5 ms·

Uber have the right idea here; own the platform, not the infrastructure. Lets face it, a cars spends most of its life stationary, waiting for you to drive it.

by Toenex 12y ago

Uber have the right idea here; own the platform, not the infrastructure. Lets face it, a cars spends most of its life stationary, waiting for you to drive it. Not so the autonomous vehicle. Autonomous vehicles are freed from the shackles of parking so why not lease your car to Uber and have it earn money as a cab? The future will be a bad time to get into car parking.

thanksgiving 12y ago
> The future will be a bad time to get into car parking. Perhaps, this will be the case in the long term. However, until then perhaps we could implement some sort of price surging where rental costs of parking space skyrockets when demands get high. Uber is doing the hard work of making price surging palatable. Everyone else just needs to ride on their coat tails.
- zevyoura 12y ago
  SF and other cities already have variable, usage based parking fees[0]; I imagine these will only become more widespread. [0] http://sfpark.org/ http://sfpark.org/
- brc 12y ago
  That is already common in most places. Most parking structures I know have different rates for different arrival and stay lengths. A lot of street parking has free and paid times. Demand based parking has been around a long time.
- rtpg 12y ago
  but the jutification for surge pricing doesn't make sense with parking. The entire premise (that I have not seen data to verify, but the premise nonetheless) is that surge pricing increases the number of drivers on the road. Are we going to build more parking spaces for half a day? "Price surging" would become a fancy word for price gouging.
  - eru 12y ago
    Surge pricing also limits demand. And that's a good thing; it's better if there's an expensive spot available, than no cheap spots.
    - rtpg 12y ago
      only better for rich people. Rent seeking does not follow free market principles (due to fixed supply), and so loses any form of moral highground in my opinion.
      - Pyxl101 12y ago
        Surge pricing is not rent-seeking. If the surge pricing was not warranted by the situation, then it creates a trivial way for competitors to eat the business's lunch by offering the same service at a slightly lower price. "Uber is surge pricing right now but Lyft is not, so I'll get my ride with Lyft" Surge pricing is a legitimate function of a properly functioning market. When demand has skyrocketed, or supply is constrained, prices _should_ rise. This is the mechanism by which markets enable resources to be allocated efficiently. Whether someone is poor or rich, if they desire a thing more than other people do (for the sake of argument, other people of similar wealth), then they should have a mechanism by which to express that preference. That preference is the price they're willing to pay. If the area is congested, and you _really_ want to go somewhere right now, then surge pricing gives you two ways to accomplish this. (1) To the extent that capacity is fixed, the ability to out-bid someone else means that you can take the capacity from someone else who doesn't desire it as much as you do. (2) The higher price incentivizes more supply. Uber drivers who see an exceptional surge price will make themselves available in order to take advantage of higher wages. A higher surge price is pure profit for the driver, if he can make himself available to drive right now versus some other time in the week Lastly, no supply is fully constrained. If the price of parking in a city skyrockets, then this creates a strong incentive for parking businesses to find a way to make more parking available. This might mean buying existing buildings, demolishing them, and converting them into parking structures; or it might mean that in the routine course of building new structures, the high price of parking will make it economical to dig a few stories deeper and provide a few more levels' worth of parking. Price and incentives always influence the operation of the market.
zanny 12y ago
You won't lease or own self driving cars. That makes no sense. You will just subscribe to a drive service if you drive a lot or just pay per ride and have one pick you up. I easily see you scheduling regular events (leave for work at 8, for example) and your car will be out front waiting each day.
- randyrand 12y ago
  No way. In the city, yes. But in the somewhat wealthier suburbs many people will spring for the "self-driving" package. It might only be a ~$10k add on or less by my estimates. Most people will want to be able get in the car without having to request and wait for a ride (most people already have this luxury).
  - erikpukinskis 12y ago
    Sure, at first. But then your daughter has the SUV and your husband has the sedan and you want to get groceries and your sons want to go to two different friends houses, so you end up using sepf-driving cars all the time anyway, and you realize it's actually quite nice not to have to worry about maintenance and cleaning and charging. And you realize you could save $300 a month. And oh, you can just order a 4-wheel-drive vehicle pre-loaded with kayaks for your camping trip? And... and... and. We haven't imagine half of what cars-as-a-service will entail. Some people will always hold onto their vehicles, but in the end I don't think a hunk of plastic and metal will be able to compete with a fleet of special-purpose vehicles supported by a staff of thousands.
    - Chronic30 12y ago
      Many rich families own (at least) one car per family member. We are talking about luxurious add-ons which is why I bring this up.
- millstone 12y ago
  Isn't owning typically cheaper than renting? Anyways, it makes no sense that everyone on my block owns their own lawnmower, and yet here we are.
anigbrowl 12y ago
Assuming Google wants to get into the car business, all it has to do is add a button to google Maps/now. I don't think ther's anything special about the Uber platform, and Google already integrates journey planning through the Calendar and Google Now interfaces (eg telling you that you need to leave in 5 min to catch that train). You're right on the car parking. I think the City of Chicago actually made a very shrewd decision to sell their street parking revenue to a private operator for a 75 year period in return for a fixed amount of cash up front (obviously I'm oversimplifying). It was excoriated as a terrible deal by most people, but none of them seem to have considered the probability that there just won't be the same sort of demand for parking in even 10 or 20 years.

