Lyft Says Robots Will Drive Most Of Its Cars in Five Years (recode.net)

A week after its rival Uber began rolling out self-driving cars in Pittsburgh, Lyft has said it also expects to roll out its self-driving by next year. Its president John Zimmer outlined a "three-phase" plan for the company, noting that self-driving cars will be made available to Lyft users in the first phase. But in this phase, it only plans to roll out self-driving cars that can "drive along fixed routes" and that the "technology is guaranteed to be able to navigate." Recode adds: In the second phase, the self-driving cars in the fleet will navigate more than just the fixed routes, but will only drive up to 25 miles per hour. As the technology matures and the software encounters more complex environments, Zimmer wrote, cars will get faster. The third phase, expected to happen sometime in 2021 or 2022, will be when all Lyft rides will be completed by a fully autonomous car. Shortly after that phase begins, car ownership will see a steep drop-off, according to Zimmer. Zimmer, who has long been a vocal proponent of ending car ownership, set a date for the death of the personally owned car in major U.S. cities: 2025.

Comments

So a guy that runs a ride sharing company.

[sims 2]

Says that self driving cars will put an end to car ownership.

It could put a dent in it but unless this makes people so broke that they can't own their own car I think personal space will still win out.

Re:So a guy that runs a ride sharing company.

[PIBM]

Reason #1 it won't happen; families.

Here I have 4 kids, each requiring different car seats size / adjustments. We are bringing and keeping different stuff for the kids (Stroller, diapers, their favorite movies) which stay with us without needing to grab it at our Xth destination. Keeping our previous purchases safe while we go for our next stop, and the items we don't need at that stop (no stroller at the grocery store) is a major win that lyft rides won't provide.

It might definitely help reduce the percentage of ownership, but it certainly can't sign the death certificate.

Re:So a guy that runs a ride sharing company.

[drinkypoo]

Says that self driving cars will put an end to car ownership.

Even the automakers are expecting ride sharing to put a major dent in auto sales. Their analysts have been talking about this for years and most of them are invested in ride sharing. They are definitely talking about self-driving cars being part of this equation, and again, have been for years.

People who can't really afford to own a car responsibly often own one anyway, because they can't function without one in a world so dependent on private transportation. Most nations fit that description; people using public transportation suffer badly compared to vehicle owners because of public transport's many deficiencies. Self-driving cars have the potential to eliminate virtually all of those deficiencies. You can get a car when you want one, you don't have to worry about whether the driver is fit to do his job because there isn't a driver, and the vehicles don't inherently cause traffic flow problems with other vehicles, decreasing the overall efficiency of the system.

Since the economy isn't exactly improving, you can reasonably expect vehicle ownership to continue to decrease. The age of the U.S. fleet in particular continues to increase to ever-higher record levels. People are buying less cars, that's a fact. They're buying less cars both because they can not afford as many cars because the economy is still in the toilet, and because they can better function on public transportation than in the past because some new options have opened up under the name of "ride sharing". Whether they are ride-sharing or not isn't really the point here (though they aren't) but that they now exist when they didn't before. Yes, those are private transportation systems, but anyone who does not abuse them can use them.

Re:So a guy that runs a ride sharing company.

[drinkypoo]

If you can't afford a used car, you definitely can't afford to be spending way more in 'cab' fares at around $10 a 1-way trip.

You are forgetting TCO, and that the 'cab' fares are going to decrease because no one is going to have to pay a driver, and the bar to entry into the market is diminishing as Uber and Lyft push legal changes that reduce it — the same regulations designed to keep them from entering the market are the only thing that keep potential competitors out. If these companies actually succeed in changing the legal landscape sufficiently for their business model to be seen as generally viable, they'll be drowning in competitors quicker than you can say "automakers".

Used cars are cheap, but keeping them on the road isn't. You should see the A8 I just picked up for $200, it looks better than the one I've got already and it's got half the miles. But it needs a new slush box and best case that's around $2500. And... what will fail next?

Re:So a guy that runs a ride sharing company.

[ShanghaiBill]

And can you imagine haling a 'cab' for every stop in your running around at around $10 a pop?

