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Comment by monkmartinez | Hacker News Reader

I live in the suburbs. I have a family with two grade school kids that participate in seasonal team sports and year-round gymnastics. They attend a charter school with no school bus system.

Let's say each ride cost $10... that is $20 to $40 per day just for the kids on most weekdays. Add in birthday parties, saturday games, doctor/dentist, trip to grandma/grandpa that live 7 miles away... and we are talking $1000 per month in "ride-sharing costs" for my children alone. We could add in my wife and I's costs, but it would be silly.

Maybe this service is less than $10 per ride, even at $5 per ride it is wayyyyyy more expensive than I currently spend on a 4 year old Toyota Highlander with low miles with insurance and fuel.

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Who says you need to be the rider, and not the car owner? You could be making that $10 a ride renting your Toyota Highlander to other suburbanites when your kid's sports aren't in season? Or when you're on vacation, or at work for an 8 hour chunk? To say nothing of the convenience of a car that can drop off/pick up the little one from soccer practice on its own if you have a scheduling conflict.

Just tons of drone cars picking up kids and delivering them to their parents. Owners of said cars collecting monthly AirBnB style rent from the people that can suddenly no longer afford a $3000 beater to get them around, but will happily pay $10 a ride in a self driving car. Oh yeah, don't forget about the vomit and drinks spilled all over the place in your ride share. Also sick people touching all the things. Where do I sign up? </sarcasm>

This type of naive suggestion totally ignores the way that most middle-class American families actually use their cars not just as transportation but for storage and as a mobile base of operations. Please explain how I'm supposed to let others use my car as a short-term rental during the day while it's full of child seats, snacks, extra clothes, sports equipment, etc. Plus I don't want random people coughing / eating / having sex / using drugs in my nice clean cars. Outside of maybe a few affluent urban areas populated largely by young childless people it's just a silly unrealistic idea.

If you'd think instead of being naively condescending:

a.) Snacks and supplies in trunk - lockable containers inside. All could be accessible via app/key fob only.

b.) Who says the suburbanite your renting to won't want to use a car seat?

c.) Camera, ID, cleaning deposits, car self-drives to detailer on your lunch break.

$1,000 a month is a heck of a carrot to keep a car clean - even if that's not for you is your worldview really so small that you cannot imagine it being for someone not all that dissimilar from you?

No those suggestions are even more ridiculous and impractical. There's no way you're getting $1000 per month; you obviously just made that number up. SUVs/CUVs (which most people prefer now) don't have separate lockable trunks. I don't want other random kids in my child seats either: think puke and head lice. There are at least three totally different types / sizes of child seats anyway (rear facing, front facing, booster with or without back) and the straps have to be adjusted to fit the child so even if the renter also has kids the type and number of seats are unlikely to match what they legally need.

If the car you use is giving, say, 15 rides per day, then what you spend for 3 per day only needs to be 20 percent the cost of owning, fueling, and maintaining the car.

If the total cost of ownership is, say, $1000 per month, you might only pay $200, or about $2.20 per ride.

Your lifestyle is being subsidized by the negative externalities your transportation causes that you don't pay for, so it's not a great argument against advancing technology, because your comfort only matters to you.

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