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Comment by kamakazizuru | Hacker News Reader

The study has a major flaw in that it ignores the grouping effect that makes self-driving cars & fleets completely different from chauffers. Shared usage will: - most definitely happen in the case of "errand" like rides. The request to "pick up my shopping from Target" will be clubbed with 5-10 other similar requests and delivered at the same time. - lead to single rides being a rarity, and at best a perk like "first / business class" - bigger cars on the road with more seats, driving autonomously vs the nightmare equivalent of everyone having a chauffeur

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A well reasoned rebuttal but it only works if people renting or timesharing vehicles for just single jobs. If things remain in their current ownership model (I buy a car and keep it in my driveway when not in use) their study holds merit.

The fleet prediction is indeed a game changer and should be prioritized over single ownership in order to curb VMT but it would be a large paradigm shift and those don't always go as planned.

that sounds like wishful thinking to me. coordinating with other people is hard. and if the ride is free, why bother. also people want to stay independent and not have to share.

the option to share an uber or equivalent for example is already there. every time i used it the trip took longer than had i not shared. missed a train because of it once too.

so i doubt that sharing will happen as much as you think

> coordinating with other people is hard.

Only when you're driving around humans. When you're using automated cars to replace errands, it becomes a lot easier to coordinate a set of grocery pickups, laundry dropoffs, and so on.

With concepts like Amazon Lockers in apartment complexes, you can pick up their laundry from one locker, deliver cleaned goods to another, all while they're at work.

that may work with services that manage this, but not if i use the car to manage my own. those are two entirely different kind of uses of self driving cars.

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