What you are missing is that it won't be $10 a pop. Today, the biggest expense is the driver. Once the driver is gone, the price will fall dramatically. Also, a typical Uber/Lyft driver today drives for about 4 hours a day. A self-driving-car can operate 24/7. So the increased supply will drive down the price, while the lower amortization cost per ride will drive down the cost even more.

Uber and Lyft will also face pricing pressure from improvements in mass transit. Even for a bus, the biggest cost is the driver. As big human-driven buses driving fixed routes, are replaced with small self-driving vans driving flex-routes, prices will go down and ridership will go up.

Re:So a guy that runs a ride sharing company.

[Thud457]

Get back to me when Roomba can avoid smearing dogshit all over the house.

Then maybe I'll consider the possibility that a robot car can safely discern a child running into the street from a abandoned shopping bag blown in the wind.

Re:So a guy that runs a ride sharing company.

[BlueMonk]

The bus service in my area has a monthly pass option. I suspect Lyft would offer multiple or alternate pricing plans with a similar idea that can make the service more cost effective for people depending how they use the service.

Re:So a guy that runs a ride sharing company.

[Etcetera]

... now here in SF where parking is $280/mo in a private garage, it makes perfect sense. My lady friend owns a car but we only use it for trips out of town. If we're going somewhere to dinner or a show we always take an uber -- parking is insane and effectively impossible. All the street parking is taken up 100% of the time by residents who don't want to pay for private parking. As more people move in to cities, private car ownership can't go up. Private ride share makes perfect sense.

The problem here is San Francisco. Massive development, poor freeways, high-density urban living in glorified dorms, zero parking, and eco-nuts who are trying to make a point.

Perhaps Uber/Lyft makes great sense there, like taxis in New York and the massive, mass public transit investment. In most of the rest of the country, the economics don't make sense unless you're going to try to force people to use them by making parking very inconvenient, and/or taxing the hell out of everything involved with having a car. That might be one way to achieve it, but that's hardly a fair win.

Hell I recently *moved* to a downtown urban area and parking's a pain for visitors, but not insurmountable. And every condo or rental unit comes with at least one parking space for it (usually 1 per BR). Why? Because San Diego developers are realistic about car needs and aren't trying to force people into their preferred civic paradigm. Bay Area problems come from a manifest unwillingness to face inconvenient truths.

Re:So a guy that runs a ride sharing company.

[swb]

Totally autonomous cars will have to be part of this for it to succeed, otherwise there won't be enough car owners and drivers to drive around the people who don't own a car.

I feel like automakers have been talking about this like Elon Musk is talking about going to Mars. I don't doubt that self-driving cars will be a reality, but I'm really wondering if they will be a reality in my lifetime (I'm 50).

Re: So a guy that runs a ride sharing company.

[ShanghaiBill]

You realize that the biggest cost is the driver because the driver is paying for the car right?

No. Do the math. A typical Uber driver grosses about $18/hour. If he buys a $30k car, keeps it for 10 years, and drives 4 hours per day, 5 days a week, then that is about $3 / hour. Much more is paying for the driver than the cost of the car.

For an SDC that drives 20 hr/day, 365 days per year, the cost per hour is about 50 cents.

Re:So a guy that runs a ride sharing company.

[uberdilligaff]

You've hit the nail on the head. This craze will end soon after one of these driverless wonders runs over a 5-yr old kid and the operating company is sued into oblivion or legislated out of existence.

Automatic elevators were first

[mi]

How sad to see the nice, well-groomed and jovial men operating elevators replaced with the soulless automation.

We are going to miss the nice, well-groomed and jovial cab-drivers too...

Picard meme "Not this shit again"

[OzPeter]

The third phase, which according to the graph the company expects to be sometime in 2021 or 2022, will be when all Lyft rides will be completed by a fully autonomous car. Shortly after that phase begins, car ownership will see a steep drop-off, according to Zimmer. Zimmer, who has long been a vocal proponent of ending car ownership, set a date for the death of the personally owned car in major U.S. cities: 2025.

So he wants to totally rewrite the entire legal basis for cars, road rules and insurance in the US within the next 9 years? And expect that in a country where people almost idolize their cars that they are suddenly going to say "hell yes .. I'm selling my car tomorrow!"

