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How Much Americans Could Save by Ridesharing Driverless Cars Over Owning
An anonymous reader shares a study: Self-driving cars promise safer roads, less traffic and increased mobility. Some autonomous vehicle proponents also maintain they will save time and money. But will they really save Americans time and money? And even if they do, are Americans ready to give up driving? Online insurer Esurance surveyed consumers, analyzed trends, and spoke to experts to find out. "Like with most new technology, we'll see consumer perceptions evolve and adoption accelerate as the promised benefits of self-driving cars are realized," said Haden Kirkpatrick, head of strategy and innovation at Esurance.
The reality is that the first fully autonomous cars will be very pricey and beyond the reach of most Americans. Manufacturers expect the early buyers will be businesses and the very wealthy. One developer says prices won't start coming down enough for most families and individuals to buy them until 2025 or beyond. Until the price of ownership of self-driving vehicles comes down, most people will experience driverless vehicles through ridesharing, according to researchers. According to Esurance research, in the best-case scenario, a family that gives up its car in favor of driverless ridesharing could save $4,100 in annual transportation costs. Other research confirms that a 20 percent improvement in efficiencies of the personal transportation system, would generate a five percent increase in household incomes.
The reality is that the first fully autonomous cars will be very pricey and beyond the reach of most Americans. Manufacturers expect the early buyers will be businesses and the very wealthy. One developer says prices won't start coming down enough for most families and individuals to buy them until 2025 or beyond. Until the price of ownership of self-driving vehicles comes down, most people will experience driverless vehicles through ridesharing, according to researchers. According to Esurance research, in the best-case scenario, a family that gives up its car in favor of driverless ridesharing could save $4,100 in annual transportation costs. Other research confirms that a 20 percent improvement in efficiencies of the personal transportation system, would generate a five percent increase in household incomes.
I only need a car once or twice a year, so I just rent one. Seems pointless to own a car.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
There are lots of ways to cut costs. Stop paying rent and live in a trash bin. Use found items as clothing. Eat trash, drink dirty fracking contaminated water and die young. Save tons.
Excellent job taking averages and making it look like it will work. I would love to see data for how many people could actually share. There is nobody besides myself going from close to my home to my odd work location at my random schedule.
So long as companies like Uber ignore users privacy and Gorvernments insist on tracking our every move. No. If this worked so well why don't they do it in high population dense locations like China or Dubi? Because it doesn't.
It will however make a very select few people extremely rich.
How Much Americans Could Save by Taking Public Transit
FTFY - If you live in city with a robust transit system, you can live without owning a car.
Goodbye, Slashdot!
Seems very optimistic to even have real safe autonomous cars on the road let alone have these features down to standard cars. The first cars with collision avoidance braking were available 15-years ago and its pretty much only in the last year where they have been standard on typical cars from some manufacturers.
Yeah, right. Increasing efficiency no longer gets passed on to employee incomes, it just gets captured as profit by the 1%.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Car sharing is perfect for those who enjoy the smell of vomit, and like getting chewing gum on their butts.
If you live in NYC or Europe where there are buses, trams, trains, trolleys, Puppeteer teleport pads, and plenty of other public transportation mode, then ride-sharing makes sense. However, US cities refuse to do proper policing and rather blow their wad on new sports stadiums than basic protection (it is common for non emergency calls to take 8-12 hours before they are bothered with.) So, Americans are forced into the suburbs if they value the safety of their family, and so their kids don't step outside to see a wino passed out on their doorstep, or get impaled on a syringe from some crackheads the night before.
With everyone going to work at the same time, ride-sharing an autonomous car isn't really feasible. Especially with employers demanding everyone do the 8-5 junket daily.
Instead, what needs to be done is actual police protection in cities, incentive for work at home days, and getting employers to allow for earlier/later shifts.
....and you're won't have to spend even that amount.
Share a ride but you're the only person in the car.
Well, words don't matter anymore.
I spent on average 1/24h in a car, and for this I must pay more than 10$ a day + gas. If I could have a reliable and cost efficient driverless taxi service available, I'd certainly never own a car ever again. I live in a small rural town where public transportation is almost inexistant and taxi fares are expensive. I wish I could just use a car when I need to and let it go elsewhere when I don't need it. In my mind, fully autonomous cars will have a very big effect on car ownership for individuals. If a business were to own such cars for a taxi service, there would be no much maintenance costs, just the acquisition price and power (for electric cars, and where I live power is cheap), so I think they could come up with a price that is very competitive and have a good profit margin. They would have no taxi drivers to pay and I hope the taxi licencing would be adapted to this new reality and that governments won't try to slow this revolution with heavy taxation. They should instead have a contingency plan (buying back licences, facilitate career change, etc.) for these drivers that normal technological advancement pushes out of a job.
