95% of the time, storing all those cars while they are doing nothing is a cost to the individual and society. The promise of car sharing is that the number of vehicles required will be reduced, and the fixed operating costs (parking, registration, etc) are divided among many users which should more than offset the additional repositioning movements.
 

Online tom66

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Re: Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...
« Reply #198 on: August 15, 2022, 08:22:20 am »
The core problem with these ideas, IMO, is that you are simply replacing a car with a different car.  My cost example, as low as it was, was my most expensive per-mile car.   We have a BEV that we use for the majority of our driving and the incremental cost of keeping it around is trivial.  Even when Uber was subsidized by investor cash and by drivers not understanding how much their (required) newer cars were depreciating and wearing, they were much more expensive than just driving our own.  And for me and a lot of others, cost isn't the primary factor--as I said, you could triple my costs and it wouldn't affect my decision nor that of any of my neighbors AFAIK.

So to sum it all up:  An SDC service as opposed to a privately owned car (which, b/t/w, could also be an SDC if they ever actually produce one) will always end up driving more miles simply because there is always at least some deadheading.  Because of that and the nature of a for-profit operation where there is always at least some overhead, staff, etc, the SDC service will always have a higher per-mile cost unless you try to add back in things like the cost of parking at home.  Thus your viable cases for an SDC service are where parking is unavailable or prohibitively expensive (on an incremental basis, not paid-in like mine) or the paid-in parking owner can somehow recover value from the unused parking and there are not good public transportation options already and the users don't mind other aspects of shared usage, like not being able to keep their beach chairs in the trunk.

We can't really predict human behaviour here, there's a big attraction to cars as an aspect of class.   But I don't see the per-mile cost as being more.  A typical private car spends 95% of its time parked up, slowly deprecating.  An SDC can use a lot more of that time, say, pretty much all the time between 6am and midnight, with maybe one or two charging stops depending on mileage.  Deadheading would assume that the car returns to the same location to pick up passengers, e.g. going between a city and an airport.  But why would an SDC not just pick up the next car-passenger pair?  If cars are less common anywhere, there will be a journey.  It's just taken you to work, now it picks up Betty to go to the shops, and collects Dave from the shops to go back home, and then takes John to the airport... The connectivity is complete with very limited void periods; and if there are any void periods, these can be used to charge, for cleaning, or just idling (but at very little cost, as the driver's not hourly!)

The only reason (imo) Uber is as expensive as it is, is because there are limited numbers of drivers who need to be paid a wage. When you change that to an allocation of SDC vehicles then it becomes feasible to offer the service at a much lower cost.

Think about it this way,  if say the average CA car is $40,000 and lasts 15 years and does the average of 12k miles per year, then per mile depreciation alone is 22 cents per mile (that's more than nct's quoted cost on depreciation alone, but this is a new car.)  Plus you need parking, insurance, fuel, maintenance, have breakdowns and, if you really want to look at it from an economists lens, there's the opportunity-cost of buying that $40k car over putting that in your pension or going on holiday more often.  Even if you don't allocate your driveway's cost, what about the places you go?  Even if the parking is free, someone is paying for that, and that *is* reflected in whatever you buy.  That could be better allocated if cars didn't need to be stationary for so much of their lives.

OK, so what if you buy a car half-way through its life but because it's a little undesirable it only costs $10k?  The maths on depreciation looks better, as you buy at the more linear part of the deprecation curve, but you then have the unknown of prior service history (I've bought a car before that later transpired to have mostly fraudulent history.)  You have to spend e.g. that $10k twice as often because the car lasts half as long on average, and you have potentially higher risks of getting a proper lemon (like I did!)  Of course, the used car market is funny now, and demand has shifted more into used cars, raising their price.  It's still probably cheaper, but harder to work out.  Still, about 40% of cars on the road are leased in the UK, suggesting that there's a strong bias towards 4-year and newer cars.

An SDC may, say, with sensors and car computer cost, say, $50k (I figure you save a lot of money by making it not compatible for human drivers), but it could do 500k miles before being scrapped.  (I think this is feasible with general maintenance; age is worse than mileage, in general.)  Half the cost per mile, but with NONE of the other mentioned costs, just "tap on an app and go".    Instead of spending 95% of its time parked up, the SDC is spending only 33% of its time parked up.  It's doing perhaps 13x more mileage per year, so it reaches its mileage limit in about 3 years.  At which point, it may get a new battery pack, or it might be allocated into different service e.g. shorter routes, or be recycled.  Since the parts only need to last, say up to 5 years at a time, it may be possible to optimise them for higher mileage instead of age.  Certainly, it's clear that buses can do many years of service with just general maintenance.
« Last Edit: August 15, 2022, 08:24:47 am by tom66 »
 

Offline sokoloff

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Re: Confused about PHEV, Hybrids, etc...
« Reply #199 on: August 15, 2022, 12:02:10 pm »
Think about it this way,  if say the average CA car is $40,000 and lasts 15 years and does the average of 12k miles per year, then per mile depreciation alone is 22 cents per mile (that's more than nct's quoted cost on depreciation alone, but this is a new car.)
The average car in the US is 12.2 years old. (I think, but am not sure, that this is the average of registered cars.) Given that CA is one of the better climates for car longevity, I think it's far to estimate that cars last quite a bit longer than 15 years, likely bringing the figure you calculate down to $0.12-15.
 


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