“From a G.M. perspective, we view this as much more of an opportunity than a threat” - G.M President
Something you don't hear big corps talk so about start-ups very often. It's promising.
Something you don't hear big corps talk so about start-ups very often. It's promising.
Plus the downshift won't be as great as some predict. You'll still need enough cars for long commutes. And cars lifespan are measured in miles not years. Autonomous cars might actually increase the number of miles driven (commute while sleeping, alternative to public transit, or driving instead of flying).
A car sitting in a driveway will last longer than one doing stop and go traffic 23 hours a day.
The single most obvious point that everyone seems to be ignoring!
Also if rental becomes the dominant model then customers aren't going to worry so much about those expensive extras where car manufacturers make their profits.
yes, but think how much the average car owner uses the non-self-driving car today. The car mostly sits idle in a garage or parking spot, and is used, maybe 75 minutes of each day.
Multiplexing riders into a pool of shared cars is one way to drastically reduce the worldwide fleet of cars. a larger proportion of total cars will be moving at any one time to transport the same number of people, which means you need fewer cars overall. It will be attractive to today's car owners because it reduces costs.
to the extent that self-driving cars enable shared pools of on-demand vehicles, the innovation represents a huge disruption for the auto manufacturers who've built a business model on selling everyone a car.
> The rental model may in the end provide more profits,
Sure there is a business opportunity, but the change is disruptive.
Anything requiring a truck (60% of new vehicle sales) will not be something that you use as a automated vehicle that is for rent. You really are ok with ordering up a driverless car that I will take off-road and load up with scrap materials from a house remodel and send off, driverless down the road with my trash hanging out the back?
I really love the idea of driverless cars and I can see the stars in the tech worlds eyes. Be realistic about what your average American does with a vehicle though - it's not a daily commute up and down sandhill road to sit in a nice office.
Wouldn't it make way more sense for you to rent (or own) a pickup truck and for me to rent an autonomous passenger vehicle?
Setting autonomous vehicles aside, current short-term car rental companies (i.e Zipcar) have requirements on the condition you return a passenger vehicle in, vs a cargo/hauling vehicle.
I've rented a Zipcar pickup truck to haul a load of concrete pavers, but I wouldn't try to do the same in one of their regular passenger vehicles.
There should be a sufficiently large market for both use cases that there should be limited sharing of vehicles between them.
You would laugh at the idea of selling your primary transport and using an uber/lyft every day to transport all your equipment. Every time one shows up or drops off, remove and replace all your tools/gear. The wear and tear on these vehicles is greater than a small commuter.
Just because you rented a truck once to move gardening supplies makes you anomalous. Most people who want to do that kind of work/hobby own a vehicle that allows them to transport these things with ease.
We haven't even gotten into the aspect of children. Imagine remove/replace every day on a child car seat from a rental.
The vehicle subscription would replace the passenger car, not the truck used for heavy work, not at the least because the depreciation of the work vehicle is deductible as a business expense. Also, a vehicle actively used for construction work is already heavily utilized (it is hauling/holding stuff most of the day), so it makes more sense to own it. Passenger cars, however, sit idle most of the day in a parking lot or your driveway, hence their low utilization / wasted value.
Also, many cars today have built-in car-seats (https://www.cars.com/articles/2014/05/which-vehicles-offer-i...). You can bet this sort of feature will be more common in autonomous vehicles.
Furthermore, in certain Uber markets today, you can pay an extra fee to get a vehicle with car seats pre-installed. Right now that fee is high ($10/ride) because they're the only ones doing it, but it's a service so easily replicated that the price will surely come down.
Rideshare already only has 40% of the market to convince to sell their car and perpetually rent on demand. What's the conversion rate of that 40% who could use the on demand service for moving humans? 50%? That's not a massive pile of customers.
Built in car-seats are almost a mirage, they are wildly uncommon. The premise still remains, overwhelming majority of people will not want to abandon a personally owned vehicle for some on-demand car that arrives and some varying condition and layout that you have to load/unload every time with your things.
Try it for a week if you drive, take your car charger/paperwork/sunglasses/whatever in and out of the car every time you park. That alone will sell you on private ownership.
Assuming that your estimate 50% of non-truck owners adopting it is correct, that's 20% of 253 million cars, which is 50 million. Seems massive to me.
> Built in car-seats are almost a mirage, they are wildly uncommon.
What makes you think that they won't become more common (especially among car service vehicles) if there is a strong demand for them from car subscription services? It's not like it's a complicated technology to add.
> The premise still remains, overwhelming majority of people will not want to abandon a personally owned vehicle for some on-demand car that arrives and some varying condition and layout that you have to load/unload every time with your things.
I'm not sure how you can be so sure of your prediction of future demand, especially when technology is changing so fast.
Regarding the particulars you mention, I already load/unload my private car with stuff, but 90% of the time, it's just me and my backpack.
Sure, you can't use a rented vehicle as paperwork storage, but why would one use a car for storing paperwork?
Chargers can be provided in the rental vehicle (just like Starbucks does).
> Try it for a week if you drive
I routinely take the train (with the kids and all their gear), and we have to naturally take everything we brought with us when we get off. If anything, the rental car scenario is more convenient than that.
The car industry has spent a fortune developing the concept of the car as a status symbol, the idea that you need a truck to haul stuff, a big V8 to prove you are a suitable mate, an executive saloon to show your well up the corporate ladder.
The taxi industry hasn't done this and couldn't, utility trumps status when you are cold and wet and waiting for a ride.
But almost no one rents a mower. Why not? Is it possible that the convenience is worth paying for,even if it can be delivered to your door? Is it that knowing that it's ready for use exactly when you need it is important? You'd think a few people in each neighborhood would just do a group buy into a high-end mower that could do the job in half the time and they'd all share it. This rarely happens (only time I've seen this behavior is farmers sharing expensive equipment).
My gut tells me the self-driving/car sharing revolution is going to take a bit longer than HN expects.
If you aren't in a position to prevent innovation from happening then you may as well be the leader of said innovation.