How is it that more miles driven (car drives to pick-up, and then to destination) will reduce traffic?
I guess the assumption is there will be a lot more walking since there will be less parking spaces, so things will be closer together?
Seems like a real stretch to me. I'd think they'll increase traffic.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
This seemed pretty wacky, so I looked at the actual "study". It's a fluff piece with no grounding in reality.
The first major assumption is that a family pays $500/month to lease a car every month. Most sensible families have a $30k car paid off in 5 years and drive it another 5.
A second major assumption is that the cost of ride sharing currently covers the full purchase price, maintenance, and depreciation of the driver's vehicle. I do not know that this is the case.
So if you ignore the cost of owning the ride share car, and you inflate the cost of owning a car, it's cheaper to ride share!
Fucking genius!
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
It's like sharing lawn tools with the neighbor - it never works out. He keeps them too long, returns them dirty, uses up all the gas, doesn't check the oil... If you're going to get cranky over a $300 lawn mower, you're going to go ballistic over a $100K "shared" vehicle.
I will always own my own cars. Period.
How Much Americans Could Save by Ridesharing Driverless Cars Over Owning
In my particular case the answer is a good approximation of zero with a hell of a lot of added aggravation. I don't live in a dense urban area so pretty much any place that isn't a densely populated city doesn't make much sense for "ride sharing". I would need the vehicle at roughly the same time as everyone else (work commute) so using it when I need it most will be a competitive bidding situation and probably not save me a penny. Plus I have to schedule and/or wait for the ride to arrive.
Don't get me wrong, I'd LOVE to have access to driverless cars but it's going to be a good long while before they make any kind of practical sense.
The reality is that the first fully autonomous cars will be very pricey and beyond the reach of most Americans.
So what? That's true of every new technology. As production ramps up the costs will naturally fall. The rich get the fanciest toys first just like they always have.
Manufacturers expect the early buyers will be businesses and the very wealthy. One developer says prices won't start coming down enough for most families and individuals to buy them until 2025 or beyond.
They think autonomous cars will be a widespread thing as soon as 2025? HAHAHAHAHA... cough, sniff... Ummm, no they won't. I have confidence they will become a thing eventually but it just isn't going to happen that fast. The legal framework and insurance alone is going to take longer than that even if the technology was ready today. And the technology is no where near ready for the General Public today. Best case I'd imagine you'll see rollout start at the earliest sometime in the 2030s with lots of testing and pilot programs over then next 10-15 years. Then it will take a few decades to really start gaining large amounts of market share presuming everything goes well up to that point and there are no showstopper technology or political problems.
According to Esurance research, in the best-case scenario, a family that gives up its car in favor of driverless ridesharing could save $4,100 in annual transportation costs.
Maybe if you live near NYC where the cost of owning a car is prohibitive, travel distances are short, and where the infrastructure is set up already to support using vehicles you don't own. Basically if you live in a place where taxis are a routine thing it probably makes sense. Doesn't really work for the majority of the US and in places like Europe which already have decent public transportation there really isn't so much added value. As much as I'd like to have a driverless car (or decent public transit) to take the wheel for my morning commute I don't see it as a likely thing before I retire.
I am not interested in this model, because at its core is renter model. You don't own the car, as such you don't have any say in how it operates. So things like mandatory in-car advertising, sub-optimal routes to save fuel, or even whims of corporate policies and posturing (e.g. shuttle man last, because everything is a fault of patriarchy).
You are also foolish to think that costs will be lower in the long term. Once alternatives (i.e. personally owner car) are rare you will pay exactly as much as market can support for personal transportation. So you will still have monthly payments that are comparable to what you pay now.
I only need a car once or twice a year, so I just rent one. Seems pointless to own a car.
Well, for you the calculation is quite simple. For others, it's not so simple.
Exactly. The value of owning a car varies tremendously depending on where you live and what you do, and the value of owning a self-driving car will vary even more.
