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Looks like a great car but not sure it belongs to the future. I think the future is mostly in rented car services à la Uber/Lyft, most people live in big cities

Looks like a great car but not sure it belongs to the future. I think the future is mostly in rented car services à la Uber/Lyft, most people live in big cities where the cost of owning a car is getting closer to just taking a cab, not to mention the hassle. And this will accelerate once self driving cars become more common. So yeah, buying cars especially $35k ones doesn't seem like a business I'd invest in but I may be totally wrong here. The battery part of it is great though.

toomuchtodo 11y ago
"Listen To Elon Musk’s Awkward Silence After A Question About Tesla’s Self-Driving Fleet" http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/06/listen-to-elon-musks-awkward-silence-after-a-question-about-teslas-self-driving-fleet/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/06/listen-to-elon-musks-awkwar... TL;DR Based on Elon's response, they're considering released an Uber competitor with their own self-driving electric cars. EDIT: Uber has an app and drivers. Tesla is going to have enough manufacturing capacity to build 100K cars/year. Numbers I've found indicate that 90-95% of the time, cars are in a garage or parked. That's a lot of idle capacity society doesn't need out there. What does that mean? Tesla doesn't need to churn out enough cars to replace existing cars being sold; they just need enough that can replace current miles traveled by people.
- patrickaljord 11y ago
  Google is still light years ahead, also, self-driving cars are expected to drastically reduce the number of cars being sold as they will be used much more efficiently and now one will own a car, at least when self-driving cars will be a majority which admittedly won't be for another 15 to 20 years.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    > Google is still light years ahead Google also had a gentleman's deal with Elon to buy Tesla and allow him to continue operating it if they were unable to get their financing together. They have shared goals (electric transportation, reduced/eliminated mobility fatalities). > self-driving cars are expected to drastically reduce the number of cars being sold as they will be used much more efficiently and now one will own a car Agree completely. Google is excellent at software. Tesla is excellent at hardware. > at least when self-driving cars will be a majority which admittedly won't be for another 15 to 20 years. Google's head of their self-driving vehicle team has committed to general availability of their self-driving cars in 4 years
    - patrickaljord 11y ago
      > Google's head of their self-driving vehicle team has committed to general availability of their self-driving cars in 4 years Yes, but I said "self-driving cars will be a majority" in 15 to 20 years. The internet was invented in 1983, made available to the public in 1990 and took over 10 to 15 years later, even today there's a good proportion of the population that do not use it.
      - toomuchtodo 11y ago
        The future is hard to predict. It depends on two things: * Regulations * Manufacturing capacity The world auto fleet is replaced pretty slowly. Perhaps its turned over quicker for every self-driving car released onto the roads. If I recall correctly, for every Zipcar shared car in a neighborhood, ~20 cars are no longer kept by owners in the area. Self-driving vehicles could have the same effect, limited to only how fast they can be built and shipped on rail to their final operational region. Regulations. These are important. Self-driving cars will kill less people than human drivers. Full stop. If you incentivize people to use self-driving cars (insurance rates skyrocket for human drivers), you'll push people to automated vehicles faster. Less deaths, less capital outlay for humanity as a whole for buying cars, lots of efficiency all around. If you want to make a gentleman's Long Bet [1] on it, I'd be down for that (token amount donated to the winner's charity of choice). [1] http://longbets.org/ http://longbets.org/
    - threeseed 11y ago
      And what's Googles record on hardware like ? Apple has hired everyone under the sun to work on their rumoured car project and they already have decades of experience in global supply chain management. That is what I would be expecting from Google today if they were planning on shipping a car in 4 years. Far more likely they will license their software to Tesla. Which would be one of the only car companies interested since everyone has had autonomous systems project in place for many years.
      - toomuchtodo 11y ago
        According to Google's latest monthly report [1]: Miles driven since start of project in 2009 “Autonomous mode” means the software is driving the vehicle, and test drivers are not touching the manual controls. “Manual mode” means the test drivers are driving the car. * Autonomous mode: 1,158,818 miles * Manual mode: 877,477 miles * We’re currently averaging ~10,000 autonomous miles per week on public streets (my note: over a million miles without an accident caused by software) [1] http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//selfdrivingcar/files/reports/report-0815.pdf http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en/... Don't let their track record on consumer hardware fool you. Apple makes nice phones and laptops, while Google has built an entire simulation of where their vehicles drive, continually updates that data with vehicles in the field, and runs their self driving algorithms against those world simulations. This ain't no Apple Maps.
