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Comment by standardUser | Hacker News Reader

I know we Americans just love to own cars, what with the rapid depreciation, constant maintenance and massive storage requirements. Who could resist? But isn't the promise of self driving vehicles that we don't all need to own, maintain and operate a 4000lb machine? I know it's hard to resist dropping the $30k, $40k or even $50k and paying that monthly insurance we all love. But wouldn't it be better if we could just summon whatever vehicle we need for the hour and then get on with our lives? And more importantly, don't we all want the benefits that will come from having mostly robo-cars on the road - such as fewer accidents and injuries, less traffic, faster trips and more parking?

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That's one vision, but it's probably not the most likely one. People like privately owning cars, and as long as they're more convenient than hiring taxis it'll probably stay that way.

Here's another vision of the future - gradually everyone's cars become self-driving, and now cars are more accessible to a wider range of people. 30% of the population currently can't drive due to age or disability, but if cars drive themselves the elderly, disabled, and even children can now own and operate vehicles. And now you have 30% more cars on an already congested road system. That should be enough to make traffic jams the norm everywhere.

But in case that wasn't bad enough, consider this - now people can do other things while they travel, because they don't have to be driving. So, in turn, they can live further and further away from their workplaces in cheaper, larger houses and do more of their work on the go. And while they do this they're spending more time on the roads, and - you guessed it - causing more congestion.

And because parking will always be expensive and hard to find in busy city centers, people will set their cars to loiter while they visit, rather than parking. Just going round and round while their owners shop. Causing - you guessed it - even more congestion.

TL;DR - the most likely result of autonomous vehicles is out of control congestion.

When teleportation becomes a thing society will force supercommuters to teleport in from farther and farther-out to maximize shareholder value while remaining in compliance with their respective companies' hybrid work policies. That you arguably die and are recreated every time you pass through the portal will finally end all discussions around whether your life is worth more than productivity.

Yeah, I'd expect many cities passing laws to forbid empty driverless cars on the road unless they're a taxi.

That's already possible and called taxis/uber/etc.

In what way would self driving cars incentivize not owning your own car?

Cost, accessibility, convenience, reliability, safety. You can get all of that with a human driver too, if you're rich.

Waymo is not cheaper than Uber. I don't buy the cost argument tbh.

Explain how a car with a human driver will be cheaper or have price parity with a car that requires no paid human driver. The driver is the most expensive part of every ride. And that's before tip.

A Waymo has something like $100k of sensors and other hardware on top of the cost of the vehicle.

That cost will almost certainly come down, but at the moment it is cheaper to just pay a human to drive a car with $0 of AV hardware.

Yeah, manufactured goods aren't exactly known to increase in price as production scales. This is a very temporary anomaly. Cars with drivers are on the precipice of becoming extinct, save for specialty needs and the wealthy.

Uber outsourced they capital intensive fleet of cars to the drivers. Waymo has no such luxury.

But the main point is: if there is no need to compete in price, companies won't do it. There is no other company offering driverless rides and even if Google were to have huge margins on every ride, they wouldn't lower prices.

Happens all the time that companies literally just choose to not compete in price because people don't have options or just have accepted a specific price level.

I have to pay to store my manually-driven car 90% of the day, because there's nothing else it could be doing while it waits for me.

A driverless car can very easily do things and make money while I'm waiting for it.

In some scenarios, people rent out their owned cars during the day to avoid this massive opportunity cost, but I doubt that will be the most efficient model.

In what other asset class ever has it made sense for the capital owners to be an extremely long tail of people, rather than a large corporate owner? Especially something as high velocity and fungible as cars.

In a few ways, no.

Taxis/uber etc. are all built as "regular cards". It requires at least 2 people in there. How often is actually more than 1 person in a car? Wasn't that like 2/3 of all drives?

Now let's assume we have specialized cars for just a single person - that saves a lot of material, fuel, and also (parking) space.

But that only works if you don't OWN the car, because if you own it, you might sometimes have to have passengers right? So you always get a big car that is not needed in 2/3 or so of the drives.

That aside, having another driver is annoying for various reasons (e.g. privacy).

Simple. Not having a driver in the car. The driver is the only part of Uber I don't like. I feel like if I make them wait 20 seconds they could ding my rating. If I have kids with me, I hate having to get their carseat buckled, knowing the driver probably doesn't want kids in their car anyway. I hate the awkward silence. I hate listening to their shitty music. At no fault of their own, they are the only weak link in the Uber chain. Everything gets better for me if there just isn't a person waiting on me the whole time.

I'd sell my cars in a heartbeat if "Uber minus the driver" existed and was cheaper than owning a car.

"You will own nothing and be happy."

...no.

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