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> Also: Private car ownership is going to fall off a cliff shortly after autonomous ride services arrive. Which probably means general demand for vehicles will
by bdrool 10y ago
> Also: Private car ownership is going to fall off a cliff shortly after autonomous ride services arrive. Which probably means general demand for vehicles will fall off a cliff.
Or, if everyone has a self-driving car of their own (or one that can be converted to self-driving), people will rent out their cars AirBnB-style when they aren't using them. I mean, why not? You've already got a garage, a driveway, etc. Might as well make a few extra bucks with your vehicle...
- derefr 10y agoTwo sides of the same coin. If you can rent your neighbour's car, why own your own? Heck, why have driveways? In cities, at least, I could fully imagine new townhouse developments operating more like apartment buildings: one central parking lot for the "pool" of (mostly) driverless cars. Your car drops you off at your door and then parks in the pool; then comes back out to get you in the morning.
- bdrool 10y ago> Heck, why have driveways? My point is that millions of them already exist, with a distributed network of roads leading to them, as well as storage (garages). It would be costly to suddenly rip all those up.
- galdosdi 10y agoThey could be used for other purposes. People filling their garages with other junk and then having to put their car somewhere else is so common already. The driveway can become a front yard.
- aetherson 10y agoWhile driverless cars obviously make short-term car rental more attractive on a cost basis, I think that people here tend to overestimate the impact of this. * A large percentage of people will want to have their own car because they don't want to put up with the occasional hassle of unavailability of rental cars during a peak time, and/or occasional long waits for the car to reach them (particularly when they are being picked up in un-dense areas). And before you hand-wave this away, note that the more of a cost advantage you give to rental cars (ie, the higher the utilization of those cars), the more of a disadvantage cost/wait time will be. * People -- and very especially families with children -- also value cars as a mobile depot for their stuff. If you have kids of certain ages, this is practically a necessity. I definitely am not going to screw around with not just a carseat but like a dozen books and snacks and wipes and cups and so forth every time I get into/out of a rental car. * Then cleaning and status and all the other things that people regularly bring up here.
- galdosdi 10y ago* Availability can be addressed with a dedicated option, where you pay extra (if a fleet) or get paid a bit less (if renting out your self driving car) to ensure there's always a car whose destination's time distance from you plus remaining trip length is less than some amount you specify such as 15min. * To address the mobile depot use case, I've heard of proposals to have storage areas (possibly trunk, but not necessarily) that are only accessible by the owner, not by renters. Even that may not be perfect though, I do see your point.
- aetherson 10y agoSure, availability can be addressed by paying more, but the entire value proposition here is that you pay less. Is there a sweet spot where you still experience significant cost reductions but the inconvenience is small enough that you don't mind it? Well, certainly, for some people! But I think the number of people is going to be a lot smaller than many commentators think. (The only cases I see where there's no increase in the rides-for-hire business after full automation is if the cost of cars drops to the point where there's very little incentive to try to reduce the costs for most people. Given that cars are quite expensive now, that seems unlikely. I can construct a scenario, but you basically have to believe that, first, the additional cost for driverless sensors+software is very low, second, that driverless software is so safe that you can drastically decrease physical safety features on cars, and third, probably that automation drives significant GDP growth).
- erikpukinskis 10y ago> Is there a sweet spot where you still experience significant cost reductions but the inconvenience is small enough It's not that hard. For one thing, you don't need to increase the price much, you just need to increase it a little so that you push cost-over-everything riders out of the queue. There are enough of those that whatever capacity is left should be plenty. And you are worried those riders who were pushed out of the queue will go back to car ownership, but they are by definition cost-over-everything people, so of course they won't do that. If they could afford to own a car they could afford peak pricing.
- untog 10y agoBut why have a garage and a driveway in the future? If you can "hail" a self driving car within 5 minutes then having one in your house becomes a waste of valuable space.
- XorNot 10y agoCleaning comes to mind as a serious, unsolved problem here. The reason I like my own car is because I know the history of its dirt.
- scarmig 10y agoI wonder what the worst case scenario is here. I'll put Muni-level syringes and human waste as the worst. But (1) fare evasion wouldn't be a problem and (2) the 1% of worst offenders who account for 99% of the disgustingness can be readily blacklisted. I suspect the typical case will be a drunk person throwing up in it on the way home. Hopefully they self-report; if they don't, it comes to the next rider to report it, who does and gets a generous reimbursement, charged to the credit card of the last rider.
- nhaehnle 10y agoI've been using "car-sharing" (really an unfortunate mis-nomer) systems for some time now. Cleanliness has never really been an issue.
- sf_rob 10y agoThis seems more likely. So far sharing economy companies don't want to vertically integrate their whole service stack down to physical goods. It requires capital raising, and is low margin compared to the value that they provide by scaling their main services. Maybe they will once they've achieved full market penetration and are struggling to increase their profit, but that's decades away IMO.
- stillworks 10y agoThis is an interesting thought experiment. What do people feel about recreational driving or weekend leisure driving ? For commuting, I am totally in favor of autonomous vehicles. But for a weekend or leisure drive I may not want to bother with shared ownership. I am not from U.S. but the experience I have had with using local air travel (with Southwest) in the U.S. I am prepared to caffine up and drive up to 400mi rather than bother with the hassles of flying. (I have done that a few times and found it quite enjoyable, maybe there was a novelty factor to it)
- oddevan 10y agoAs someone who once had a long-distance relationship with a 400mi round trip, I'd say it's a little of both. There's a novelty factor, but there's also a part of it that some people find enjoyable. Having the right car helps: trips made in my almost-busted Honda Civic were much less enjoyable than the ones in my brand-new-custom-ordered Mini Cooper. :) The right soundtrack, the right weather, and the right caffeine vehicle are major factors as well.
- tintor 10y agoYou would call a car on your phone (with maybe a ski rack or whatever you need). Car will drive itself to you and you can drive it manually or in automated way over the weekend. When you return back home, car drives itself away. No hassle with maintenance, repair, parking.
- vinceguidry 10y agoNot going to happen, or if it does it won't last. The so-called sharing economy has mostly just devolved to low-barriers-to-entry entrepreneurship. AirBnB listings start off with ordinary joes renting out their spare bedrooms, but they got crowded out in a few years by businessmen providing real services, and consumers follow. Uber drivers at first were mostly just driving in their spare time, but over the years the professionals came in and crowded them out. The lesson here is that it takes work to provide a level of service that consumers are willing to pay for. That work is best done through organization and professionalization. Some guy renting his car out during the work day isn't going to find it profitable enough to continue doing when he has to compete against dedicated on-demand rental services.
- flashman 10y agoBut AirBnB and Uber require the owner to invest effort: cleaning the house (or arranging the cleaner) and driving the car. If you could hire your car out fully autonomously that changes the equation. It's like you're saying I shouldn't bother with my zero effort $100-a-month passive income just because somebody else is making $200-a-month with higher margins.
- icebraining 10y agoAs an AirBnB user, that's completely opposite to my experience - 9/10 have been ordinary people doing it on the side, not pros. I suspect the picture is different if you raise the "price" slider (I go for the cheapest third, usually), but I still see plenty of supply. Is that crowding out supported by any data?
- Eridrus 10y agoI tried renting out my car for a month in Oakland; it routinely smelt like weed and McDonald's fries, which got annoying enough that I stopped renting it out. A fleet would be able to handle these sorts of things better.