  - casylum 11y ago
    Remember how computers were supposed to eliminate paper in the office? Now we have more paper than ever thanks to computers. With self-driving cars people can have their cars out running errands for them during the day. Need to pickup something two hours away? No problem, send your car to get it while you are at work. The car that was sitting idle in the parking lot is now out on the road during the day. By eliminating the driver the number of cars on the road might increase dramatically.
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      > By eliminating the driver the number of cars on the road might increase dramatically. Charge road tax by the mile. Replaces the gas tax, regulates a limited physical resource.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      Right. Looked at a different way, self-driving cars increase the utility provided by cars, so -- since people will only buy self-driving cars if the price premium over non-self-driving cars is less than the added utility -- can be expected, all other things being equal, to increase the number of cars sold and in use. OTOH, because self-driving cars decrease the number of cars needed in society to deliver a given degree of utility, they could facilitate a reduction in the number of cars, but some other changes would need to occur to realize that reduction. Tax, regulatory, and/or urban design policies which disfavor individual ownership of vehicles in favor of centralized on-call services would have to reduce the number of cars on the road.
    - Retric 11y ago
      I have gone over a full year without thouching paper at work before so the 'paperless' office is real.
- revelation 11y ago
  Based on Elon's response... it's silence, there is nothing here.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    I have a hard time believing that, considering Tesla has only existed for 12 years, and is already producing 50K vehicles a year that are rated as the best car ever built.
    - threeseed 11y ago
      Not sure who is saying it is the best car ever built. It's long term reliability has been marked as questionable to say the least and the interior build quality is to put it mildly embarassing. There are budget Hyundais that are more luxurious.
      - toomuchtodo 11y ago
        The below are results of a quick google search. I could go get references about the Model S being one of the safest cars ever produced as well, but I don't think that's necessary. "Tesla’s Model S breaks Consumer Reports rating scale" http://arstechnica.com/cars/2015/09/teslas-model-s-breaks-consumer-reports-rating-scale/ http://arstechnica.com/cars/2015/09/teslas-model-s-breaks-co... 2015 Tesla Model S 70D Ranked “Car Of The Century”: Car and Driver http://www.businessfinancenews.com/22425-2015-tesla-motors-inc-model-s-70d-ranked-car-of-the-century-car-and-driver/ http://www.businessfinancenews.com/22425-2015-tesla-motors-i... Tesla : Consumer Reports' best car ever tested http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/09/autos/tesla-model-s-consumer-reports/ http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/09/autos/tesla-model-s-consumer...
        Vik1ng 11y ago
        > Consumer Reports' best car ever tested What a surprise when it's also the most expensive one...
- ssharp 11y ago
  Demand for cars is still huge during rush hours. Lots of cars sit idle during low demand times, but that capacity is still needed to meet high demand times. The problem isn't getting people into the same car. The bigger problem is getting people into the same car at the same time. Sure, self-driving cars can work with each other in ways human drivers can't to minimize congestion, but until you start removing cars from the road, it will still be an issue.
  - dublinben 11y ago
    Uber Pool and Lyft Line are already paving the way for car sharing along popular commutes. In the future, you will face the option of a ride home in a self-driving car either alone for $15, or with two other passengers for $5. The decision will be pretty easy for most people.
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      Or Google Now will simply suggest people in your area you could commute with, based on its aggregation of your daily commute data with the data of others, based on the time you leave every day. Or perhaps Google Maps will do that. It supports Uber internally as a travel option, no? Wouldn't it be interesting if that dropped away and was replaced with Google's self-driving car scheme one night?
      - dublinben 11y ago
        Excellent point. The actual service providing this transportation shouldn't matter. Passengers just want to arrive at their destination. Let the system figure out how to get them there.
    - ssharp 11y ago
      Is there any indication or evidence that this will be successful at a massive scale? Quite frankly, at those prices, I'm not sure either has an appeal greater than my own car, sitting in my garage, available whenever I want. I'm extremely sceptical that all the people I see driving on the freeway every day would rather sit in a Prius with three strangers twice a day on their morning and evening commutes. I think driverless cars are the future of transportation, I'm just not certain that driverless cars and car sharing will be married at the hip from day one. There is lots to figure out to make car sharing appealing at a larger scale than it already is. Most of the things I see suggested just don't have enough appeal to convince me that people will change their current behaviors for them.
