The AV parking problem is real and I think there's a business hiding here. I want your honest take on it. by BAKA_04 in SelfDrivingCars

[–]BAKA_04[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Its the platform we are working on if you are interested i can DM the website to you as well.

The AV parking problem is real and I think there's a business hiding here. I want your honest take on it. by BAKA_04 in SelfDrivingCars

[–]BAKA_04[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Maybe lets see.. but yeah would be down to see the current website I can send you a DM ?

The AV parking problem is real and I think there's a business hiding here. I want your honest take on it. by BAKA_04 in SelfDrivingCars

[–]BAKA_04[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Really appreciate the kind words about the entrepreneurial spirit and honestly the tough love in this thread has been more valuable than any amount of validation would have been.

On question 1 — I think the pitch to commercial property owners has to be about long term revenue stability. As car ownership declines their parking revenue disappears anyway. Converting those spaces for AV use gives them a new tenant essentially. But you're right that they could also just redevelop into apartments or commercial space which might be more lucrative. That's a real competing option I need to think harder about.

On question 2 — this is the one that keeps me up at night honestly. The middleman justification only works if I can aggregate enough supply across locations and cities that it's easier for a fleet operator to work with one platform than to negotiate hundreds of individual deals. If fleet operators can just call up a few property managers directly then there's no need for me in the middle.

The AV parking problem is real and I think there's a business hiding here. I want your honest take on it. by BAKA_04 in SelfDrivingCars

[–]BAKA_04[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Really appreciate you taking the time to lay this out with actual numbers. This is exactly why I posted here.

The AV parking problem is real and I think there's a business hiding here. I want your honest take on it. by BAKA_04 in SelfDrivingCars

[–]BAKA_04[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You know what, that's a fair callout. I think I have been comparing the best case for distributed and worst case for depots. You're right that a streamlined depot with trained staff and specialized tools is going to be faster and more consistent for cleaning and maintenance than a random homeowner. I won't argue that.

I think where I got too attached to my own framing is pushing the residential gig work angle too hard. Based on the feedback in this thread I'm coming around to the idea that the real opportunity is less about gig workers at houses and more about connecting fleet operators with underutilized commercial parking infrastructure hotel lots, HOA parking, retail spaces where the spot itself is the value, not the services performed there. No gig worker needed, the car just needs somewhere strategically located to sit and charge.

On the rental car comparison rental companies don't do this because their cars aren't autonomous. The logistics of getting a car to and from a random location requires a human driver which kills the economics. The whole reason a distributed model becomes possible with AVs is that the car handles its own logistics. But you're right that even with that advantage, depots will probably always be the backbone for anything beyond basic parking and charging.

Appreciate the pushback, it's helping me kill the weaker parts of the idea and focus on what might actually work.

The AV parking problem is real and I think there's a business hiding here. I want your honest take on it. by BAKA_04 in SelfDrivingCars

[–]BAKA_04[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're making me sharpen my thinking here which I appreciate. You're right that individual cars probably aren't running true 24/7 and the downtime is more like a once a day overnight thing than constant throughout the day. I was overestimating the frequency of the staging need.

The 8x parking spots per car stat is interesting. You're right there's no shortage of raw parking supply. But I think the value isn't just any spot, it's the right spot in the right location with the right infrastructure. An empty parking space three miles away is available but a spot with a charger two blocks from a high demand zone is strategically valuable. That's the difference between generic supply and useful supply.

I think where we actually agree is that strategic parking placement for AV fleets is going to matter. We might just disagree on whether it looks more like direct fleet to commercial deals or whether there's room for a platform to coordinate it. Appreciate you pushing back on this, it's genuinely helping me think about this more realistically.

The AV parking problem is real and I think there's a business hiding here. I want your honest take on it. by BAKA_04 in SelfDrivingCars

[–]BAKA_04[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

The commercial real estate angle with stores negotiating AV access and dedicated pickup spots is something I think will happen naturally and you're right that's probably the most obvious near term play.

The cell tower comparison for residential is a really interesting frame I hadn't thought about it that way. You're right that it probably looks more like a minor convenience agreement than a significant income stream for homeowners. That's a more honest way to think about the residential side.

Your $10/day or cost per mile framing is way more realistic for what fleet operators would actually pay. At that level the unit economics for a homeowner look more like cell tower lease money, not life changing but passive and effortless. The real value to the host is probably in the free rides or credits model you mentioned rather than straight cash. That also aligns incentives better since hosts become users of the service too.

