Re:Self-driving cars are headed toward an AI roadblock
by jtbayly on Thursday July 05, 2018 @01:33PM
(#17465134)
First, I've read over and over that the single largest cost in transportation is human labor (the driver). Low-skilled and low-paid they might be, but if you can replace them with a low-paid person behind a monitor that can handle 8-10 trips at once, you've saved a substantial portion of the labor cost.
Yes, that cost will be offset by the cost of the extra hardware, but that can be amortized over tens (possibly hundreds) of thousands of miles. Likewise, the investment in software (programmers) will eat into profits, but once again, you can spread that cost out over hundreds of thousands or millions of cars. Besides, an awful lot of the latter is a sunk cost at this point.
Yes, that cost will be offset by the cost of the extra hardware, but that can be amortized over tens (possibly hundreds) of thousands of miles. Likewise, the investment in software (programmers) will eat into profits, but once again, you can spread that cost out over hundreds of thousands or millions of cars. Besides, an awful lot of the latter is a sunk cost at this point.