lazaroclapp 11y ago
Ah, but assume you are an Uber/Lyft driver/owner ('owner' if the car is autonomous), who drives 6+ hours a day. Now assume oil prices don't stay where they are right now and taxes for oil start going up as alternatives become viable. Then, wouldn't it make a lot of sense to drive a $35k electric car that will cost you less over 3-4 years of ownership than a $20k hybrid car or even a $12k gas car?
- patrickaljord 11y ago
  How about self-driving cars though? No need for an owner. Besides making oil tax that prohibitive probably won't happen until there is a solid alternative which there is not for now given that the majority of electricity is produced in an unclean way.
  - lazaroclapp 11y ago
    Self-driven cars still consume energy. In fact, since you don't need to pay for labor, the percentage of the cost for the operation of a self-driving car represented by energy is larger. So, if grid electricity is cheaper than gas, you still win in proportion to how much time the car spends moving around, driver or not. Regarding adding a tax for gas cars, well... even termoelectric plants are more efficient/cleaner than in-vehicle combustion engines[1]. Also, cities might decide that they prefer the pollution happening somewhere else for air quality purposes, even if it's all the same at the global warming level. Keep in mind that when we are talking about the "carless, on-demand, self-driving" future, we are probably not talking about 2017. Optimistically, we are talking about 2027. But keep in mind how many of the cars you see on the road now a days are models older than 2005 or even 1995... that's how long a new mass produced Tesla is going to be with us, at the least. [1] Of course, electricity storage and distribution adds costs in the other direction... so we'd need to calculate which has a lower environmental impact per Watt. My bet is still on huge power plants being cleaner than millions of power tiny power plants on wheels...
chambo622 11y ago
> "Looks like a great car" You've seen the Model 3?
- johnward 11y ago
  No. Everyone is seeing photoshop renderings and thinking it's the Model 3. Tesla is supposed to unveil the vehicle next March (but we need to convert from Elon time to human). I'm anxious. edit: I'm guess that within this community it's quite possible someone has seen at least early company renderings.
csomar 11y ago
most people live in big cities Do you mean the U.S or the whole world. Either ways, cars are embraced a lot in the U.S (and the rest of the world too) to make sense of what you are saving. Global car sales are expected to grow 2.5% world-wide this year: http://www.statista.com/statistics/200002/international-car-sales-since-1990/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/200002/international-car-...
- patrickaljord 11y ago
  > Do you mean the U.S or the whole world Both: http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/news/population/world-urbanization-prospects-2014.html http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/news/population/world-...
  - sgustard 11y ago
    Re the US, the statistics don't call out suburbs; per http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-suburban-are-big-american-cities/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-suburban-are-big-ame... "Nationally, 26 percent of Americans described where they live as urban, 53 percent said suburban and 21 percent said rural."
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    But that contradicts the "most people live in big cities"; it is "most people live in cities", but of them most of them live in smaller cities. And it only deals with the urban/rural distinction, which subsumes suburbia into "urban". This has value for lots of uses, but isn't particularly useful for discussing transit, where suburbia is -- while still very distinct from rural areas -- very different from narrow-sense urban.
fweespeech 11y ago
You are thinking like someone who lives in a major metro. Sure, for SF/LA/NYC/Chicago/DC this will happen. However, pretty much anywhere that doesn't charge you for parking you are simply not accurately portraying the costs. If I need to drive 6-7 hours a week, a rented car service is not going to be cost effective outside of a handful of metros. I've run the numbers for my life and Uber/Lyft is the TCO for my car in 6 months.
- patrickaljord 11y ago
  I live in Europe where the cost of a car is prohibitive, most young people and even older don't own a car and most live in cities. This is worldwide, most people especially young people are moving to big cities. And then self driving cars.
  - threeseed 11y ago
    Young people are using public transport and will continue to going forward. Self driving cars will replace taxi services but that's about all the disruption they are likely to do.
  - izacus 11y ago
    Which magical part of Europe do you live in? Since most people outside few major subway equipped cities do own at least one family car to go around.
  - fweespeech 11y ago
    Even when visiting Europe, we drove outside of major metros. I'm not really sure what to say. Rural populations are always going to exist because you want to eat.
InclinedPlane 11y ago
"Nobody goes there, there's too much traffic." "Nobody makes cars any more, we just take cabs."

