>Baring intervention on the owner's part, cars are just going to self-drive an half an hour away to get serviced when their owner is asleep or at work
oooh I didn't even consider that, an excellent idea. I hope this comes to fruition.
oooh I didn't even consider that, an excellent idea. I hope this comes to fruition.
And what's left for you to repair? The simplicity you ask for will be introduced exactly where these home repairs used to happen: oil, filters, spark-plugs, a hose here, a cap there, etc. But the rest of the car stays mostly the same or gets even more complex. Most mechanical parts that aren't touched by the transition from ICE to electric motor could stay the same (suspensions, brakes), while the interior electronics will become more or less the equivalent of today's smartphones. Too complex for most people to try fixing themselves.
Who says that you need to own it either? Perhaps you just subscribe to a car service like zipcar or somesuch and you text msg the car to drive over to you when you need it, and when it's not being used or books it goes off to get itself serviced and whatnot. Sounds great to me.
That's where it's going, my friend!
As a city dweller I got rid of owning a car in 2015. Now I just hop in someone elses car using a ride sharing app if I'm going a short distance. If I am going a long distance I can rent someone elses car, either from a company that owns a fleet or from an individual using Turo / GetAround.
In SF you can rent a car to drive somewhere using Uber's GetAround integration for as little as $8/hour. Crazy.
I would expect to see market segmentation not only by model but by average car age and care standards, so the fleet operator can potentially demote cars from one tier to another to get more service life out of them. I imagine you will see budget subscriptions that are more likely drawing from a pool of 3-6 year old cars and more premium subscriptions that are drawing from a pool of almost new cars, as well as potential tiers in between.
I have no insurance to pay.
I have no fuel costs to pay.
I have no parking costs to pay.
I have no maintenance costs to pay.
I have a car whenever I want, for an affordable price, that is relatively modern, sometimes with a driver and sometimes I drive myself.
The true cost of a vehicle is much higher than the car payment.
There's also the loss of being able to buy and customize a car that's exactly what the end user wants. This doesn't matter at all to a lot of drivers, but matters a great deal to some.
What happens when I drink too much before needing to go home?
What happens if my car gets hit in the parking lot or broken into and I need to deal with calling the cops and trying to obtain the security camera footage before leaving?
The truth is no solution is without problems.
The transportation as a service model has more pros for me than cons. Plus it would mean fewer cars on the road overall and less need for parking spaces when autonomous vehicles can take us places and no longer need to be parked to wait for us.
For alot of car buying folks, the financing and available inventory determines the 'want'.
Though it will be interesting to see if self-driving cars reverse that trend. If a long commute becomes a pleasurable chunk of me-time instead of a grueling slog staring at the brake lights in front of you, maybe people won't place such a premium on living close to work.
Cars are a terrible way to get around in a crowded city. The city is far too dense to drive easily, cars take up way too much precious space and are huge increasers of smog.
In germany and other european cities, they already started banning diesel and other high pollution vechiles from entering major city centers because of both smog and congestion issues.
This kind of ruling will only increase.