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That’s presuming individual private ownership of those vehicles. Detroit seems convinced that a fleet approach (think Uber without the driver) is the most like

by luma 8y ago

That’s presuming individual private ownership of those vehicles. Detroit seems convinced that a fleet approach (think Uber without the driver) is the most likely outcome. In this case, the fleet moves around as needs require, generating revenue as riders are hailing then moving to an inexpensive staging area when demand decreases.

twblalock 8y ago
I do not expect individual ownership of vehicles to decline much. People trash vehicles they don’t own. Fleet-shared driverless cars will be filled with bad smells, weird stains, cigarette butts, and leftover fast food wrappers. Anyone who can afford to buy a car for themselves will do it.
- joe_the_user 8y ago
  The stain theory would depend on control and management. That said, only a percentage of people would want to just discard the car they've spent considerable money on. Self-driving fares can never be as cheap as regular driving seems. With regular driving, you are silently depreciating the value of your vehicle whereas a self-driving car would have to include depreciation in each ride.
  - mikepurvis 8y ago
    That assumes a typical daily usage pattern, though, for which yeah owning, fuelling, maintaining, and insuring your own vehicle will probably always make the most sense. However, for people who do (or plan to) use bicycles or mass transit a significant proportion of the time, being able to fall back on an hailed autonomous car in case of rain, haste, whatever is very appealing. It just depends on being able to look at a monthly bill of $200 (or whatever) in on-demand rides and see it as a huge step forward from what you used to pay in all the fixed costs of car ownership whether you used it or not. The real trick will be having a workable solution for families with kids— that's an area where current taxis/rideshare have a gap, since they're not willing to supply their own carseats for liability reasons.
    - twblalock 8y ago
      The carseat thing is a big deal. So is going to Costco and buying a ton of stuff for the family. I don't think very many people do that in an Uber.
      - mikepurvis 8y ago
        Monthly Costco run can be covered by a carshare or just planning on a rental one weekend a month and planning certain chores around it. The carseat thing is a real missing piece in the puzzle though.
      - derefr 8y ago
        But Costco offers free delivery above a $75 purchase, which is generally around the same point where the goods wouldn't fit in an Uber.
        notatcomputer68 8y ago
        As a non-owner of a car thanks for this information
    - joe_the_user 8y ago
      Sure, switching to an autonomous taxi would be an easy call for some people and would not appeal for others. But when you have that, you double or multiply by N, the road usage. Which is going to produce multiple problems for everyone. People imagine that once autonomous vehicles reach a certain level, they'll just morph to provide all the benefits of a well-planned public transit system. But I'm doubting common good can just fall out of more chaos. And hey, the private automobile itself was thrown onto society with effectively no consideration of externalities and brought us to our current heaven/hell of urbanism. So it's quite possible that, despite some talk of planning, autonomous vehicles will just appear, make a hash of things and all the clean-up will happen later, if at all.
    - ryanwaggoner 8y ago
      I just checked here in NYC and both Uber and Lyft have carseat options. And every car I’ve ever rented had the option too.
- mrep 8y ago
  Where do you live because I have used zipcar, rental cars, uber, and lyft extensively in the USA and never experienced any of those things. I don't see how people could negatively abuse it that much when the next rider/owning company/video cameras in self-driving cars can easily report the bad actors and ban them from the system.
ghaff 8y ago
It's really not clear how that works. If people keep commuting on a regular schedule, most of the demand is at certain times of day. Now, it's reasonable to ask whether this might not be a forcing function for more varied work schedules as pricing would presumably favor off-peak commuting. But, then, one is inclined to ask, why not the obvious next step--at least part-time work from home--which we can (and many do) today?
- tomjen3 8y ago
  What would probably happen is that the price of a car would go up, which means more people will share a car (this would be feaseable with autonomous cars because you can still leave pretty much whenever you need to, and go pretty much where you need to, because you only need to coordinate with any other group of people who happen to need to leave at that time, rather than select the people you want to share a car with and then coordinate when you need to leave). There is also the alternative that people will move further away from their work, because they can use the commute time -- essentially then, they would leave their homes at the same time, start working and then leave their offices so that they are home again at the same time, which means (assuming everybody lives at different distances from their workplace) that you automatically get a stackering effect.
- woolvalley 8y ago
  Autonomous electric fleets can bring cars in before the predictable peak hours occur, reducing congestion. Autonomous fleets are also not vehicle size limited. You can bring in autonomous buses that go point to point (mostly) because there is high enough demand to fill such specific routes. Autonmous fleets are also not wandering streets looking for parking, which is a major part of congestion. Autonomous fleets can also be parked in towers, because a robot car doesn't care if it takes 10 minutes to get out of a tower, as long as the throughput is high enough. Eventually you will need heavy rail to increase throughput for dense enough places, but that's still a separate problem today.

