Last Mile Solutions - The monetization

The pricing would be $12 per day (or $3 per day for self-driving cars) for cars where the longest trip is 1.5 miles, e.g., a 1.0 mile drive to the metro, ride the metro, and a 0.5 mile drive to work (and the reverse in the evening). For bikes, the cost would be $6 per day.

The car costs

Driving costs At a cost of $0.25 per mile for gas and wear and tear, and an average 4 miles per day per user, the total cost would be $1 per commuter per day.

Parking costs (city) In many cities it costs $15 per day for parking. It would only cost one fifth of that for the smart cars because of their size and that they can be perfectly packed with no need for isles. The result is $3 per day per car in a garage designed for Last Mile Solutions (LMS). LMS would also lease 2-4 spaces near most mass transit stops adding another $3 per day per car. (suburbs) Parking is the suburbs would be at least three times cheaper than in cities, so I expect the cost to be $1 per day per car. I think each car could serve 7 commuters per day. So the cost per commuter would be $1 per commuter per day.

Relocation costs (city) I expect city elves to use bikes to move cars around. I expect it to take 15 minutes to move a car from where it was left to where it is needed and get to another car. If each biker is paid $12 per hour, that’s $6 per commuter for the city-side of their commute. (suburbs) In the suburbs, it’s more realistic to use large trucks to move the cars around. That reduces the labor costs significantly. Being able to pick up and drop off four cars at a time helps to amortize the costs to $1.25 per car or $3 per commuter for the suburb-side of the commute.

Those costs add up to $11 per commuter per day, $9 of which is labor. Wow, that’s a lot. So, really for this idea to be viable, we need self-driving cars. With self-driving cars, the labor cost goes to zero, and the parking costs are reduced (just drive around to park further away where it’s cheaper, or even better, work as a taxi during the day). With self-driving car technology, the cost per commuter per day could be as low as $2.

Things look slightly less bleak for bikes, as there would be very little parking fees and bikes could be picked up and moved much more easily than cars, cutting the labor costs in half. So the total cost per commuter per day using bikes would be $5.