toomuchtodo 11y ago

"Listen To Elon Musk’s Awkward Silence After A Question About Tesla’s Self-Driving Fleet" http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/06/listen-to-elon-musks-awkward-silence-after-a-question-about-teslas-self-driving-fleet/ http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/06/listen-to-elon-musks-awkwar... TL;DR Based on Elon's response, they're considering released an Uber competitor with their own self-driving electric cars. EDIT: Uber has an app and drivers. Tesla is going to have enough manufacturing capacity to build 100K cars/year. Numbers I've found indicate that 90-95% of the time, cars are in a garage or parked. That's a lot of idle capacity society doesn't need out there. What does that mean? Tesla doesn't need to churn out enough cars to replace existing cars being sold; they just need enough that can replace current miles traveled by people.

patrickaljord 11y ago
Google is still light years ahead, also, self-driving cars are expected to drastically reduce the number of cars being sold as they will be used much more efficiently and now one will own a car, at least when self-driving cars will be a majority which admittedly won't be for another 15 to 20 years.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  > Google is still light years ahead Google also had a gentleman's deal with Elon to buy Tesla and allow him to continue operating it if they were unable to get their financing together. They have shared goals (electric transportation, reduced/eliminated mobility fatalities). > self-driving cars are expected to drastically reduce the number of cars being sold as they will be used much more efficiently and now one will own a car Agree completely. Google is excellent at software. Tesla is excellent at hardware. > at least when self-driving cars will be a majority which admittedly won't be for another 15 to 20 years. Google's head of their self-driving vehicle team has committed to general availability of their self-driving cars in 4 years
  - patrickaljord 11y ago
    > Google's head of their self-driving vehicle team has committed to general availability of their self-driving cars in 4 years Yes, but I said "self-driving cars will be a majority" in 15 to 20 years. The internet was invented in 1983, made available to the public in 1990 and took over 10 to 15 years later, even today there's a good proportion of the population that do not use it.
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      The future is hard to predict. It depends on two things: * Regulations * Manufacturing capacity The world auto fleet is replaced pretty slowly. Perhaps its turned over quicker for every self-driving car released onto the roads. If I recall correctly, for every Zipcar shared car in a neighborhood, ~20 cars are no longer kept by owners in the area. Self-driving vehicles could have the same effect, limited to only how fast they can be built and shipped on rail to their final operational region. Regulations. These are important. Self-driving cars will kill less people than human drivers. Full stop. If you incentivize people to use self-driving cars (insurance rates skyrocket for human drivers), you'll push people to automated vehicles faster. Less deaths, less capital outlay for humanity as a whole for buying cars, lots of efficiency all around. If you want to make a gentleman's Long Bet [1] on it, I'd be down for that (token amount donated to the winner's charity of choice). [1] http://longbets.org/ http://longbets.org/
  - threeseed 11y ago
    And what's Googles record on hardware like ? Apple has hired everyone under the sun to work on their rumoured car project and they already have decades of experience in global supply chain management. That is what I would be expecting from Google today if they were planning on shipping a car in 4 years. Far more likely they will license their software to Tesla. Which would be one of the only car companies interested since everyone has had autonomous systems project in place for many years.
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      According to Google's latest monthly report [1]: Miles driven since start of project in 2009 “Autonomous mode” means the software is driving the vehicle, and test drivers are not touching the manual controls. “Manual mode” means the test drivers are driving the car. * Autonomous mode: 1,158,818 miles * Manual mode: 877,477 miles * We’re currently averaging ~10,000 autonomous miles per week on public streets (my note: over a million miles without an accident caused by software) [1] http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en//selfdrivingcar/files/reports/report-0815.pdf http://static.googleusercontent.com/media/www.google.com/en/... Don't let their track record on consumer hardware fool you. Apple makes nice phones and laptops, while Google has built an entire simulation of where their vehicles drive, continually updates that data with vehicles in the field, and runs their self driving algorithms against those world simulations. This ain't no Apple Maps.
- casylum 11y ago
