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Comment by criddell | Hacker News Reader

Without big regulatory changes around private ownership, cars like this one make me think that the idea of a massive shared fleet is doomed if self driving becomes a reality.

When cars become mostly about tech, tech will do what it always does - get cheaper and better. The total cost per trip will drop through the floor. People will buy more cars and urban sprawl will go crazy.

If I could send out my car without a driver to run errands for me, I would do it all the time. Lots of stores already have curbside delivery set up so it would be easy to adapt that for driverless cars.

There are other effects as well. For example, if accident rates plummet, car insurance will get cheap and that industry will implode.

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The wear on a car costs about as much as paying someone to drive it. The costs can only go so low, and the cost of personal ownership is still going to be higher than a fleet because the car sits around more. And if they're so cheap I'd still expect to see instant rental/taxi fleets.

As for people buying more cars, so many people already have cars that I don't imagine that having a huge effect.

So overall I disagree with your conclusions.

The wear on electric cars is significantly cheaper. No pistons, no oil, no gears, no transmission, no exaust system, no series of gaskets for the coolant to flow through the engine block. In fact, electric motors only have metal to metal contact at bearings, the actual forced produced is without metal to metal contact.

Fleet prices for electric cars today are already significantly cheaper. In the future, probably more so.

This doesn't invalidate your point, but the motors in electric cars are also liquid cooled just like ICEs. The system is a bit simpler since you're cooling a motor and not an engine, but ultimately it's a water cooling system and needs gaskets etc.

Yeah, people too often say things like "there's no gaskets" or "there's no gears or oil". There are gaskets, there are usually gears, there is usually a lubricant oil in the gearbox. But the temps and pressures on the cooling systems are much lower, the gearboxes are fixed gear ratios, and there's no waste carbons in the oil dirtying it. So the service intervals of all of these are much longer than any regular ICE vehicle.

Most electric cars still have a gear box with gear oil lubricating it. They're usually fixed gear ratios so the wear and tear is much lower (not sliding gears around but on cars it's not normally the motors directly connected to the wheels.

> so many people already have cars that I don't imagine that having a huge effect.

Instead of one car per adult, it'll be one car per person once the kids get to primary school age in suburban families.

There are a lot of elderly and disabled people would own cars if they were self-driving and a bit cheaper than they are now. Many people currently using public transport might switch, too. That group might use shared cars, but the others are unlikely to.

The effect might be bigger than one would think.

Edit: the effect on traffic volume and congestion will be bigger. Freed from the burden of driving, commuters will be able to live further away from their jobs. Empty cars will be a significant fraction of vehicles on the road.

> Instead of one car per adult, it'll be one car per person once the kids get to primary school age in suburban families.

I was actually thinking that it would reduce car ownership. If I could commute and then send the car to home so that my wife could commute to her workplace, I definitely would! It would require syncing on who uses the car when, but at a more granular level compared to now ("I'm taking the car today" vs "I'm taking the car between 8-9am").

I expect the opposite. With self-driving cars the cost of an Uber drops significantly. Instead of more cars we will end up with less cars at higher utilization. Why would you personally own a car when Uber is 10x cheaper for all use cases of a personal vehicle?

I'd be more worried about what happens when all cars are controlled by 2 massive tech companies.

At least in the US, people generally aren't all that price sensitive about their car. They spend a lot more money on cars than they strictly need to and I don't expect that to change. There are exceptions though (NYC is a big one).

If anything, the kinds of personalization you will be able to do with something like the car in the article are pretty big. I could see people buying them like they buy their phones. Pay $200 / month and get a new car every two years.

> Why would you personally own a car

For me, it's because shared cars are usually nasty inside. Plus, the pandemic has me thinking about the safety of shared spaces. My car is an extension of my home and I feel safe in it.

> what happens when all cars are controlled by 2 massive tech companies

Why would the car companies even sell cars for shared use? Setting up a company like Uber has never been easier and it's getting more easy all the time. Why wouldn't the car companies create their own car share services?

I am a car owner, but I'd seriously consider eliminating it if other options were convenient and cost effective. I've had my car for just about 15 years now. I am waiting for an electric option that will be a suitable replacement.

Automated driving will also prompt new, more agile forms of package delivery (imagine a package being shepherded from the Amazon warehouse shelf to your door with zero human participation) which will undoubtedly result in more vehicles on the road.

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