Having a car that can drive by itself will make it a lot more valuable in some locations. I would really find it valuable to have a car that can drop me off and then go park itself, and then come pick me up when I need it again.
So I'm not at all sure that people will buy fewer cars if the cars are autonomous. I'll say that the cars will be more valuable, at least to people who travel a lot to places where parking is hard to find, and hence a new segment of people who previous didn't want to own a car will now want one.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The numbers in this article look wrong, to me.
It ignores downtown parking costs, which easily amount to another $1,000-3,000 a year in the city I live in. Ride-sharing would at least halve that for each involved party. It also ignores garage space, which in many cities (including mine) is an additional cost for an apartment rental... and most people are not home-owners here. That's usually another $1,000.
So that $7.5k vs $4.5k starts to look more like $10.5k vs $5k, in return for all of the inconveniences and last-minute problems of ride-sharing.
Of course, public transit costs me $996 per year, and I spend another $200-300 per year for the occasional car rental when I really need one, and there are fewer inconveniences than ride-sharing.
I only need a car once or twice a year, so I just rent one. Seems pointless to own a car.
If you live in the US then I'm guessing you live somewhere in or near NYC because that's one of the few places in the US you can actually get away with not owning a car. In fact owning a car there is actually kind of pointless. There are a few other places in the US where a car doesn't make sense but not very many of them.
owning a car == freedom
It is and it isn't. It gives you freedom of mobility, but it also ties you down. And, of course by paying money to maintain and park a car, you decrease your freedom, in that you could use that money to do other things.
So, like many things: it depends.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
and when there an crash the eula says you are at fault and that log access starts at $250 per event.
As a European where the public transport is availabl to go to and from work fatsre than I could drive and that trip is paid 100% by the company, I do have car sharing.
They advertise that if your drive less than 15.000 KM per year, car sharing is cheaper. However you do need to have a car nearby available and it take some planning.
Most people will not be willing to walk 5 minutes and plan it in advance. And if you trive 14.550 KM per year, the gain is so small that it is not worth it.
So what it can be is a great alternative to a second car for many people. e.g. at leats one person goes to work with public transport and the other might as well. Just sometimes you will need a second car because reasons. Why have a car that is standing there costing money all the time.
Having a self driving car that comes to you would lower the treshhold of the 5 minute walk and make it even possible for those who would have to walk more, It would increase the availaility as well.
As extra information: I mainly use it to do shopping one per week. This months monthly bill was 75EUR and that inclused insurance, fuel, miles and the rent. That was abit on the high side as I normaly pay around 30 EUR per month. I also have paid 150EUR a month when I did a trip.
I save on average 250 EUR per month comparing of when I had a car.
And all this is in Europe where not having a car is not a real issue. I know many peope who do not have one. I also know people who have one, yet do not need it.
Before I sold my car, I tried it for two months to be absolutely sure that it was the right choce. http://www.cambio.be/ if you live in Belgium and want to get more info.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
The cost is irrelevant and will adjust to still being a car payment for us all, but we won't have the car or rights against search because it isn't our property.
At first it will be cheaper to lure people in but eventually be just as expensive. They will have logs within reach of a subpeana.
Just say no now.
Can't wait to get one of these cars after the last user wacked off in it or took a dump on the seat.
Here in the good old US of A there are a few cities that have a public transit system that is good enough to get by without having a car. New York city comes to mind. If you live close to the BART line in San Francisco it works well for the daily commute. Maybe Chicago. The T-line in Boston is pretty good.
After that it is a very steep drop off. Public transit really only works if you live and work right downtown of a major city. If you are in the suburbs then forget it. Rightly or wrongly, having a car is seen by some as a symbol of success. In America there is a stigma attached to taking the bus. Most people would prefer the freedom of having their own car and setting their own schedule.
Where I work there is a ride share program but almost nobody uses it. Why? Because I don't want to be sitting in front of someones house waiting for them to get their shit together while my car idles away. Or standing in the hot sun waiting for my ride to show up. Yes, I would probably save some money but for me the freedom is worth more than the few dollars I might save.
translation: joke's on you if you thought our rates would actually go down with self-driving cars. we will just charge higher monthly (and per-mile and per-passenger) commercial rates to fleet operators of self-driving cars, while insisting that the manufacturers themselves be liable for any malfunction-caused accidents. we've already done the math and our shareholders will absolutely love this.
