I did wonder about maintenance costs, but I figured they wouldn’t change the picture too much because I only assume an avg 3 year lifetime for the robot, and figured they wouldn’t need a huge amount of maintenance to make it to that point.
Moreover, if there’s worthwhile maintenance that extends the lifetime further, then the hardware costs could end up cheaper than my per year estimate.
I’m also envisioning the costs after a big scale up, and there would be robot repair shops as numerous as car repair, rather than needing to fly in specialists.
That said, I agree it would be interesting to look at how much is spent on car maintenance per year on a car vs. capital costs. (I expect it would be under 10%?)
The average American drives 45,000 miles in three years, but a car operated 20⁄7 (like your robot) would accumulate about a million miles in that timeframe. Probably it would go through 2 engines and 3 transmissions if it could even be kept on the road. All things being equal it would need 22x as much maintenance than the average of the US fleet, so probably more like 220% of the capital cost.
A really nice printer/photocopier-combo costs about $10,000 like your robot, and is built from of motors, cameras, and computers just like your robot. While it’s mature technology and built to generally high quality standards, if you try running copies 24⁄7 you will quickly be on a first-name basis with local Kyocera guy.
I did wonder about maintenance costs, but I figured they wouldn’t change the picture too much because I only assume an avg 3 year lifetime for the robot, and figured they wouldn’t need a huge amount of maintenance to make it to that point.
Moreover, if there’s worthwhile maintenance that extends the lifetime further, then the hardware costs could end up cheaper than my per year estimate.
I’m also envisioning the costs after a big scale up, and there would be robot repair shops as numerous as car repair, rather than needing to fly in specialists.
That said, I agree it would be interesting to look at how much is spent on car maintenance per year on a car vs. capital costs. (I expect it would be under 10%?)
The average American drives 45,000 miles in three years, but a car operated 20⁄7 (like your robot) would accumulate about a million miles in that timeframe. Probably it would go through 2 engines and 3 transmissions if it could even be kept on the road. All things being equal it would need 22x as much maintenance than the average of the US fleet, so probably more like 220% of the capital cost.
A really nice printer/photocopier-combo costs about $10,000 like your robot, and is built from of motors, cameras, and computers just like your robot. While it’s mature technology and built to generally high quality standards, if you try running copies 24⁄7 you will quickly be on a first-name basis with local Kyocera guy.
That’s helpful! Makes me think the all in hardware costs could be off by a factor of 2x.