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This doesn't seem quite right - if I own a car and use only 1/3rd of its capacity, I generally expect it to last 3x as long, so the unused capacity costs me not

This doesn't seem quite right - if I own a car and use only 1/3rd of its capacity, I generally expect it to last 3x as long, so the unused capacity costs me nothing. Even your annual steam cleaner example will favor the purchaser over the renter, given enough time. So the difference between renting and owning must come down to the cost of unused capacity, which means the fixed costs. Where those fixed costs are high, like a parking space in SF, you want to amortize them by maximizing utilization, which means sharing cars. But where those fixed costs are low, like parking in my driveway, unused capacity may be so cheap that owning costs less than renting, even if the car sits idle most of the time.

aetherson 12y ago
Cars degrade in value pretty strongly based on age, not just mileage. For example, a 2009 Toyota Camry with 5,000 miles on it, base 4-Door sedan, in excellent condition, shows a Kelley Blue Book price of about $13k (in my zip). It would've been about $18k new. But your point is taken, a great deal of the equity burn on a car is mileage-related. (Especially when you consider that if there are three users of a rented driverless car, it drives more than 3x the distance than would three separate owned vehicles for the users -- it must, after all, shuttle itself between users.)