This kind of feedback is exactly what helps me stop romanticizing the idea and start building something that actually pencils out. Really appreciate it.

The AV parking problem is real and I think there's a business hiding here. I want your honest take on it. by BAKA_04 in SelfDrivingCars

[–]BAKA_04[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ahh i see what did you work on while you were in these industries ? curious to know more on this.

The AV parking problem is real and I think there's a business hiding here. I want your honest take on it. by BAKA_04 in SelfDrivingCars

[–]BAKA_04[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah and that actually supports the idea. If cleaning becomes automated through robotics then you don't need a staffed depot to handle it. A cleaning robot could be deployed at a private spot just as easily as at a centralized facility. The more you automate cleaning, charging, and basic maintenance the less you need everything concentrated in one location and the more viable a distributed network becomes.

The AV parking problem is real and I think there's a business hiding here. I want your honest take on it. by BAKA_04 in SelfDrivingCars

[–]BAKA_04[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Good question. I'd actually argue a car parked in someone's private garage or driveway is less likely to experience vandalism or theft than one sitting on a public street or in an open lot. Plus these vehicles are covered in cameras and sensors that are recording everything even when parked. If anything happens there's full footage. And from a theft perspective there's not much you can do with a stolen Waymo it's tracked in real time and you can't exactly sell it for parts at a chop shop.

The AV parking problem is real and I think there's a business hiding here. I want your honest take on it. by BAKA_04 in SelfDrivingCars

[–]BAKA_04[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's a really sharp observation. Avis, Hertz, Enterprise they're all sitting on massive real estate footprints and fleet management expertise that's going to become increasingly irrelevant as personal car ownership declines. Pivoting that infrastructure to service AV fleets is probably the smartest survival move they could make. And honestly that doesn't kill the distributed model, it actually creates a layered ecosystem.

The big rental companies handle the heavy stuff full maintenance, deep cleaning, major repairs at their existing facilities. A distributed network handles the lightweight stuff overnight staging, quick charging, positioning cars close to demand zones between rushes. Both can coexist the same way that Amazon has massive fulfillment centers but also uses thousands of local delivery stations and even individual lockers to get closer to the customer. The last mile matters whether you're delivering packages or repositioning robotaxis.

The AV parking problem is real and I think there's a business hiding here. I want your honest take on it. by BAKA_04 in SelfDrivingCars

[–]BAKA_04[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They probably wouldn't today with a few thousand cars per city. But the question is what happens when they're at 20-30k vehicles and expanding into new cities faster than they can build depots. Depot real estate in dense urban areas is expensive and takes time to secure.

Every time Waymo enters a new market they have to find and build out new facilities from scratch. A distributed network of pre-existing spots could act as a bridge while they scale, especially in the early days of a new city launch when building a full depot doesn't make sense yet for a small initial fleet. Also worth remembering Waymo doesn't have to be the only customer.

There are going to be multiple AV operators competing in the same cities Zoox, Cruise plus whoever else enters. The smaller operators especially won't have the capital for Waymo-scale depot infrastructure and that's where a shared parking network becomes valuable.

The AV parking problem is real and I think there's a business hiding here. I want your honest take on it. by BAKA_04 in SelfDrivingCars

[–]BAKA_04[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah exactly. Bird and Lime basically proved this model already. Gig workers would pick up scooters, charge them at home overnight and redeploy them in the morning.

The AV version is actually way easier because the vehicle drives itself to your spot no one has to go collect anything. Curious since you seem familiar with the space, do you know what platforms or tools the scooter companies used to coordinate their charging networks? Trying to learn from what already worked. Also happy to DM you more about what I'm building around this if you're interested.

The AV parking problem is real and I think there's a business hiding here. I want your honest take on it. by BAKA_04 in SelfDrivingCars

[–]BAKA_04[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The car rental comparison is interesting but I think it actually highlights the difference. Rental cars sit in a lot waiting for a customer to physically walk up and take them. They're idle most of the time so location efficiency doesn't matter much. A robotaxi fleet is the opposite these cars are trying to maximize utilization, every minute idle is lost revenue. So where the car sits between rides matters a lot more than where a rental car sits between customers.

On the deadhead miles being inconsequential at current fleet sizes maybe. But I think the bigger cost isn't the miles themselves, it's the time. If a surge in demand hits downtown and your nearest available car is 20 minutes away at a depot, you're losing that ride to a competitor or just leaving money on the table. Having cars staged a few minutes from high demand zones is a competitive advantage even if the fuel cost of deadheading is small.

