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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 sme

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.
    - m0ngr31 8y ago
      The problem then becomes: what do you do with the carseat[s] when you are shopping, at a venue, etc... If I own/rent the car, I can just leave them in while I'm doing whatever. If I'm doing Lyft, I'm stuck carrying around baby seats between rides. Which is not appealing.
      - ryanwaggoner 8y ago
        That's not how it works...the Lyft has a carseat, you use it, then you get out and leave the carseat behind. It's not a loaner for the day.
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.

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.
  - m0ngr31 8y ago
    The problem then becomes: what do you do with the carseat[s] when you are shopping, at a venue, etc... If I own/rent the car, I can just leave them in while I'm doing whatever. If I'm doing Lyft, I'm stuck carrying around baby seats between rides. Which is not appealing.
    - ryanwaggoner 8y ago
      That's not how it works...the Lyft has a carseat, you use it, then you get out and leave the carseat behind. It's not a loaner for the day.

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.