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Comment by delegate | Hacker News Reader

Self-driving cars will slowly (or quickly) make car ownership redundant.

Why own a car (pay taxes, insurance, parking), when you can have one at your door in a couple of minutes ? When you arrive at the destination, just exit the car - no need to look for parking or anything like that, let the car figure it out.

If technology can do that, then owning a car becomes more of a hobby than necessity. I hope GM's strategy is aligned with this, as the profits will not come from selling cars, but from providing the service.

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> Why own a car (pay taxes, insurance, parking), when you can have one at your door in a couple of minutes ?

Because when I want to use one to go to the mountains or the beach on a holiday weekend there will be none available or surge pricing? This is already the case to some extent with rentals and car sharing services.

I own a car in NYC that is only used on the weekends. Financially this is a somewhat dubious proposition compared to Zipcar, but it's a win for me in two ways: it's always available without any reservation process, and my financial incentive is to use it more often since I've already paid all of the fixed costs (tax, insurance, parking) of ownership. I like this incentive since I enjoy getting out of the city. With Zipcar the annualized costs are fairly similar to owning a car and using it a couple of weekends per month, but a simple weekend getaway comes with a $300+ pricetag up front for the car rental.

This is a pretty solvable problem from a car service's POV: overprovision your fleet to account for people who want to take a car for a full day or even a week, and then charge significantly less than ZipCar but more than a local ride-hop (you could even change pricing plans so you pay by the hour/day instead of by the mile). Because your fixed vehicle costs are amortized over a much larger number of customers than ZipCar and your car can get itself from where there's supply to where there's demand, you can eliminate the reservation aspect and charge significantly less.

On an economic level, the occasional person who wants to reserve a car for a weekend uses up a much smaller fraction of a car than one who owns one outright.

But the economics will certainly change in the future. Self driving cars can be used around the clock and probably be used to deliver packages and food overnight. Maybe even empty your garbage or deliver batteries as an cheaper(?) alternative to your power company. Also scale and competition could get much bigger.

> Because when I want to use one to go to the mountains or the beach on a holiday weekend there will be none available or surge pricing?

Some people will still own cars. But owning a car will shift from being a necessity (as it is for people today in areas without adequate transit systems) to a luxury.

I know you were asking rhetorically, but there are still reasons to own a vehicle, even in a world with L5 autonomy.

A pretty big thing you can do is keep stuff in there. This is perhaps a nice-to-have for many people, but for certain use-cases it's mandatory (ie a general contractor who keeps their tools in their truck.)

There's also the idea of doing clandestine things[1] in your car which you don't want some data vacuum to pick up.

Some people like racing, and/or doing work on their engines as well.

And of course, status symbols remain "in", this year and likely for the foreseeable future.

L5 autonomy does away the "typical" use-cases of personally owned vehicles (ie, move a person and maybe a few light goods a short to medium distance), which is great. Not everyone owns their vehicle purely as a point-to-point human transporter, though.

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[1]: (Like planning surprise parties) | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu5b_jYWVcQ&feature=youtu.be

I used to think this, and I still think it'll happen in urban centers, but there are pretty big swaths of rural or just low density areas that wouldn't be well served by this, so it'd take a while (a couple decades extra maybe) to get local rideshare hubs going, and in some more remote places it maybe would never happen.

Once they are safe and reliable, autonomous vehicles will quickly replace the subsidized demand response bus services that run in rural areas.

(drivers are a big expense for such services)

This ^ Exactly this. Now if every person in a rural area sold their car back to the manufacturer and then those cars were used to service those rural areas than there is a possibility. But cars will still be purchased because of rural areas. I live 120 miles from my job. My neighbor is a mile down from me. If I want to drive to nearest town, where a car service would most likely be located, I'm not waiting the 30 minutes for it to pick me up. And it doesn't make financial sense for them to have one closer to my house.

If you don't drive, waiting 30 minutes for a robotaxi to show up is vastly better than having to rely on someone else to ferry you around or being stuck at home.

While obviously density improves the efficiency of almost any transportation system I don't understand why driverless vehicles would ever be less efficient than traditional cars. Sure they will initially cost more due to additional sensors and computers there will also be saving from removing unneeded human controls. Lastly accident/fatality rates are several times higher in rural areas so the potential safety gains are larger.

What's that economic phenomenon where a decrease in the cost of something results in an increase in the overall amount spent on it?

You can still do that with Uber. Why own a car today?

You have to pay a human to take you. Humans are expensive.

This is the right answer

and smelly, and talk too much, and the biggest one of all: suck at driving.

The human part is pretty cheap compared to the other parts at least here in Toronto:

Car insurance $220 (20h at minimum wage)

Car payment $780 (70h at minimum wage)

Gas $200 (18h at minimum wage)

Parking $250 (22h at minimum wage)

If I didn't enjoy driving and having a nice car, it would already be cheaper to Uber everywhere.

Maybe I'm getting confused due to currency changes, but I think you could certainly divide all of those numbers by two in many American markets.

$780/m lease is payment for 6 years pays for 60k car. More realistic lease payment is $200-$250/m.

Average insurance in US is ~$100/m

Autonomous cars should be a cheaper than Uber eventually. Additionally I imagine they will be more reliable, which is something you can't necessarily guarantee with a random uber driver.

Because Humans quickly change your rider review from 5 stars to one when you do not tip.

Drivers have to rate you before they see your tip unless you give a cash tip.

There have been reports of drivers changing ratings retroactively after seeing their own rating drop, or if a customer doesn't tip.

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