by luma 8y ago

twblalock 8y ago

I do not expect individual ownership of vehicles to decline much. People trash vehicles they don’t own. Fleet-shared driverless cars will be filled with bad smells, weird stains, cigarette butts, and leftover fast food wrappers. Anyone who can afford to buy a car for themselves will do it.

joe_the_user 8y ago
The stain theory would depend on control and management. That said, only a percentage of people would want to just discard the car they've spent considerable money on. Self-driving fares can never be as cheap as regular driving seems. With regular driving, you are silently depreciating the value of your vehicle whereas a self-driving car would have to include depreciation in each ride.
- mikepurvis 8y ago
  That assumes a typical daily usage pattern, though, for which yeah owning, fuelling, maintaining, and insuring your own vehicle will probably always make the most sense. However, for people who do (or plan to) use bicycles or mass transit a significant proportion of the time, being able to fall back on an hailed autonomous car in case of rain, haste, whatever is very appealing. It just depends on being able to look at a monthly bill of $200 (or whatever) in on-demand rides and see it as a huge step forward from what you used to pay in all the fixed costs of car ownership whether you used it or not. The real trick will be having a workable solution for families with kids— that's an area where current taxis/rideshare have a gap, since they're not willing to supply their own carseats for liability reasons.
  - twblalock 8y ago
    The carseat thing is a big deal. So is going to Costco and buying a ton of stuff for the family. I don't think very many people do that in an Uber.
    - mikepurvis 8y ago
      Monthly Costco run can be covered by a carshare or just planning on a rental one weekend a month and planning certain chores around it. The carseat thing is a real missing piece in the puzzle though.
    - derefr 8y ago
      But Costco offers free delivery above a $75 purchase, which is generally around the same point where the goods wouldn't fit in an Uber.
      - notatcomputer68 8y ago
        As a non-owner of a car thanks for this information
  - joe_the_user 8y ago
    Sure, switching to an autonomous taxi would be an easy call for some people and would not appeal for others. But when you have that, you double or multiply by N, the road usage. Which is going to produce multiple problems for everyone. People imagine that once autonomous vehicles reach a certain level, they'll just morph to provide all the benefits of a well-planned public transit system. But I'm doubting common good can just fall out of more chaos. And hey, the private automobile itself was thrown onto society with effectively no consideration of externalities and brought us to our current heaven/hell of urbanism. So it's quite possible that, despite some talk of planning, autonomous vehicles will just appear, make a hash of things and all the clean-up will happen later, if at all.
  - ryanwaggoner 8y ago
    I just checked here in NYC and both Uber and Lyft have carseat options. And every car I’ve ever rented had the option too.
mrep 8y ago
Where do you live because I have used zipcar, rental cars, uber, and lyft extensively in the USA and never experienced any of those things. I don't see how people could negatively abuse it that much when the next rider/owning company/video cameras in self-driving cars can easily report the bad actors and ban them from the system.

ghaff 8y ago

It's really not clear how that works. If people keep commuting on a regular schedule, most of the demand is at certain times of day. Now, it's reasonable to ask whether this might not be a forcing function for more varied work schedules as pricing would presumably favor off-peak commuting. But, then, one is inclined to ask, why not the obvious next step--at least part-time work from home--which we can (and many do) today?

tomjen3 8y ago
What would probably happen is that the price of a car would go up, which means more people will share a car (this would be feaseable with autonomous cars because you can still leave pretty much whenever you need to, and go pretty much where you need to, because you only need to coordinate with any other group of people who happen to need to leave at that time, rather than select the people you want to share a car with and then coordinate when you need to leave). There is also the alternative that people will move further away from their work, because they can use the commute time -- essentially then, they would leave their homes at the same time, start working and then leave their offices so that they are home again at the same time, which means (assuming everybody lives at different distances from their workplace) that you automatically get a stackering effect.
woolvalley 8y ago
Autonomous electric fleets can bring cars in before the predictable peak hours occur, reducing congestion. Autonomous fleets are also not vehicle size limited. You can bring in autonomous buses that go point to point (mostly) because there is high enough demand to fill such specific routes. Autonmous fleets are also not wandering streets looking for parking, which is a major part of congestion. Autonomous fleets can also be parked in towers, because a robot car doesn't care if it takes 10 minutes to get out of a tower, as long as the throughput is high enough. Eventually you will need heavy rail to increase throughput for dense enough places, but that's still a separate problem today.