AV operators, like Waymo, Uber, or Lyft, must know the lifespans of their autos to find out the true price of staying in enterprise.
Stephen Hayes, VP of Lyft’s autonomous car program, advised me that the “lifetime mileage” the corporate can accrue on a robotaxi continues to be unknown.
“How lengthy will an AV final?” Hayes stated. “At present, we’re within the early innings, clearly, of the autonomous transition and only a few AV gamers have autos on the street which have run lots of of hundreds of miles.”
A part of the enterprise proposition for ride-hailing corporations like Lyft is reselling its fleet of autos, also referred to as remarketing. Lyft owns a fleet by its subsidiary known as Flexdrive. For robotaxis, remarketing stays an “unknown,” Hayes stated.
“There is not any marketplace for it,” he stated. “There is not any secondary market the place it is like, ‘Hey, I need to go purchase a used AV.’ Ten years from now, it will look fully totally different, however we do not know in what methods.”