But will they really save Americans time and money?
Maybe. Right now in the U.S. there is a culture where your car is a status symbol. Because of that people spend way more on cars then they need to. With an autonomous ride sharing vehicle the economics are different and more akin to commercial trucks. They need to be reliable, repairable, and go 1 million or more miles. Because of this you can't compare it to the cost of using Uber or owning you own car.
And even if they do, are Americans ready to give up driving?
Some will, some won't. As with all technologies it will be a slow progression. If a car manufacture released a fully autonomous car today at a reasonable price it would still be years before I would buy one because a) I don't buy new cars, b) I don't buy "first of" anything, c) my cars are still working fine and I won't replace them until they die.
What I expect will happen is that families will move down to one car and use ride sharing to fill in the gaps. People who drive sports cars or big boat towing trucks will still drive those vehicles. It'll be the small commuter vehicles that will be the first to be replaced.
let the government run it like we do with the Post Office.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
So, like many things: it depends.
You mean YMMV?
Self-driving ride-sharing would work for me if I could schedule a ride and then a '78 Trans Am shows up at my door and let's me drive that bitch.
Other than that, no thanks. Self-driving ride sharing is not for me. I'll leave that to you youngsters, with your technology and blueteeth and lip piercings.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Why does the cost of riding in a ride-share car go down over 25% between 2025 and 2030?
Why is the cost/mile to own so much higher than the cost/mile to hail? Don't the share companies need to make a profit?
Based on the IRS deduction the cost to operate a vehicle in 2018 is $.545/mile. This chart says by 2030 a rideshare company will be charging $.25/mile, so their expenses must be well below that
None of this makes sense to me.
As a simple example: Lets compare Federal car allowance $0.55/mile with costs for off-peak Uber in my neighborhood.
If I drive the 2 miles to go shopping the total cost for the car is $2.10.
If I Uber there it is $8.00 each way = $16.00.
You mean, like, with STRANGERS?!
Ok, so explain to me how this is different that (horrors!) taking public transit.
Self-driving cars promise safer roads, less traffic and increased mobility.
{Citation Needed} -- and not from marketing departments or from SDC fanbois.
Oh yeah? I'll take two self driving cars, please. Who is selling them?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Yeah, sure.
"Tragedy of the Commons" is a thing.
Ever seen collective spaces used by lots of people? Worse, used almost anonymously?
Yeah, no thanks - I don't want to hop in my 'driveshare' car at 0700 in the morning to go to work and slip on a pool of cum and vomit from the last user(s).
-Styopa
And when you factor in the higher probability of life lost by poor software, it's an even greater value because then you won't have to pay taxes anymore and your family can actually get a lot of money I'm sure. Win win really.
I'd rather spend more money and more time and drive my own vehicle so I'm 100% in control of where I'm going, how I get there, and not mow down pedestrians because I actually know the difference between a living being and an inanimate object. Furthermore my travels won't be tracked by GPS and what's going on inside the vehicle won't be surveilled, either. You fools can entrust your life to some shitty machine if you like, but if it crashes into me I will sue the living daylights out of you for it.
Except it doesn't. Point to an example of a self driving car without a "safety driver" that has to be at the wheel and alert to legally drive. No, the example where uber mudered a pedestrian because their safety driver was texting doesn't count.
Ah, well if you are going to use a silly definition of the word exist you ought to have a disclaimer lest reality will collide with you. There are enormousness amount of things which aren't on the market yet still exist. Driverless cars have existed for nearly 2 decades by my estimation. This isn't about flying cars which an entirely different story.
brandelf -t FreeBSD
You'd be wrong. Roll out started back in 2017
That's not a roll out in any meaningful sense. I cannot call it to where I am, give it an arbitrary destination and have it take me there safely. That system is nothing more than a glorified airport shuttle on a fixed route and fixed destinations. Not even close to something that could replace my car and certainly not a replacement for a taxi.
In SF there's scooters on every corner just waiting to be used... and most aren't.
So in the driverless model, to make it so i'm not wasting time waiting for a car to take me to the store, and then another one to pick me up and take me home. Is someone going to foot the bill to have thousands of cars just sitting around waiting for someone to click "i need a ride" button on their phone?