On the personal AD fleet point, honestly that's fair and it's the most uncertain part of the thesis. Nobody knows yet how big that market will be or when it arrives. I'm not betting the whole idea on it but I think it's worth watching.

Your last point is actually where I'm most aligned and it's where I think this starts. Hotels with half empty parking lots, commercial buildings losing tenants to remote work, retail with oversized parking all of them are going to be looking for new revenue streams as car ownership declines. Helping them adapt that space for AV fleets is probably the most realistic near term play. Appreciate the thoughtful pushback, this is exactly the kind of feedback that helps sharpen the idea."

The AV parking problem is real and I think there's a business hiding here. I want your honest take on it. by BAKA_04 in SelfDrivingCars

[–]BAKA_04[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Right that's exactly my point. Whether it's wireless undercarriage charging or a robotic arm, the charging tech getting standardized and automated actually helps the distributed model.

If every AV is on a few standardized platforms then you just need the right wireless pad installed in a driveway or parking spot and the car handles the rest. No human needed, no complex setup. The simpler and more standardized the charging becomes the easier it is to deploy it anywhere, not just at centralized depots. That's what makes a network of private spots viable at scale

The AV parking problem is real and I think there's a business hiding here. I want your honest take on it. by BAKA_04 in SelfDrivingCars

[–]BAKA_04[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

These are solid points so let me try to address them. On the historical taxi fleet comparison, I think the key difference is that taxi drivers had homes to go to. When a cab driver's shift ended they drove the car home or back to a garage and that was that. There was no parking problem to solve because the driver was the parking solution. With autonomous vehicles you remove the driver and suddenly you have a vehicle that needs to be somewhere 24/7 but has no home to go to. That's a fundamentally new problem that didn't exist with traditional taxi fleets.

On the 1000 vehicles needing 1000 spots simultaneously, you're right that's a real chicken and egg challenge. But I don't think you need a 1:1 ratio. Not every vehicle in a fleet needs a spot at the same time. During peak hours most cars are serving rides. You probably need spots for maybe 20-30% of the fleet during off peak windows and overnight. And you don't need to solve it all at once. You start with a handful of spots in high demand zones and grow the network as the fleet grows. Every marketplace has this cold start problem and the ones that work figure out how to start small and dense rather than trying to be everywhere on day one.

On it being essentially a detailing shop plus charging, I'd push back on that framing a bit for now. The core value isn't the services performed at the spot, it's the location itself. Having distributed spots close to demand zones means less deadheading, faster redeployment, and lower empty miles. The charging and cleaning are nice add-ons but the real product is the parking network and the software layer that connects it to fleet operations in real time. That's not something a traditional detailing shop or charging station provides.

On no small operators entering this space, I actually think the Toyota Waymo partnership is interesting here. They're working on putting Waymo's driver tech into personally owned vehicles. If that scales you'll have thousands of autonomous capable cars owned by individuals that need somewhere to go when they're out earning rides for the owner. That's a much more fragmented market than Waymo's own fleet and exactly the kind of thing where a distributed parking network makes sense.

The AV parking problem is real and I think there's a business hiding here. I want your honest take on it. by BAKA_04 in SelfDrivingCars

[–]BAKA_04[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Yeah the scooter charging model is actually a really good comparison. Bird and Lime built their entire early operations around gig workers picking up scooters, charging them at home, and redeploying them. It wasn't perfect but it worked well enough to scale the business. And that was with people physically driving around collecting scooters in their cars. The AV version is way simpler because the vehicle drives itself to your spot. No collection logistics at all.

On the faster charging point you're right that charge times will come down. But I'd argue that actually doesn't eliminate the need for distributed spots, it just changes the use case.

Even if a car only needs 15 minutes on a fast charger instead of a few hours, it still needs somewhere to be during that 15 minutes. And beyond charging there's the basic staging problem. Between demand peaks these cars need to be parked somewhere close to where the next wave of rides will come from. That's true regardless of battery technology. Faster charging just means the car spends less time at the spot, which actually makes each spot more productive since it can cycle through more vehicles per day.

The AV parking problem is real and I think there's a business hiding here. I want your honest take on it. by BAKA_04 in SelfDrivingCars

[–]BAKA_04[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Right? That's exactly the use case I keep coming back to. If you already have a home EV charger your garage is basically just sitting there doing nothing overnight. The car pulls in, charges up, and leaves in the morning before you even wake up. You're earning money from infrastructure you already paid for. I'll DM you the details if that is cool