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Interesting that they only let you borrow for now. Will car ownership be killed with self-driving cars? Will Waymo let you actually buy and own a car that isn't
by Asooka 10y ago
Interesting that they only let you borrow for now. Will car ownership be killed with self-driving cars? Will Waymo let you actually buy and own a car that isn't network connected and fully yours? Seeing how value extraction works in today's enterprise, i.e. via rent-seeking, I'm guessing we're headed to not owning cars any more.
- nvr219 10y ago> Will car ownership be killed with self-driving cars? I hope so.
- Neliquat 10y agoSerious question; Why would you hope this?
- ryandrake 10y agoUnfortunately, the concept of something being fully yours seems to be what's going away. So much of what we "buy" now is locked down by the manufacturer to the point where you cannot even hope to modify or repair it. Automobiles, in particular are getting less and less modifiable every generation. More and more electronic gadgets in the home are locked into only running manufacturer-selected software. Everything is network-tethered to the manufacturer, who ultimately controls whether/how their products operate. Sad times.
- monkmartinez 10y agoYeah, it is working out great for farmers that use John Deere tractors.
- Ajedi32 10y ago> Will car ownership be killed with self-driving cars? Probably. It seems way more convenient and efficient to be able to summon a car to any location on demand than to have just one car that you use for everything. No more parking, no more refueling, no more vehicle maintenance; just push a button and a car shows up within minutes (or in some cases, seconds) to pick you up, and step out of the vehicle when you reach your destination. Want a specific model or paint color? It's just a couple taps on your phone away. Car breaks down and needs a tow? Replacement gets summoned automatically, and the car company credits a couple bucks to your account for the inconvenience. If that kind of service becomes available at a reasonable price point, I suspect it won't be long before car ownership becomes much less common.
- vkou 10y agoIt's also more convenient to always eat out, but the world won't become a better place if home-cooking dies. Under the no-private ownership model, you are going to get screwed by surge pricing.
- Qwertious 10y agoPresumably slightly less screwed if you reserve beforehand, though, and I suspect what would actually happen is massive carpooling during peak times (also, small one-person cars that are cheaper)
- plopz 10y agoHow do you solve the issue of extreme demand M-F at 8am and 5pm and low demand any other time?
- Ajedi32 10y agoSame way any other business that has brief periods of high demand (electric companies, ISPs, restaurants, etc) does; you anticipate the demand and make sure you have enough capacity available at those times to meet it. With a self-driving car fleet there are probably lots of other little tricks you can do too, like offer discounts for sharing a vehicle with another passenger, or use machine learning to predict what locations will have the highest demand during particular parts of the day and move portions of the fleet to cover those areas.
- vkou 10y agoMy non-ML prediction of which locations will have the biggest demand in Seattle: People on the West Side who want to get to the East Side, and people on the East Side who want to get to the West Side. (You'd figure that maybe optimizing this would bring more value to society then making a car drive itself...) 8am-9am, 4pm-6pm. You don't need ML to figure this out - just look at a Google Maps traffic heatmap in rush hour. Carpools, vanpools, already exist. For some reason, though, the vast majority of the cars parked on the freeway are single-occupant vehicles. I can't imagine why people aren't keen on sharing their vehicle with a stranger, or pay triple surge pricing to get home when it starts raining. This community is highly opposed to relying on web services that they don't control... Yet it is perfectly OK with ditching their car, and instead relying on a car-on-demand service to get to and from work?
- Qwertious 10y ago"Will car ownership be killed with self-driving cars?" Presumably. It's pooling for cost-saving reasons, much like cloud computing. If people want to be frugal, they won't buy a car.