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Because once self-driving cars are cheap enough -and they will be-, this model won't make sense. There would to many cars competing for the few clients that nee
by wklauss 9y ago
Because once self-driving cars are cheap enough -and they will be-, this model won't make sense. There would to many cars competing for the few clients that need rides at any given time. The money you'll make will probably amount to nothing and won't cover the hassle.
But I don't think this will be an option. I think we all know cars are extremely inefficient, but we fail to see the magnitude of that inefficiency. They are outrageously, extremely, mind-bogglingly inefficient. To the point that, once they start to become more efficient thanks to self-driving, owning your own car will be extremely rare.
The thing with self-driving cars is that it really alters the whole economic landscape of car transportation. You don't need two cars in your garage because the same car can take your kids to school and you and your spouse to work.
But keep that idea scaling. Your whole neighborhood could probably get around with less that one self driving car per house. So you'll start seeing neighborhood associations or apartment buildings pooling resources to buy 20 or 30 cars for the whole community to use.
Scale even further. The same could be said for a city. You could just have a fleet of 1000 cars, paid and maintained by the local government with taxes, that move people around with maximum efficiency.
It's not that Uber has a tough future ahead. All car companies that rely in selling cars in volume will also face pressure. There will be a lot of concentration, a lot of mergers and a lot of bankruptcies, because we are going to a market that will be 1/10th the size of what it is now.
- bryanlarsen 9y agoEvery single time that technology has made something massively more efficient, usage has gone significantly up, not down, as the efficiency enabled unexpected use cases.
- wklauss 9y agoThe technology, here, is the algorithm and hardware related to self driving. Not the car itself. Yes, we will use self- navigating software and LIDARS for a lot of things (car, buses, trucks, planes, boats, shipping containers...). And we will find new uses for it too. But the car as an object will be considered an annoyance to have. And probably heavily taxed to pay for roads, etc...
- TheCondor 9y agoWhy wouldn't a family have three cars in the garage? One for you, one for you spouse and the one for the kids to get to school or soccer practice or even their friend's house to play after school? Sure it's "inefficient" but the time efficiency of having a car ready to bring them home the instant you call has a premium value to many. if you take the driving out of the equation, I expect the average car becomes dramatically less expensive, performance is purely there for human emotions. Lower the car price and we will simply buy more there are lots of places where people don't take public transportation now, why is that going to change? So long as work schedules are similar and eating times are similar it seems like there is a queue theory problem with your community pool.
- Fricken 9y agoI've got to make sure I've got my shoes and jacket on before calling an Uber it arrives so fast, it actually saves time because I don't have to deal with parking.
- wklauss 9y agoReal estate prices are one reason. The other is that your waiting time for a shared self-driving car will be almost nothing (around 5 min?), specially in suburban areas. Keep in mind that is very likely that your kids will go to school on a self driving bus, in any case.
- frankc 9y agoI hear what your saying but can't you use the same logic with bathrooms? Sure, we could all get by with 1 bathroom. Hell, we can get by with just communal bathrooms. But it turns out it's nice to have the luxury of not sharing things, even with your family. It's nice to be able to customize things the way you want. I will buy the argument that people will give up personal car ownership when I start to see people give up having personal bathrooms.
- andy_ppp 9y agoWow, the neighborhood car pool system would be awesome; you could even crowdfund an Uber competitor in your locality and earn money from your investment!