Filling Up The Junk Heap: Self-Driving Cars Said To Last Just Four Years At A Time

Dr. Lance Eliot, AI Insider

[Ed. Note: For reader’s interested in Dr. Eliot’s ongoing business analyses about the advent of self-driving cars, see his online Forbes column: https://forbes.com/sites/lanceeliot/]

How long will a self-driving car last?

It is easy to simply assume that the endurance of a self-driving car is presumably going to be the same as today’s conventional cars, especially since most of the self-driving cars are currently making use of a conventional car rather than a special-purpose built vehicle.

But there is something to keep in mind about self-driving cars that perhaps does not immediately meet the eye, namely, they are likely to get a lot of miles in a short period. Given that the AI is doing the driving, there is no longer a dampening on the number of miles that a car might be driven in any noted time period, which usually is based on the availability of a human driver. Instead, the AI is a 24 x 7 driver that can be used non-stop and attempts to leverage the self-driving car into a continuously moving and available ride-sharing vehicle.

With all that mileage, the number of years of endurance is going to be lessened in comparison to a comparable conventional car that is driven…