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Comment by gh02t | Hacker News Reader

Paying the driver is a pretty big cut. If there's no driver to pay and fuel is cheap (because electric / hydrogen / whatever futuristic efficient tech) then the numbers start to work out. You've also got a persistent customer, so you can probably operate on lower margins since you have a fairly stable customer base.

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And then some data miner will discover most workers live near each other and will cut costs by getting a bigger self-driving bus to pickup several people.

And then another data miner will discover the bulk of the traffic time is spent on traffic, so they will buy land to create a right-of-way lane to optimise the commute times.

Finally, the Ouroboros eats his own tail by creating a private subway system.

Heh, what I had imagined in my own little scifi vision of the future was a hub system. Everybody gets their own little single seat self driving car pod thing that drives you to the train station. But here's the twist, instead of getting out and boarding the train the pod just drives up and latches in. You're then whisked away in the comfort of your own personalized vehicle, which automatically undocks at the appropriate station and delivers you to your workplace.

So you're carrying around tonnes of useless metal just so people don't have to walk a few feet and sit next to other people?

This is what happens with private cars now, except in a much more wasteful way.

Commuter train cars generally weigh about a ton per 3 passenger seats, but packed-full cars are considered uncomfortable. So a pod weighing 600 kg would be equal in weight per passenger to a train car where everyone sits alone on a double-seat place. Which is a pretty reasonable comfort standard. An EV pod could also be charged in the train during the journey, so you would have its full range available at both ends of the train journey.

The point wasn't to avoid people (I consider that a downside actually), it was to save having to have a vehicle come pick you up twice a day or generally having to drive around without a fare. It'd be your own personal vehicle and it'd have to be as small and light as possible for this exact reason - I had imagined golf cart sized. The vehicle would only need a minimal battery because it only has to take you from the station to work and home to the station (and could charge on the train and at work). You're right though, I dunno if the economics would ever work out.

With the disclaimer that this was just a fantasy and probably shouldn't be taken too seriously.

I thought the final step would be that they'd realise there was a geographic centrum, create a parking lot to save fuel, then realise they didn't need wheels, ... and you've got a "trailer park".

I'm waiting for the option to throw my Amazon personal logistics vest on and be delivered to my office via drone.

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