Rise of the Taxi-Bot

The President of the Los Angeles Taxi Commission speaking at the Connected Car Expo today teased the audience with some very good news. Eric Spiegelman claims taxi fares will drop considerably once fully autonomous taxis fill our city streets.

The LA Taxi Commission is the regulatory authority for the city of Los Angeles and the taxi industry. Spiegelman greeted the audience by saying: "One thing I want to tell you today is how excited I am about driverless cars as a regulator."

Driverless cars have the potential to solve certain social equity problems that have plagued regulators for a generation, he claims. Fully autonomous cars, driverless cars; the term he prefers is Taxibots.

"I suggest Taxibot because in 20 to 30 years in the future when driverless cars take over the streets, most of them are going to behave like taxis for a number of reasons," said Spiegelman.

First of all, without a driver Taxibots will be a lot less expensive and fares will drop by about 85 percent. He gives a few reasons why: "With a taxi driver, if he drives more than 50,000 miles in a year, we start to worry that he's not getting enough sleep. A Taxibot is going to be capable of driving over 100,000 miles in a year. And it is likely a Taxibot will be far smaller in size. With lower fares and smaller cars spread out over twice the distance, it is going to be a lot cheaper to take a Taxibot than it will be a taxi cab. I think it will be in the neighbourhood of 25 cents per mile [16 cents per kilometre]."

At that cost per mile, a Taxibot will be as affordable per mile as owning and driving your own car, at least in California.

"The average Californian drives 13,500 miles per year, so that's less than [US] $3500 per year in transportation costs," figures Spiegelman.

Compared with the annual US $7500 cost of driving a Toyota Camry, a Taxibot could be about half the cost of driving the most popular car in America.

The social impact will reach even deeper, as Spiegelman claims.

"We're going to have more equality. At 25 cents a mile, that is competitive with a city bus. So with the entire population of South LA [a low income neighbourhood] spending less money and less time on transportation, they'll be able to spend more time with their kids helping them with homework, take better jobs farther away and attend schools farther away. And 25 cents per mile transportation services might help alleviate food deserts which are those areas in certain neighbourhoods where people don't have access to healthy groceries."

He admits to brushing in wide strokes. The future with driverless Taxibots does sound rather enticing if it works out as Spiegelman predicts.