If you assume a ridesharing model for AVs, this makes a fair bit of sense. Your typical family car gets maybe 2-3 hours of driving a day, if you live in a long-commute area. An autonomous vehicle will probably get 12-14 hours of driving each day. If you assume it's traveling at an average of 20 mph for 12.5 hours/day, that's 250 miles/day, or 90,000 miles/year, about 5-9x the mileage a typical family car gets. A 4-year lifespan is fairly generous under those conditions.
One thing I was surprised out with robot lawn mowers vs normal lawn mowers and robot vacuums vs normal vacuums is how many hours they are used for. I am sure cars are the same way.<p>My non-autonomous is 10 years old and has 140,000 miles, so 4,000 hours (at average 35 MPH) or 400 hours per year (about 5% of a year). An autonomous car could be driving for much longer, even bumping up to a 15% utilization would now mean my 140,000 miles/4,000 hours would be hit at 3 years!
Using years as a comparison point between the lifespan of autonomous vehicles and manually driven vehicles doesn't make sense. Autonomous vehicles will be on the road most of the day while manually driven vehicles generally sit parked most of the day. We should be talking about miles driven as a point of comparison since use is the primary factor that wears out a vehicle rather than simply the passage of time. Whatever that number is for autonomous cars, it will certainly be more in line with what we expect from manual cars than the 4 year comparison.
> It’s more surprising compared with the nearly 12 years that the average U.S. car owner hangs on to a vehicle. In fact, Americans are maintaining their cars longer in part because the technology used to make and operate them has advanced meaningfully<p>Was this a mistype? Wouldn't it make more sense to suggest people hang on to their cars for longer, because cars have -not- made meaningful advancements?<p>Unless they mean that the cars are lasting longer because of technological advancements in manufacturing making them more durable? They're definitely not easier to maintain for the layperson, so I'm certain it's not the Automotive industry choosing to empower consumers into keeping their cars longer...<p>> Today’s vehicles spend most of the day parked. To develop a profitable, viable business model for [autonomous vehicles], they need to be running almost the entire day.<p>This is making sense. If you're running the vehicles like they're commercial vehicles, you're going to induce wear that a consumer would never come close to. Four years lines up pretty well with other commercial vehicle turnover, like delivery vans, utility company vehicles and so on. The article mentions the median lifecycle for taxis is pretty similar, at 3.8 years.
There are so many questionable statements in this article. First is the 4-year scrap cycle, which seems to be based on nothing. Then there's the claim that running on-board tech and climate control will cut battery life in half, which might make sense if your battery is ridiculously small (Nvidia's full Drive system fits in a 500 watt TDP). And the cherry on top is the claim of no charging infrastructure (dubious, but even if true, why not build some for a few million of investment?) combined with the claim that fast charging degrades battery life (better not tell Tesla).<p>I had to look up John Rich on LinkedIn. He's a Ford lifer with no actual electric or software experience as far as I can tell. I'm disappointed.
The linked article says that the "average age" of a car is 11.6 years. This implies to me that the typical lifespan of a car is almost double that. The average will be skewed by people who have plates on 100 year old cars.