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41119.3
Evaluating AMoD systems
19.3.2.3 Financial analysis of AMoD systems
This section provides a preliminary, yet rigorous economic evaluation of AMoD systems.
Specifically, this section characterizes the total mobility cost (TMC) for users in two
competing transportation models. In System 1 (referred to as traditional system), users
access personal mobility by purchasing (or leasing) a private, human-driven vehicle.
Conversely, in System 2 (the AMoD system), users access personal mobility by subscribing
to a shared AMoD fleet of vehicles. For both systems, the analysis considers not only the
explicit costs of access to mobility (referred to as cost of service -COS-), but also hidden
costs attributed to the time invested in various mobility-related activities (referred to as
cost of time – COT –). A subscript i = {1, 2} will denote the system under consideration
(e.g., COS1 denotes the COS for System 1).
Cost of service: The cost of service is defined as the sum of all explicit costs associated
with accessing mobility. For example, in System 1, COS1 reflects the costs to individually
purchase, service, park, insure, and fuel a private, human-driven vehicle, which, for the case
of Singapore, are estimated for a mid-size car at $18,162/year. For System 2, one needs to
make an educated guess for the cost incurred in retrofitting production vehicles with the
sensors, actuators, and computational power required for automated driving. Based upon
the author’s and his collaborators’ experience on self-driving vehicles, such cost (assuming
some economies of scale for large fleets) is estimated as a one-time fee of $15,000. From
the fleet-sizing arguments of Section 19.3.2.2, one shared self-driving vehicle in System 2
can effectively serve the role of about four private, human-driven vehicles in System 1,
which implies an estimate of 2.5 years for the average lifespan of a self-driving vehicle.
Tallying the aforementioned costs on a fleet-wide scale and distributing the sum evenly
among the entire Singapore population gives a COS2 of $12,563/year (see [18] for further
details about the cost breakdown). According to COS values, it is more affordable to access
mobility in System 2 than System 1.
Cost of time: To monetize the hidden costs attributed to the time invested in mobility-
related activities, the analysis leverages the Value of Travel Time Savings (VTTS) numbers
laid out by the Department of Transportation for performing a cost-benefit analysis of
transportation scenarios in the US [36]. Applying the appropriate VTTS values based
on actual driving patterns gives COT1 = $14,460/year (which considers an estimated
747 hours/year spent by vehicle owners in Singapore in mobility-related activities, see [18]).
To compute COT2 , this analysis prices sitting comfortably in a shared self-driving vehicle
while being able to work, read, or simply relax at 20 percent of the median wage (as oppo-
sed to 50 percent of the median wage which is the cost of time for driving in free-flowing
traffic). Coupling this figure with the fact that a user would spend no time parking, limited
time walking to and from the vehicles, and roughly 5 minutes for a requested vehicle to
show up (see Section 19.3.2.2), the end result is a COT2 equal to $4,959/year.
Total mobility cost: A summary of the COS, COT, and TMC for the traditional and
AMoD systems is provided in Table 19.1 (note that the average Singaporean drives 18,997
km in a year). Remarkably, combining COS and COT figures, the TMC for AMoD systems
is roughly half of that for traditional systems. To put this into perspective, these savings
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