Quote:
Originally Posted by Street Pharmacist
There's a reason there's so much argument about future tech, because no one really knows what's going to happen. I see your points, but:
1) The costs are driven mostly by capital costs (purchase price) and maintenance. A large corporation has a giant purchasing power advantage over you and likely own their own maintenance service which is also a large financial advantage to owning your own. The mileage costs are going to be energy, which again the purchasing power of the service trumps an individual owner. This is all before the scale effect (more person-miles/day in a service car than individual ownership) which will likely be huge.
This leads to:
2) Money. Individual preferences matter a whole or less than money. We can talk about preferring your own car, and hating using someone else's car, etc. But if it saves you $400 a month, people will switch. Then service will improve
The rush hour conundrum is not agreed upon by anyone in the prediction industry. Some economists suggest that more ridership leads to more congested roads. Some argue that because upwards of 90 of downtown traffic is people looking for parking this could be ameliorated. Also, most traffic congestion is due to human issues:
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I can see the cost difference existing but I'm unsure how much you actually end up seeing and how much just ends up as profit in a market that will be at least as monopolistic as cell phones. The cost for no one to own a car is much lower than the cost for x% to not own their car. And given these companies want to ensure profitability there will be a sweet spot for this car sharing option.
The rush hour problem isn't congestion it's that the demand for cars will only exist at rush hour unless people will be willing to car pool. (Which they could do now but choose not to). Changing from a driverless car from a driven one does not make car pooling any more attractive. So if car pooling does not increase and congestion decreases reducing transit times and parking costs no longer exist because I just send the car home all of these things incentivize me owning my own car.
And if people aren't willing to car pool the usage rate of the vehicles won't be high enough to get the benefits of car sharing for most people. Cartogo is an excellent example. Making car to go driverless doesn't really change the car 2 go model. It makes it a little easier to get a car but outside of that the automated fleet of corporate owned vehicles is no different.
So while automation will happen automation actually incentivized individual ownership by reducing insurance, parking and congestion costs.