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Comment by 6d6b73 | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately this will make the pollution worse. For example if I drive my car to work, my car does 6 miles round trip . If someone else does the same in total we did 12 miles. However if we share one car and the car needs to go even a mile between two places, it will have to drive significantly more.

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Well, that's an interesting problem to solve.

In the situation you propose, you have would-be car owners who now share a car. That eliminates the pollution involved in the manufacturing of one car from the story. And yes, if the car had to make back and forth trips from a central location, that would be inefficient. But I think the idea is to have a network of shared infrastructure (similar to uber), so that if someone needs a car, they can have access to the closest available one.

Even for uber-like car sharing/pooling, each car will have to travel more, and occasionally will be driving empty (when autonomous).

If automated cars are billed per mile, you could still arrange the same sort of multi pickup trip you would ordinarily, I'd hope.

How about renting the cars with shared cost per mile? That would encourage users to always share them when possible.

You're driving a 3 mile distance? This is exactly why electric cars are not the messiah of transportation.

Well, I can't walk on the highway so yes I have to drive.

Cars pollute significantly more at the start of the journey. One long journey is better than 2 short journeys.

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