  Remember how computers were supposed to eliminate paper in the office? Now we have more paper than ever thanks to computers. With self-driving cars people can have their cars out running errands for them during the day. Need to pickup something two hours away? No problem, send your car to get it while you are at work. The car that was sitting idle in the parking lot is now out on the road during the day. By eliminating the driver the number of cars on the road might increase dramatically.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    > By eliminating the driver the number of cars on the road might increase dramatically. Charge road tax by the mile. Replaces the gas tax, regulates a limited physical resource.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    Right. Looked at a different way, self-driving cars increase the utility provided by cars, so -- since people will only buy self-driving cars if the price premium over non-self-driving cars is less than the added utility -- can be expected, all other things being equal, to increase the number of cars sold and in use. OTOH, because self-driving cars decrease the number of cars needed in society to deliver a given degree of utility, they could facilitate a reduction in the number of cars, but some other changes would need to occur to realize that reduction. Tax, regulatory, and/or urban design policies which disfavor individual ownership of vehicles in favor of centralized on-call services would have to reduce the number of cars on the road.
  - Retric 11y ago
    I have gone over a full year without thouching paper at work before so the 'paperless' office is real.
revelation 11y ago
Based on Elon's response... it's silence, there is nothing here.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  I have a hard time believing that, considering Tesla has only existed for 12 years, and is already producing 50K vehicles a year that are rated as the best car ever built.
  - threeseed 11y ago
    Not sure who is saying it is the best car ever built. It's long term reliability has been marked as questionable to say the least and the interior build quality is to put it mildly embarassing. There are budget Hyundais that are more luxurious.
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      The below are results of a quick google search. I could go get references about the Model S being one of the safest cars ever produced as well, but I don't think that's necessary. "Tesla’s Model S breaks Consumer Reports rating scale" http://arstechnica.com/cars/2015/09/teslas-model-s-breaks-consumer-reports-rating-scale/ http://arstechnica.com/cars/2015/09/teslas-model-s-breaks-co... 2015 Tesla Model S 70D Ranked “Car Of The Century”: Car and Driver http://www.businessfinancenews.com/22425-2015-tesla-motors-inc-model-s-70d-ranked-car-of-the-century-car-and-driver/ http://www.businessfinancenews.com/22425-2015-tesla-motors-i... Tesla : Consumer Reports' best car ever tested http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/09/autos/tesla-model-s-consumer-reports/ http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/09/autos/tesla-model-s-consumer...
      - Vik1ng 11y ago
        > Consumer Reports' best car ever tested What a surprise when it's also the most expensive one...
ssharp 11y ago
Demand for cars is still huge during rush hours. Lots of cars sit idle during low demand times, but that capacity is still needed to meet high demand times. The problem isn't getting people into the same car. The bigger problem is getting people into the same car at the same time. Sure, self-driving cars can work with each other in ways human drivers can't to minimize congestion, but until you start removing cars from the road, it will still be an issue.
- dublinben 11y ago
  Uber Pool and Lyft Line are already paving the way for car sharing along popular commutes. In the future, you will face the option of a ride home in a self-driving car either alone for $15, or with two other passengers for $5. The decision will be pretty easy for most people.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Or Google Now will simply suggest people in your area you could commute with, based on its aggregation of your daily commute data with the data of others, based on the time you leave every day. Or perhaps Google Maps will do that. It supports Uber internally as a travel option, no? Wouldn't it be interesting if that dropped away and was replaced with Google's self-driving car scheme one night?
    - dublinben 11y ago
      Excellent point. The actual service providing this transportation shouldn't matter. Passengers just want to arrive at their destination. Let the system figure out how to get them there.
  - ssharp 11y ago
    Is there any indication or evidence that this will be successful at a massive scale? Quite frankly, at those prices, I'm not sure either has an appeal greater than my own car, sitting in my garage, available whenever I want. I'm extremely sceptical that all the people I see driving on the freeway every day would rather sit in a Prius with three strangers twice a day on their morning and evening commutes. I think driverless cars are the future of transportation, I'm just not certain that driverless cars and car sharing will be married at the hip from day one. There is lots to figure out to make car sharing appealing at a larger scale than it already is. Most of the things I see suggested just don't have enough appeal to convince me that people will change their current behaviors for them.

