The true cost of autonomous cars

#Discussion(General) [ via IoTForIndiaGroup ]

Until now, the cost of autonomous cars has been largely guesswork — companies have been reluctant to say how much they will charge for their vehicles. But previously unreported contracts on the website of the Houston-Galveston Area Council reveal how much is being charged by two of the companies, Silicon Valley-based Drive.ai and EasyMile, a French autonomous shuttle provider. The documents prepare the companies to be hired in any city in the state.

EasyMile is charging more than $27,000 a month per small electric shuttle for cities that sign up for one year of service. Sign on for five years and the price drops to about $8,000 per month per shuttle. That means $324,000 and $96,000 per year, respectively.
Drive.ai charges $14,000 monthly per vehicle (bright orange vans, as seen above) for one year, which drops down to $12,900 a month per van for a five-year commitment: $168,000 and $154,800, respectively.
As a part of the agreement, the companies will operate and maintain the vehicles.
And some localities are paying such rates — with the help of federal grants:

The state of Rhode Island is paying $800,000 for the first year of a shuttle service coming to Providence in 2019, helped along by a $300,000 federal grant.
Arlington, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, hired Drive.ai to run three on-demand self-driving shuttles in the entertainment district. For the yearlong program, the city will foot 20% of the $435,000 price tag and a federal grant will cover the rest.
But these are the outliers, according to Greg Rodriguez, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who specializes in autonomous vehicles. “Most cities think that there will be no costs related to a pilot project with [a driverless] shuttle company,” Rodriguez told me.

"I will be very surprised if cities will pay for AV car services even at relatively low prices, let alone steep prices."
— Raj Rajkumar, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University

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