Personally, I hate owning vehicles and desperately want a self-driving taxi service that I can order via an app to get me and my family around.
And I think it would be cheaper. The optimal use for a product that is depreciating in value whether you use it or not, is to use it as much as possible. We are paying for our cars for sit in place all day and night.
This is the real reason ppl will own cars for the foreseeable future. Same reason I prefer a detatched home with a private/fenced yard. I'd probably get used to high-density living, but I doubt if I'd ever really prefer it.
Labor is about half of the cost of a hired ride. We know this is true for Uber because there is a lot of public discussion about the budget of a rideshare driver. Not sure about taxis.
Given those premises and assumptions, a person who doesn’t want to drive would care about self-driving tech because it could eventually lower the cost of hiring a ride, potentially by 50%.
This future sounds great until you consider what it really means to let “someone else” become the arbiter of you being able to get around.
If I have a car in my driveway, I can make sure it is charged/fueled for whenever I need it and I can just turn it on and go. Compare that to a system who’s goal is not specifically moving you, but keeping cars/assets always on paid trips. Sure, you may in luck if you live in a well-off areas where many trips are taken, but I fear peak hours will become something of a bidding war where nobody wins.
If you do not control your means of transport, someone else does and they can take it away from you at any time. This “rent seeking” is one of the biggest cancers on our society and I will be no part of it given the choice.
Assuming we're discounting things like bicycles, family member's vehicles and company-owned vehicles, this is present day reality for the overwhelming majority of people on this planet.
(It's also debatable whether a car truly eliminates other people from being an arbiter of "being able to get around" if you are still reliant on a fossil fuel supply chain. By comparison an EV charged with a domestic solar array would probably more liberating.)
By comparison, yes. But where are you going to go, or what are you going to do, that isn't dependent on other ppl in some way? I like the idea of being self-supporting as much as anyone, but that doesn't change the fact that we're all interdependent in modern society.
Yes, bikes and other things may exist, but if all high-powered transport is outside of our control, how much control do we have over our movements?
That being said, I think a lot of people in the US purchase cars through auto loans, and those loans while not physically limiting one's day-to-day mobility, can restrict one's job mobility. Maybe it only applies to certain economic classes, yet I imagine some people may be afraid to leave their job or lose their job because if they do, they lose their car and therefore lose their ability to move. And the safety net for physical movement in some places if one doesn't have a car is close to zero.
The car does provide "freedom of movement" in a libertarian fantasy way, but in reality one gives up your privacy with a drivers license. Speed traps and cameras track license plates, police can stop you, and you need to be sober. You are paying rent in the form of license fees and parking tickets; and you are paying for fuel which relies upon a long and complicated supply chain.
In urban areas, one might imagine other types of freedom. Such as the choice of walking/biking/bus/taxi/tram/subway in addition to driving, or some combination of those.
> I fear peak hours will become something of a bidding war where nobody wins.
If only there was a public option that wasn't surge-priced.
Maybe it's different in other parts of the world, but that seems to be the way it works here in Chicago.
Originally, growing up in St Louis, I avoided driving because I saw lots of friends wasting their time in shit jobs to pay for their shit cars; cars were supposed to provide freedom, but were really a gateway to the shackles of work. I suppose that's another reason beyond 'it's inconvenient,' though.
I could see a scenario where instead of (or in addition to) vehicles being pooled between "x" random people (taxis, Uber/Lyft, ZipCar), you could purchase a fractional share of a car (Cf. NetJets): you get semi-exclusive use of (particular?) vehicles.
They do reduce parking requirements, though.
And when you're not?
And couldn't the car assist in the calculation?
People with kids, especially suburban ones, seem to use the vehicle as a sort of mobile operating base. So the car isn't just a taxi. It's where the kids' sports stuff goes. Plus the folding chairs for the games. Plus snacks and water on hand. Plus it gets used as a storage locker when they're out somewhere. And it has assorted useful stuff, like charging cables and wet wipes and sunglasses and spare napkins and and and...
So I expect fractional ownership will not be particularly popular for a lot of people because a) they're already used to owning a vehicle, and b) they don't want to have to take everything out of the car all the time.