lazaroclapp 11y ago

Ah, but assume you are an Uber/Lyft driver/owner ('owner' if the car is autonomous), who drives 6+ hours a day. Now assume oil prices don't stay where they are right now and taxes for oil start going up as alternatives become viable. Then, wouldn't it make a lot of sense to drive a $35k electric car that will cost you less over 3-4 years of ownership than a $20k hybrid car or even a $12k gas car?

patrickaljord 11y ago
How about self-driving cars though? No need for an owner. Besides making oil tax that prohibitive probably won't happen until there is a solid alternative which there is not for now given that the majority of electricity is produced in an unclean way.
- lazaroclapp 11y ago
  Self-driven cars still consume energy. In fact, since you don't need to pay for labor, the percentage of the cost for the operation of a self-driving car represented by energy is larger. So, if grid electricity is cheaper than gas, you still win in proportion to how much time the car spends moving around, driver or not. Regarding adding a tax for gas cars, well... even termoelectric plants are more efficient/cleaner than in-vehicle combustion engines[1]. Also, cities might decide that they prefer the pollution happening somewhere else for air quality purposes, even if it's all the same at the global warming level. Keep in mind that when we are talking about the "carless, on-demand, self-driving" future, we are probably not talking about 2017. Optimistically, we are talking about 2027. But keep in mind how many of the cars you see on the road now a days are models older than 2005 or even 1995... that's how long a new mass produced Tesla is going to be with us, at the least. [1] Of course, electricity storage and distribution adds costs in the other direction... so we'd need to calculate which has a lower environmental impact per Watt. My bet is still on huge power plants being cleaner than millions of power tiny power plants on wheels...

chambo622 11y ago

> "Looks like a great car" You've seen the Model 3?

johnward 11y ago
No. Everyone is seeing photoshop renderings and thinking it's the Model 3. Tesla is supposed to unveil the vehicle next March (but we need to convert from Elon time to human). I'm anxious. edit: I'm guess that within this community it's quite possible someone has seen at least early company renderings.

csomar 11y ago

most people live in big cities Do you mean the U.S or the whole world. Either ways, cars are embraced a lot in the U.S (and the rest of the world too) to make sense of what you are saving. Global car sales are expected to grow 2.5% world-wide this year: http://www.statista.com/statistics/200002/international-car-sales-since-1990/ http://www.statista.com/statistics/200002/international-car-...

patrickaljord 11y ago
> Do you mean the U.S or the whole world Both: http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/news/population/world-urbanization-prospects-2014.html http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/news/population/world-...
- sgustard 11y ago
  Re the US, the statistics don't call out suburbs; per http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-suburban-are-big-american-cities/ http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/how-suburban-are-big-ame... "Nationally, 26 percent of Americans described where they live as urban, 53 percent said suburban and 21 percent said rural."
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  But that contradicts the "most people live in big cities"; it is "most people live in cities", but of them most of them live in smaller cities. And it only deals with the urban/rural distinction, which subsumes suburbia into "urban". This has value for lots of uses, but isn't particularly useful for discussing transit, where suburbia is -- while still very distinct from rural areas -- very different from narrow-sense urban.

fweespeech 11y ago

You are thinking like someone who lives in a major metro. Sure, for SF/LA/NYC/Chicago/DC this will happen. However, pretty much anywhere that doesn't charge you for parking you are simply not accurately portraying the costs. If I need to drive 6-7 hours a week, a rented car service is not going to be cost effective outside of a handful of metros. I've run the numbers for my life and Uber/Lyft is the TCO for my car in 6 months.

patrickaljord 11y ago
I live in Europe where the cost of a car is prohibitive, most young people and even older don't own a car and most live in cities. This is worldwide, most people especially young people are moving to big cities. And then self driving cars.
- threeseed 11y ago
  Young people are using public transport and will continue to going forward. Self driving cars will replace taxi services but that's about all the disruption they are likely to do.
- izacus 11y ago
  Which magical part of Europe do you live in? Since most people outside few major subway equipped cities do own at least one family car to go around.
- fweespeech 11y ago
  Even when visiting Europe, we drove outside of major metros. I'm not really sure what to say. Rural populations are always going to exist because you want to eat.

InclinedPlane 11y ago

"Nobody goes there, there's too much traffic." "Nobody makes cars any more, we just take cabs."