Not necessarily. Take car wear and tear, for example. Some of it is mileage-based, which is going to be pretty much the same whether it’s you driving your personal car or hailing a ride. Either way, for a trip of 10 miles, the same cost is incurred.
But some vehicle wear and tear is time-based (seals drying out, UV exposure causing seats to crack, etc), and the you’d get the same wear sitting outside parked all day as you would having it driving constantly. And some wear and tear is thermal cycle based, so if you could hypothetically keep it running 24/7 driving people around, it’d be much better for the car than having 3-4 cold starts per day.
So if one car could (hypothetically) serve the needs of, say 10 people during the day and run 24/7, each person would pay the full mileage depreciation per trip, but the time depreciation would be split 10 ways, and the thermal cycling depreciation would drop to 0.
You seem to be completely ignoring the cost of depreciation, registration/tax, and parking (actual cost, or opportunity cost of the car occupying your garage/driveway). These are all costs you pay for yourself if you own a car, but are shared among many users for a shared car. In particular, if you buy a new car, depreciation is a bigger cost than all others.
$50k plus for top end units now. There are shorter range units that are supposed to be $100 in mass quantity. You can also project out a pattern of IR dots and measure distance that way.
I think long-term it’ll be a mix of personal vehicles and taxi companies managing gigantic fleets. As I mentioned before, the market will drive prices low enough that a individual car owner is going to have trouble making a profit off of the razor thin margins (barely above maintenance, depreciation, and fuel) They’re just there in the example to keep the taxi companies honest- the minute they start charging more, a flood of personally owned ride shares ensues to capitalize on the market.
I can’t imagine private car owners rending their vehicles out. When self-driving cars become common, there will be two kinds of people: people who don’t want the hassle/expense of owning a car, and people who want to own a car because they want a car all to themselves, waiting in their driveway/garage all the time.
I’m sure that’s a valid point, and I honestly believe that the real factor here is that the normal instincts of property ownership and pride thereof will dissuade people from turning their shiny new cars into a public utility. Nevertheless here is some interesting info which will appeal to the germophobes among us. I post it only semi-seriously but it’s presumably factual:
Of the vehicles we tested, rideshares yielded the highest bacteria levels by far – more than 6 million CFU/sq. in. on average. The rental cars averaged more than 2 million CFU/sq. in., while the taxis had an average of just over 27,000 CFU/sq. in. To put it in perspective, rideshares averaged almost three times more germs than a toothbrush holder. Toilet seats and coffee reservoirs both contained fewer microorganism than rideshares and rental cars.
And then we have Wolfpup’s First Law, to wit: Where there is a lot of bacteria there will inevitably be McDonald’s wrappers, spilled Coke, and, eventually, somewhere, somebody’s puke.
And Wolfpup’s Second Law: Where there are a sufficient number of people, anything that can get broken will be broken.
Seriously. All anyone has to do is ride public transit for a month or so, and then think to themselves "Do I want these sketchy, grungy-ass people riding in my car? Most people would say no, unless the car is strictly a money-making proposition and they don’t intend on riding in it themselves.
I’ve owned cars for quite a while, and time-based and thermal wear and tear costs are beyond trivial, and would doubtlessly be offset by the cleaning costs the Uber owners incur and I don’t. All those wetwipes have to be paid for by somebody, and that somebody had better be the passengers if this is supposed to be a viable business model.
The owner of the Uber has all these costs too, and if they’re running a viable business then those costs will be passed on to the passenger (me) through the ride charge one way or the other.
An individual car owner is like an Uber owner who rides in his own car with an employee discount. I’m riding in my car for cost. If I’m riding in their car I’d better be being charged higher than cost or there’s no reason for them to be running a business.
Unless, of course, it’s being posited that these cars are being run as a non-profitable shared recourse, or at below cost - perhaps they’re subsidized by the government, or are straight up owned by the government! (Perhaps as a way less cost-effective alternative to busses.) That’s departing from the Uber model, of course, but it’s certainly a possible scenario. Just one that’s not on the table if you’re talking about people being incentivized into contributing their privately-owned cars to the system based on how profitable running an Uber car is.
Sounds like you just explained why Uber and Lyft don’t exist.
Sure, there will be people who look down on others and feel that their car will be tainted by anyone else being in it, and for them, paying a premium for owning their own car, and having it exclusively for their own use makes sense. Everyone has their priorities.
Many people, myself included, would see an expensive asset sitting idle 90% of the time. It’s not all that nice a car, but I have a fixed cost of about $350 a month just to keep it, whether it sits idle or I drive it every second of the day. Whether that means I would rent mine out, or just not buy one and use a rental depends on many factors, but I would not be using it as a driveway weight.
It was pointed out earlier, also, that a ride-sharing system doesn’t work because you may need a large car for moving things, I argue, that’s exactly why a ride share is superior. Most of the time, I need something to transport my body form one place to another. Sometimes, I need that, along with a few pounds of groceries.