Where can I get some of what he's smoking?

Alternatively its purely a BS reaction to Uber to try and remind people that Lyft exists and is relevant.

Re:Picard meme "Not this shit again"

[bluefoxlucid]

The major defect in his argument is generational: we're all used to driving, to owning, and otherwise to just having our own private car. There's a familiarity in this which is in many ways romantic, filling us with a sense of security as we remain surrounded in our own territory and firmly in control during every commute.

A new generation will have to introduce itself to that familiarity, and to the classical concept of car ownership and of driving. Those of this new generation will spend their lives observing an exciting transition to self-driving cars and chartered transportation without the restrictions of buses and trains. Their decision won't be between a new form of transportation and an old; it will be between two available options, neither of which is a staple of their lives and identities.

That generation will likely abandon the costs, risks, and inconvenience of driving in favor of chartering self-driving cars. Why spend $28,000 every 5 years, plus $3,000 in fuel, plus $7,500 in maintenance, plus $5,000 in insurance? $725/month, or you can spend $10/day and end up with $300/month. The difference comes from the vehicles turning over a large profit per their usual lifetime, being better-utilized between maintenance cycles, having more-efficient insurance (self-driving, large fleet, self-insured), better maintenance (access to mechanics as a factored-in cost), and better lifetimes (due to better maintenance), as well as a tax deduction for their depreciation (eventually cuts 40% of the cost from the purchase price) and all other costs (that base $725/month becomes $435/month to start with).

There's an interesting economic advantage here, too: those enormous tax deductions ($3,480 per car per year) are eliminated from consumer expense. If the taxi service has a higher profit margin, then part of that is captured in taxes (i.e. if they save $3,480 and charge you $3,000 less, that extra $480 is taxed at business 40% rate). Whatever savings go to the consumer are spent on other goods, which eventually get taxed--less taxes on what goes to wages of those other businesses supplying other goods, and the same taxes on those business's profit margins. The enormous tax savings from deductions and depreciation is just captured somewhere else, creating more jobs and more consumer wealth in the process.

Of course, those newly-created jobs aren't an expansion of employment; they just replace the taxi driver and maintenance worker jobs lost in this transition. They also take time to materialize, meaning sudden economic shock (changing to driverless taxis overnight) creates a spike in unemployment, while slowly converting the market (changing to driverless taxis over half a generation) creates visible strain on the taxi driver market (unemployment in that sector) while some other market grows to compensate (e.g. IT jobs, doctors), with a much smaller peak unemployment increase.

Re:Picard meme "Not this shit again"

[JaredOfEuropa]

A lot of all that can be worked out as we go along. Rules for motor cars were not all hammered out before the first one was allowed on the roads.

Legal issues: this is mostly about liability. Has to be worked out but this does not have to take absurdly long.
Road rules: no need to rewrite those, autopilots are built to work within the existing rules. At first there may be some additional rules (and traffic signs) about where you may and may not engage the autopilot. Again, very little keeping us from allowing autonomous vehicles on the road today.
Insurance: this is potentially harder: autonomous cars will likely require special insurance, and at first the risk of this insurance will be very hard to gauge. But insurers have deep pockets and may be willing to take on that risk in order to be the first with "autopilot insurance". If that insurance turns out to be too expensive for consumers, auto manufacturers or even governments may decide to sponsor this type of insurance or assume part of the risk in order to speed adoption. A temporary arrangement, as insurance premiums for autonomous vehicles are likely to drop below levels of insurance for regular cars.

With that said, you are right about one thing: there is no way in hell privately owned cars will disappear from major cities anywhere near 2025. There are still loads of technical problems to overcome, and a lot of them are solved in an iterative fashion, by building on real life experience with the previous release. Nothing that gets solved overnight. And even if we see car hire services for fully autonomous cars (and I mean real cars, not golf carts limited to 25 MPH) emerge by 2020, which I doubt, there'll still be many people who are not going to give up the convenience (and status) of having their own car. The first thing we may see disappearing by 2025, if technical development milestones are achieved as predicted here, is ownership of second cars for occasional use.

HOW are they NOT a TAXI service at this point?

