On today’s show we are talking about the impact of artificial intelligence on the design of apartment buildings. The most obvious medium term impact of AI is going to be on the automotive industry. Some people prefer to drive by car because they don’t want the experience of public transit. It’s noisy, it’s crowded. You can’t have a private phone conversation on a bus or on the subway. The bus doesn’t take you where you want to go. It may take you close by, not exactly where you want to go. Even in places where traffic congestion is high and parking is expensive, people prefer to drive over the alternative. 

The cost of a taxi might be expensive. But depending on how often you drive and how far you drive, even using a taxi service might be more cost effective than owning your own car.

These days a ride sharing service like Uber or Lyft is typically costing between $2-3 per mile or between $1.25 - $1.87 per kilometre. Much of this is linked to the wage associated with having a human driver behind the wheel.

If you take a typical leased vehicle that might give you 15,000 miles per year and that lease might cost you $600 a month and maybe a similar amount in insurance. If you spend $2000 a year in fuel to drive those 15,000 miles then your cost per mile for a vehicle that you own is going to cost about $1.09 per mile. If you have to pay for parking, you are probably going to break $1.25 per mile in terms of cost. That’s assuming that the car needs no maintenance. 

On the other hand, if you can save time because you don’t need to look for parking a robotaxi might be a competitive solution. Some recent numbers suggest that robo-taxis will cost between $0.25-$35 per mile in mass deployment.

That’s a significant saving over car ownership. The other important question will be the balance of supply and demand. If you have to wait too long for a robo-taxi to show up, then people won’t use it. But if the supply is sufficient to keep wait times low, then robo-taxi adoption will change the entire auto industry. There will be no reason to own a car. For those really long road trips, it would be cheaper to rent a car. For trips within the city, a robo-taxi would even be preferable to owning a car for many people. 

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