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Comment by tristanj | Hacker News Reader

> If this self driving future is better, people will be driving more, not less

People won't be driving at all.

> still requiring the production of a similar number of cars.

Doesn't address my point, that consumers won't be the ones buying cars. These cars will be sold to self-driving vehicle fleet managers, not consumers.

Obviously, cars will still be made, but not consumer cars. The consumer car market is dead.

> those don't appear to be coming from Tesla

Tesla just killed its consumer vehicles Model X and Model S. Tesla shifted focus into the Cybercab & Cybervan, both self-driving only vehicles, which don't have steering wheels.

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> > If this self driving future is better, people will be driving more, not less

> People won't be driving at all.

Poor choice of words. There will be more cars on the roads, not fewer. Somebody will have to build those cars.

> Obviously, cars will still be made, but not consumer cars. The consumer car market is dead.

But the car market is larger, not smaller, and that's what matters. Fleet vehicles are generall not cheaper than consumer vehicles; a new city bus is now $1M and not because city transport authorities are swimming in cash.

> Tesla shifted focus into the Cybercab & Cybervan, both self-driving only vehicles, which don't have steering wheels.

Which is only one portion of the picture. Have they spent any effort on million mile batteries? Have they spent any effort on million mile suspensions? Have they spent any effort on million mile interiors -- nobody wants to get into a taxi with > 200 000 miles on the odo, but million mile trains and buses are fine because they're made of hard wearing material that is easy to deep clean.

Taxi drivers generally run Toyota's and Mercedes' for a reason.

Do you live in a dorm with a shared bathroom? Most of your home is only used a few times a day.

People buy cars because it's a little bubble of home away from home. They store their stuff in there, it smells like them, and they don't get stranger's vomit on a seat when they want to drive somewhere.

The "people won't buy cars because self-driving" take just completely ignores the human nature.

I understand your argument but you are neglecting the numbers.

The cost per mile for a personal EV is $0.75/mi.

The cost per mile for a shared AV EV (at scale) is $0.40/mi.

The cost savings are extremely significant. I would agree with you if these numbers were close (maybe 10% cheaper just to rideshare everywhere) but it will be nearly 50% cheaper to rideshare self-driving than own. Tens of millions of people are going to switch.

Not to mention -- as more people switch to shared AV, the cost of ownership for humans goes UP even more. Fewer human drivers mean higher insurance rates, fewer personal cars are sold so the cost per car increases, personal car repair shops close and the cost of individual car repairs increases. Etc.

You can make even larger savings by moving into a dorm tomorrow. Are you neglecting the numbers?

Are you neglecting the numbers? Dorms barely exist in the US. You couldn't move into a dorm even if you wanted to. They were effectively illegal to construct since the 1930s, regulated to death by the 1950s, and only recently rules on SROs were relaxed to allow them.

I've seen "hacker houses" try and fail to make dorms. One I went to put three bunk beds in the basement, with 12 people living in the house. They eventually got shut down by the city for violating occupancy laws.

If dorms were legal, more people would use them.

Sure, more people would use them, but it doesn't mean that the majority of people would trade normal housing with dedicated bathrooms (that are used only for a fraction of the day) for that. Normal housing market didn't die when dorms were legal to construct.

The savings that can be made from living in a tiny box with a shared bathroom instead of a regular American house are extreme and are much bigger than savings from not owning a car. Do you seriously think that will convince people and we will see the death of dedicated housing units in the near future?

I ran the numbers. Car ownership today @ 15,000 miles per year costs $1,003/mo. Traveling the same distance with AV would cost $520/mo. Monthly savings are $483/mo or around $5,800/yr.

See I'd agree with your argument if the savings were small, basically nobody is giving up their car for 10% savings, but these savings are very significant. Car ownership costs are the second biggest expense for most households after rent, and self-driving cars cut this in half.

I can see many households downsizing, and instead of owning 2-3 cars, only owning 1 and replacing those trips with self-driving rideshare fleet vehicles.

Especially for the younger generation - teens today drive far fewer miles than ever, which skews the costs away from car ownership even futher. I predict many will not get their own individual car, they'll just rideshare.

> Car ownership costs are the second biggest expense for most households after rent, and self-driving cars cut this in half.

Living in a hostel with a shared bathroom can cut the biggest expense (rent) by more than half.

Would you?

> Living in a hostel with a shared bathroom can cut the biggest expense (rent) by more than half.

I don't believe you. Run the numbers for me for a private room at a hostel in NYC or SF, and get back to me.

> Tesla shifted focus into the Cybercab & Cybervan

Building on the proven sales success of the Cybertruck?

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