Who cleans up the driverless car if the previous rider gets sick in it or spills their drink? If the car shows up and their a slurpee spilled on the seat, I now have to reject it and wait another X minutes for another car to show up. Not exactly something I'm willing to do if I need to get somewhere. Also, how do you budget your time when you need to take into account the variable availability of one of these cars?
I can't imagine trying to haul kids around in these things in the case when you've got a child seat. Or, you want to take your bike somewhere, and you've got to attach a bike rack to it.
This is part of the new progressive mentality - encourage complete dependence in every aspect of life. Rent an apartment. Ride share a car. No ambition. Once you don't own anything, it's only a small step to having everything you "need" issued by the state. Also, when you don't own, you don't need to feel connected to anything ... no country, no community. That'll make it easier to accept the idea that you're prohibited from defending anything, including yourself and your loved ones.
This is all science fiction: speculating what the future will be like based on technology that doesn't exist yet.
You say that as if it's a bad thing.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I drive for Lyft from time to time. What surprised me is how many people use ride sharing to get to and from work. They are usually short trips that end up costing them ~$20-30 per day. I did some quick back of the napkin math, and spending ~$400 a month for transportation to and from work is a lot less than my car payment + insurance + gas + repairs.
At that point, I started extrapolating. If one person is spending $400, then three people are spending $1200 or four people are spending $1600. Given that kind of capital, I could see enterprising friends all pitching in to purchase an autonomous vehicle. Where it really starts making sense is when you can send the vehicle out to do ride share while you are working.
The article even mentions that the initial market for those vehicles is businesses. I can easily imagine a business of ride sharing with AVs. That's the low hanging fruit right there.
Granted, most people do more than just go to and from work with their cars. But again, what really surprised me was how many people in college and their mid-20s have no interest in owning a car. For some, it's a luxury that they cannot afford on top of student loans and all the other costs of starting up a life after moving out of their parent's house. For others, they just have no desire to own a car. They see it as an unnecessary expense.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
'And even if they do, are Americans ready to give up driving? '
New Yorkers already did, years ago.
Buttfuck, Idaho? Not so sure.
Can we stop with the driverless cars fantasy already? It is a phony dream, that technology will somehow create a perfectly obedient machine, in the form of a car, and allow us to live lives of ever increasing leisure. Why not just revive slavery? For the simple cost of food and housing, we could use slaves to drive our cars, and implement the same types of car-sharing ideas that the article proposes.
We just have to learn how to schedule our trips and coordinate with our neighbors, "Does anyone need the slaves on Thursday? We are planning a family outing." Either with slaves or with driverless cars, the coordination problems are the same, and we have NEITHER THE TOOLS NOR THE SOCIAL STRUCTURES TO MAKE ANY OF THIS WORK ANY TIME SOON. One thing is pretty clear: the "driverless" technology will need to have the equivalent of a human intelligence in order to accomplish any of the things that have been promised - something that can watch the road, with situational awareness, and also analyze and adjust the route to the final destination, and monitor traffic reports, and make sure there is enough gas. We could use slaves for this and save a lot on microchips.
Brought to you by We Don't Want Them To Own Cars, part of the We Don't Want Them To Own Property project, in partnership with We Don't Want Them To Move Freely and We Want To Track Everything They Do as part of the Citizen Slavery Coalition.
Like Uber you know when your ride is approaching. That time spent being ferried from A to B is time available to you. Look at people now, they would much rather be on a bus/train/ferry/... and bury themselves in /. or whatever rather than have to push through traffic and find/pay-for a carpark; and that carpark probably won't be at that pick-up/drop-off point outside their source/destination. And unlike a train/bus/ferry/... you can totally immerse yourself or even fall asleep as you wont overshoot your destination (assuming the car can rouse you ;).
In a rideshare setup like this, who is responsible for upkeep and maintainance on the car? Who cleans it when another ridesharer's kids leave cookie crumbs and spilled juice on the back seat? It's a sad fact that when someone doesn't actually own something, they aren't motivated to treat it properly.
Neither do hurricanes. In fact, mass evacuation is in almost all cases counter-productive.
Oh yeah? I'll take two self driving cars, please. Who is selling them?
Just because no one is selling them doesn't mean they don't exist jackass.
Do you think nuclear weapons are "science fiction based on technology that doesn't exist" because you can't buy one?