[tekrat]

Lyft and Uber can no longer maintain that they are a "ride sharing service" where independent contractors own and operate their own vehicles.

In the autonomous cars case, Lyft and Uber CLEARLY own the vehicles!!!! They are a TAXI service and need to be regulated as such.

How the hell have state and local prosecutors allowed them to get away with this??

Re:HOW are they NOT a TAXI service at this point?

[drinkypoo]

In the autonomous cars case, Lyft and Uber CLEARLY own the vehicles!!!! They are a TAXI service and need to be regulated as such.

Obviously the regulation will have to be different, because there are no drivers.

How the hell have state and local prosecutors allowed them to get away with this??

It hasn't happened yet. Calm down.

Get out of your city more often

[Etcetera]

The tech industry would be much less hilarious if so-called visionaries left the Bay Area or the East Coast Boston/Phil/NY/DC metropolitan areas more often.

If you get out into the other 98% of America, you'd realize that a) we like cars and b) we like ownership of property and things like cars.

Stop trying to solve problems that only exist in San Francisco. Thanks.

Re:Get out of your city more often

[psmoot]

Stop trying to solve problems that only exist in San Francisco. Thanks.

(Full disclosure: I've lived in the Bay Area for 25+ years and work in the tech industry.)

I've never really wanted a car when I lived in Boston. I don't want one when I visit NYC (especially Manhattan). Didn't particularly want one on London, Paris, or Rome either. I can't imagine I'd want one in Beijing or Tokyo. I'm seeing a trend here.

I find as I grow older (I'm in my 50s), the romance of owning a car is really diminishing. I no longer identify as powerful and free because I have a car. My kids are the same way, they kinda don't care whether they own a car or even have a driver's license. Maybe the Bay Area is weird but I think this is far from unique.

Re:Get out of your city more often

[Tom]

Here in Europe, private ownership of cars could go the way of the Dodo bird and many people would welcome it.

The main differences:

One - our cities are older and streets smaller, the insanity that is hundreds of thousands of people each driving in a huge metal box that is mostly empty becomes visible very fast under such conditions. Parking in most European cities is a nightmare.

Two - we actually have working public transport.

I would be more than happy to use self-driving taxis in the city, and keep my car only for long-distance trips where train is not a good choice for some reason (remote village, castle, animal park, whatever in the countryside, etc.)

Maybe americans love their cars so much - but half of them also liked slavery and anyway it was abolished.

Well that's wrong

[SuperKendall]

many things are a 'judgement call' and that requires a conscious, sentient, self-aware brain to decide what to do.

That's not at all true. Anything directing the car, no matter how dumb, can make a choice.

In fact on average a computer will have much better visibility to the full surroundings than a human driver could, so even if "dumber" the computer is better informed and so statistically will probably make better choices.

I also disagree with your assumption that all drivers can be classed as "conscious" when there are a lot of bad drivers who are zoned out while driving.

Re:Well that's wrong

[ranton]

Our computers fuck up all the time because of bad sofrware. So do your phones. So will so-called 'autonomous cars', and the more complex the software, the harder it is to find the bugs in it, and in this case the bugs WILL GET PEOPLE KILLED

Bugs in the human brain killed 38,300 people in 2015 and injured another 4.4 million. And these bugs are far harder to find and fix than autonomous driving cars would be. Yes, it's very likely each year self-driving cars will kill thousands of people and injure hundreds of thousands more. But even if this is true they would still be an order of magnitude safer than human drivers.

I'm not saying it is an absolute that self-driving cars will be safer than humans in the next 10 years, but it is certainly not nonsense.

Re: Well that's wrong

[fluffernutter]

So tell me the number of sufficient cases you need to determine if an object is any kind of child's toy or not any kind of childs toy? If you don't know the amount of trials you need to do to cover any object in the world, then how do you know if you're going to be killing a child or not the first time it happens?

