With Uber the driver can sit in his middle-of-nowhere house (or work on his garage, yard, etc.) for those 40 minutes with his driver app on, and get in his car only when the app alerts him that he has a fare. This will take the driver to a central location where there are short waits and frequent fares.

I remember reading a post from an Uber driver in a small town. Basically, instead of idling, he'd just use his house as a waiting area. So instead of just waiting around, he'd be at home, doing other stuff until he got an rider. Then he'd get in his car and drive them where they needed to be.

That only works if trips are originating from nearby. I've been to some shady Louisiana bars out in the middle of nowhere, I'm not sure how even Uber would work out there.

If he lived next to the bars or downtown that would probably be reasonable, but I can't imagine he would bring in too much money (as opposed to living in a large metropolitan area).

It really depends on how close the rural area is to a population center.

Sounds like a perfect case for autonomous cars. They don't have to be paid to wait.

I suspect that the main obstacle for self driving cars, if they do eventually exist, is not going to be finding use cases for them.

Gas, wear and tear & depreciation aren't free though, these are always going to be higher cost areas to serve.

How much wear and tear for a robot that is just sitting still listening to the internet uplink? If only every tenth of all cars currently stored on public parking would be hailable robots you would get very comfortable availability even in the remotest village. Occasional idle rebalancing drives would probably be less common than the idle leg of current “go pick someone up“ or “bring someone somewhere and return" trips.

If robot taxis happen, they won't be just like regular taxis without a driver. The mix between investment, hourly cost and per mile cost would change a lot, making entirely new business models possible and shifting the optimization peaks of existing ones.

Personally, if I would somehow happen upon a dozen robot taxis to turn into a business, I would select elderly people in a rural area as my target audience. Not your typical early adopter and quite some natural churn (short age window between should not drive anymore but still able to take care of themselves), but you get awesome ad targeting if you put out flyers in the doctor's waiting room. Oh, and you need to hire the one taxi driver who currently serves the doctor's appointment market in that area as your support guy who chats all the nice old ladies through the introductory phase over the car's hands free.

Except that you are not paying for "gas, wear and tear & depreciation" when you call a taxi. You're not even paying for the human driver. You are paying for the monopoly.

Even if calling a driverless car cost more for remote areas, it would (or at least could) still cost a fraction of the cost of a taxi. $30 instead of $120 for a long distance drive is totally reasonable.

$30 for a 8 mile trip when your making $7hr is really hard on the budget. It might be way cheaper, but it is still unfordable for the median person in a rural area.

You may have missed it, but my grandparent's comment - and my reply - were regarding driverless cars. There is no driver making $7/hour in an autonomous driverless car. (Off-topic aside: no taxi driver makes $7/hour). There's a reason an easy trip costs $50-80 in a taxi, and it has nothing to do with human labor or maintenance of the car. A driverless vehicle will not have to make $100+/hour to make up for maintenance costs.

Nor do driverless cars have to make up for "idle time". The only legitimate counter argument as to why a taxi should earn as much as they do is that they sit around not making any money for 10-60 minutes at a time. However, that goes away with driverless cars, and any excuse to charge exorbitant prices the way taxis do completely vanishes.

No, the $7hr was in reference to what you make as a service sector employee in Idaho or Montana.

The real question is why work for so little money? The federal minimum wage is $7.25, tipped employees can make less per hour but only if the tips exceed the minimum wage for that time, but that isn't the real wage floor consider Walmart[0] has a minimum wage of $10.00 nationally and the average time between hire and promotion(with raise) is 3 months with an average fulltime compensation of $13.38 an hour. Construction labor, house cleaning, call centers and even dishwashing in non chain restaurants tends to pay similarly, I really don't know why anyone would make the minimum wage for any extended period of time, nor how employers offering it manage to find anyone given the competition.

[0]http://news.walmart.com/news-archive/2016/01/20/more-than-on...

Go to Idaho or Montana then, you'd be surprised what people will work for when there are no alternatives.

I think the issue is I and my peers never really received any education about how to make it in the world (outside of simply "go to college"). If you are working a minimum wage or low paying job you really have two jobs the second being constantly searching for and applying to better opportunities.

Also I suspect another issue is the cliffs for government benefits. If you work between 45 - 60 hours a week for $12 - $13 an hour like I did a few years ago you aren't exactly well off yet programs like Obamacare will fine you for not buying health insurance that you can't really afford. Similarly free clinics will turn you away and I wasn't able to find a single aid program that you would qualify for except about $20 a month in food stamps. I figured out the costs once and there are a great many situations where a rational actor would simply work less or for less money and do better economically.

Yep, wages don't amount to everything. I don't know how Walmart is nowadays, but a few years ago I had a few friends working at one being stiffed an hour or two underneath the weekly "full time" amount so they didn't need to keep up with certain benefits. And making them work unpaid overtime and bullying them into not reporting it or clocking in.

People bring up legal recourse for these situations, but realistically, it's very scary when you're in that scenario and have to actually deal with getting underpaid or not getting paid for a while but having your dignity.

About the tipped wages mentioned a couple comments up, from my experience working delivery, that's a great way to get yourself fired. Because I guarantee you all the employees won't go in together on saying it, you're basically telling the management "I don't get tipped as much as everyone else" which is great grounds for poor performance, it's a catch-22.

See: http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/im...

IMO that's the strongest argument for replacing welfare programs by a negative income tax, or universal basic income.

Most people in welfare have to borrow money or work igaly true Too make ends meat from user5

They do, right? Needs to be depreciated.

I lived in Beijing for 9 years and never had to worry about a DUI since I didn't even own a car. Some bad nights (no taxis available) I walked home for an hour or so, no big deal.

Population densities in the US suck, and everything is oriented around personal cars. Totally different things.