by Toenex 12y ago

thanksgiving 12y ago

> The future will be a bad time to get into car parking. Perhaps, this will be the case in the long term. However, until then perhaps we could implement some sort of price surging where rental costs of parking space skyrockets when demands get high. Uber is doing the hard work of making price surging palatable. Everyone else just needs to ride on their coat tails.

zevyoura 12y ago
SF and other cities already have variable, usage based parking fees[0]; I imagine these will only become more widespread. [0] http://sfpark.org/ http://sfpark.org/
brc 12y ago
That is already common in most places. Most parking structures I know have different rates for different arrival and stay lengths. A lot of street parking has free and paid times. Demand based parking has been around a long time.
rtpg 12y ago
but the jutification for surge pricing doesn't make sense with parking. The entire premise (that I have not seen data to verify, but the premise nonetheless) is that surge pricing increases the number of drivers on the road. Are we going to build more parking spaces for half a day? "Price surging" would become a fancy word for price gouging.
- eru 12y ago
  Surge pricing also limits demand. And that's a good thing; it's better if there's an expensive spot available, than no cheap spots.
  - rtpg 12y ago
    only better for rich people. Rent seeking does not follow free market principles (due to fixed supply), and so loses any form of moral highground in my opinion.
    - Pyxl101 12y ago
      Surge pricing is not rent-seeking. If the surge pricing was not warranted by the situation, then it creates a trivial way for competitors to eat the business's lunch by offering the same service at a slightly lower price. "Uber is surge pricing right now but Lyft is not, so I'll get my ride with Lyft" Surge pricing is a legitimate function of a properly functioning market. When demand has skyrocketed, or supply is constrained, prices _should_ rise. This is the mechanism by which markets enable resources to be allocated efficiently. Whether someone is poor or rich, if they desire a thing more than other people do (for the sake of argument, other people of similar wealth), then they should have a mechanism by which to express that preference. That preference is the price they're willing to pay. If the area is congested, and you _really_ want to go somewhere right now, then surge pricing gives you two ways to accomplish this. (1) To the extent that capacity is fixed, the ability to out-bid someone else means that you can take the capacity from someone else who doesn't desire it as much as you do. (2) The higher price incentivizes more supply. Uber drivers who see an exceptional surge price will make themselves available in order to take advantage of higher wages. A higher surge price is pure profit for the driver, if he can make himself available to drive right now versus some other time in the week Lastly, no supply is fully constrained. If the price of parking in a city skyrockets, then this creates a strong incentive for parking businesses to find a way to make more parking available. This might mean buying existing buildings, demolishing them, and converting them into parking structures; or it might mean that in the routine course of building new structures, the high price of parking will make it economical to dig a few stories deeper and provide a few more levels' worth of parking. Price and incentives always influence the operation of the market.

zanny 12y ago

You won't lease or own self driving cars. That makes no sense. You will just subscribe to a drive service if you drive a lot or just pay per ride and have one pick you up. I easily see you scheduling regular events (leave for work at 8, for example) and your car will be out front waiting each day.

randyrand 12y ago
No way. In the city, yes. But in the somewhat wealthier suburbs many people will spring for the "self-driving" package. It might only be a ~$10k add on or less by my estimates. Most people will want to be able get in the car without having to request and wait for a ride (most people already have this luxury).
- erikpukinskis 12y ago
  Sure, at first. But then your daughter has the SUV and your husband has the sedan and you want to get groceries and your sons want to go to two different friends houses, so you end up using sepf-driving cars all the time anyway, and you realize it's actually quite nice not to have to worry about maintenance and cleaning and charging. And you realize you could save $300 a month. And oh, you can just order a 4-wheel-drive vehicle pre-loaded with kayaks for your camping trip? And... and... and. We haven't imagine half of what cars-as-a-service will entail. Some people will always hold onto their vehicles, but in the end I don't think a hunk of plastic and metal will be able to compete with a fleet of special-purpose vehicles supported by a staff of thousands.
  - Chronic30 12y ago
    Many rich families own (at least) one car per family member. We are talking about luxurious add-ons which is why I bring this up.
millstone 12y ago
Isn't owning typically cheaper than renting? Anyways, it makes no sense that everyone on my block owns their own lawnmower, and yet here we are.

anigbrowl 12y ago

Assuming Google wants to get into the car business, all it has to do is add a button to google Maps/now. I don't think ther's anything special about the Uber platform, and Google already integrates journey planning through the Calendar and Google Now interfaces (eg telling you that you need to leave in 5 min to catch that train). You're right on the car parking. I think the City of Chicago actually made a very shrewd decision to sell their street parking revenue to a private operator for a 75 year period in return for a fixed amount of cash up front (obviously I'm oversimplifying). It was excoriated as a terrible deal by most people, but none of them seem to have considered the probability that there just won't be the same sort of demand for parking in even 10 or 20 years.