Re: Well that's wrong

[zlives]

third world market beta testing

Re:Well that's wrong

[fluffernutter]

So then you admit putting AI on the roads today amounts to vehicular manslaughter then. Thanks for being honest. The question is whether automation will be able to survive the lawsuits, and I hope any family that loses a member will bring the fires of hell down on the company responsible for releasing that particular AI. Even more importantly, the execs of that company should have to meet with the family and explain to them why their solution was worth their son's/daughter's/father's/mother's life. Relieving people of the burden of driving doesn't quite cut it with me, because that really is a first world problem. This all just seems to be about luxury and convenience.

Re:When was the last time you were in a cab?

[nicolaiplum]

In the last 2 weeks I have taken licensed taxis in the Netherlands, UK, and USA. In all cases the drivers were reasonably competent, at least as well groomed as me, and either quiet and polite or jovial and talkative.

In the USA, the main problem with taxis is in the places with a limited number of licenses for taxis, possessed by rentiers who have no incentive to improve service and whose employee drivers have no autonomy and earn very little. Un-limit the taxi number and give them autonomy and quality would greatly improve.

Re:No, they won't.

[drinkypoo]

They need to be able to determine the difference between a rabbit hopping across the street and a bouncing ball.. because a child may be running after the ball. A human would stop and so should AI.

They don't need to do that because they can just slow down anyplace the view is obscured, so that if someone comes out from between parked cars they don't hit them. They can also simply assume that any object crossing the road rapidly might be followed by another; that's true whether we're discussing a child following a ball or one in which there's two rabbits... or more likely, multiple deer. A small fawn is about the same size as a large ball...

Only applicable in urban hipster neighborhoods

[ErichTheRed]

Outside of cities, I can't see the economics of this working. Telephone service in rural areas had to be subsidized by a universal service fee. Why? Because the for-profit telephone company, even with a monopoly, didn't want to extend the network for a small number of customers unless there was an incentive. Imagine Uber/Lyft having to guarantee that one of their self-driving cars would be available to take you wherever you wanted to go, 24/7, with 30 minutes' notice regardless of where you live.

The other reason why I don't think personal cars are completely doomed is families. If you have kids, you know that the car becomes another room of the house if you live in the suburbs and have to drive everywhere. Imagine having to haul all your crap out of your self-driving Uber cab when you reach your destination, then put it back into another car when you want to go back.

I think some of this stuff is really cool, but the business model seems exactly like a myopic view of the entire world being a dense city filled with well-to-do hipster singles or married people who don't have kids. It's the same model as Blue Apron and all those other delivery services...Ironic mustache and goatee Swift developer and his marketing liaison coordinator wife arrive home from another 12-hour shift at the unicorn startups they work at. Rather than call an Uber to take them to the trendy new Ethiopian-Thai fusion place again, or hang out with the LUDDITES at the grocery store, Blue Apron has a box delivered to their front door with meals in it! It's brilliant! Everyone will love it! Give us $100 million!!!

Re:And that's where you are wrong.

[HornWumpus]

Yes I did. IIRC divided highway accident rates are about 1/4 the average for all driving. (You can Google for yourself, it's not hard to find. You want the accidents/mile not accidents/hour to compare to Tesla stats.) By far the safest mode.

Tesla's in autopilot are (by current data) much more dangerous than regular cars in similar situations.

This has been beat to death in the last three Tesla threads. But the fanbois keep bullshitting/parroting.

Re:bald tires, upatched OS, questionable brakes

[ShanghaiBill]

Eliminating the driver also eliminates the person most likely to complain loudly about life-threatening deferred maintenance.

Almost all traffic accidents are because of human error or inattention. The second biggest reason is road conditions. Poor maintenance and mechanical failure account for about 3% of all accidents, but less than 1% of fatal or injury causing accidents.

An accident, or even a mechanical breakdown on the road, is much more expensive than routine maintenance. So a profit-maximizing company would ensure that routine maintenance is done. This is no different than rental car companies today.

Re:No, they won't.

[AvitarX]

Kids already do this, and throw rocks from overpasses.

Fortunately, most humans, even children, aren't horrible people, and it's rare.

Do you really think a kickball thrown onto a busy highway won't cause an accident already?

The DEVIL's cybernetic jitney

[Thud457]

I still say the only way for these newfangled contraptions to be safe is to hire a man to walk ahead of it waving a flag, or at night or in inclement weather, a lantern.