Car define certain people. Sports cars, 4x4, etc. By making all cars look and act the same, then, tell people to ride share instead of owning one, you continue to chip away why America is unique to the rest of the world. Another way to destroy it from within. Make America, like every other flippin' European country. Cars are always being made to look "more European". Hey, get a grip! We flippin' left that hell hole for a reason. Maybe in large cities this would be good, but some of us out here in flyover country actually ENJOY getting behind the wheel of a car and taking it for a spin!
You could save money riding public transit. Today! Why don't you?
Oh, yea! You don't like sitting in/smelling other people's piss.
I'm eager for self-driving cars to get the fucking morons out from behind the wheel. But, I'm not even vaguely interested in our sharing/subscription everything present and future. Piss on that business model and every cocksucker that encourages it.
Yes you too, cocksucker. Did I stutter?
Ten years ago, you used to post decent posts with good information, decent talking points, which all in all made you worth reading even if we differed in opinion. Now, you've turned into a MAGAtard like ever other conservative on this site and so your posts are pretty well equalivalent to droolings on the keyboard. The howling rabble just love your drool and they mod this dumb shit up. It doesn't make you correct.
You know damned well how many companies have cars they could sell to you right now (you bitch in the stories /. posts about them). You know damned well the reason they aren't for sell is all due to everyone worrying about who is the bastard who's gonna get sued. It's the American Fucking Way(tm).
If this is the crotchety bullshit we have to deal with from old ass baby-boomer phantomfive, just die already and give a young person a turn to thrive. Your old defeatist thinking is holding everyone else back.
I think of driverless cars in terms of less vehicles i would have to own. I own 3 vehicles but if (in the future) i could purchase one family autonomous car the cost savings is pretty high.
Self-driving cars promise safer roads, less traffic and increased mobility. Some autonomous vehicle proponents also maintain they will save time and money.
Yeah, and they made all sorts of promises of heroin solving the morphine and laudanum problem, too. And opiods are non-addictive, too.
We value our freedom and out lives. Keep this crap out of the way.
Getting to where I need to be when I need to be there is too important for me to trust to anybody but me. Businesses will always put their interests ahead of mine, and that's unacceptable for my mission critical need.
for the same reasons I don't take a Taxi, Uber, the bus or a GD train.
I go where I want and, more importantly, WHEN I want. I'm not going to wait around for someone / something to come pick me up. Did the bus and / or Bart thing for years. Will never do it again.
IF a self-driving car is on par price wise with the current offerings, then I have no issues with owning one as I can get in it and go without someone / something else dictating WHEN I can go.
Until then, I'll just keep on driving.
Can I ride share a pickup truck when I want to get a load of manure? I wonder if I can hire my Toyota Tacoma as a ride share to haul a load of manure for someone else.
Nah. SAE level five cars don't exist yet, and that's what people normally mean, and what this article is talking about.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Nah. SAE level five cars don't exist yet, and that's what people normally mean.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Normally people say what they mean.
brandelf -t FreeBSD
No they don't haha. From the context of the article, they are talking about at least level 4.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Car driving needs a lot of infrastructure that will break down in most natural disasters - hurricanes, earthquakes, landslides. Most cars would run out of gas within hundreds of miles. Hurricanes might deposit debris , trees etc. on roads making it impossible to drive, or might take away roads where the cars could have driven.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
When I give up my guns. My testicles would have to be long gone.
Right now, I need my car. I drive to work, I drive to visit customers, I drive to pick up groceries and all the stuff I need on a day to day basis.
In a couple of years, I'll retire. THEN I might be able to get by with a car service. In theory, it sounds great; hail a little car to take me TO the grocery store, and a bigger one to bring me (and my purchases) home.
But the problems that I foresee aren't so much technical issues as social ones. In Seattle, in San Francisco and in San Jose, companies have deployed dozens or hundreds of electric scooters and bikes; lease the scooters with your phone, and use them as long as you like, and then drop them off anywhere. But vandals and locals concerned with the litter and cluttering of the scooters have been destroying them, throwing them down cliffs, into rivers and ditches, or befouling them.
Will the same thing happen with automated car service vehicles? I can almost guarantee it.
Isn't Ridesharing part of the philosophy behind Uber and Lyft? We see the indigenous Ridesharing folks, the Taxi company, fighting Uber and Lyft in the urban areas and Winning! Cities are restricting, taxing, and outlawing Uber and Lyft. Where is your Ridesharing then? The idea may be good, but since it moves, the Governments will tax it out of existence.