Very occasionally, I have need of going camping or on vacation, where I want enough space to hold some cargo, and sometimes I want to move furniture.
If I buy a car that can move furniture, then not only is the vehicle not in use 90% of the time, but it is not in use for the purpose I bought it for 99.9% of the time. I am also using a much larger and less efficient vehicle to transport my body to work than I need to, just because I might need to move a couch someday.
Being able to choose the type of vehicle I need for the purpose I need it for is far superior to buying a vehicle with the very rare needs covered.
Also, an autonomous AV can drive you to another city. An uber driver isn’t going to much like you asking them to drive you 100’s of miles, because then they need to drive back. An AV can just be repositioned, the same as they do with one way rentals of cars and moving vans, except without need of paying a driver to balance load from demand.
Having more AV’s on the road will make traffic more efficient, as most inefficiencies come from impatient drivers trying to shave off seconds, and AV’s have no reason to be impatient. Carpooling improves that even more.
Fewer cars and more efficient traffic means shorter commute times, which is great for passengers, but is also good for the owners of the AVs, so they can turn around and pick up more, meaning that fewer are needed to deal with the rush.
If there is an app that allows me to schedule my trip to work, and preferably pre-schedule a week or more out, then I know when the car will be there, and when it will drop me off. I would think that scheduling a regular route in advance would decrease costs, and therefore, decrease prices. If I want an individual car to come and pick me up at my house at 7:25, and I call it at 7:15, then I should expect to pay a much higher fare than a car or van that will I have a recurring schedule to stop at the end of my street that I share with a few other people.
I may have to share with a couple other people, but that’s fine, especially if there are cameras and monitors in the car that deter people from acting boorishly, I don’t have a problem associating with other people. It could be interesting, even, a chance to actually meet people face to face and have a conversation.
So, yeah, private ownership is not going to go away, but it will decrease substantially. Most people will use some sort of ride share transit system to get around, some of them from large fleets maintained by livery companies, some maintained by a municipality, and a few owned by private citizens who rent theirs out when the “surge pricing” gets high enough to pay for the indignity of having someone else in your car.
As a first order approximation, I would say that most people who drive an economy car would be happy saving money by ridesharing, and the people who pay a premium for luxury cars now will pay a premium on having the luxury of their own car.
I was thinking about this, and something else occurred to me, that impacts the OP’s notion that Uber completely replaces private ownership.
One proposed benefit to everybody riding an Uber is that you don’t have to worry about parking; your ride just shows up, carries you to your destination, and drives off in search of another fare. A huge boon to those who otherwise have to leave their cars in parking garages and walk half a mile to get to their actual workplace, right?
So you have a downtown metropolitan area, with millions of people working in it and no convenient parking around. We know that come five o’clock those millions of people will be calling for millions of Ubers, and there had better be millions of Ubers available or there will be wait times of an hour or more since it will take a while for cars to make multiple trips, dropping off one rider and coming back for a second. So we know there have to be tons of cars waiting around for a rider come start of rush hour.
Where do these cars wait? They won’t all have just finished dropping off a fare; the whole deal with rush hour is that more cars will be needed then than were being ridden in an hour before. Presumably you don’t want them to just drive around in circles all the time when not in use, burning gas and clogging the roads.
Parking garages are probably out; they charge to park there. Even if you handed your Uber your credit card and somehow fitted it with a little robot arm to put the credit card in the slot so the gate will open, the cost of running an Uber would go up a lot if you’re paying for daily parking. This would be reflected in the costs to riders.
Do the Ubers all go home and wait there when not in use, either to a central Taxi business parking lot or back to their private owners’ houses an hour and a half away? If so then this means that anybody who’s not working within a few miles of home base will have longer wait times, perhaps much longer wait times.
Do the Ubers all find the nearest free parking space and chill there? That’s fine if there’s enough free city parking for everyone to park in - but what city has that? Or do they just find any free space and chill there?
If I own a downtown Denny’s that has a small parking lot, I’m not going to be too happy about Ubers chilling there, taking up spaces without anybody ever coming in to buy something, and preventing real paying customers from parking there. If I own a downtown Walmart with a huge parking lot I’m still not going to like Ubers chilling there taking up my spaces without giving anything back. I’ve seen signs saying that people who try to park their motorhomes in the walmart lots overnight will get towed.
Ubers will start getting towed, if they gum up every business parking lot for miles around. Ubers will start getting banned from parking in other people’s lots, for longer than a pickup or dropoff. Business owners will mark out a couple of spaces for Ubers to wait in for their passengers, and Ubers anywhere else will get their license numbers taken down and charges filed.
Unless there’s something I’m missing about all this?
One single car still can’t drive itself reliably enough. It isn’t a numbers game; the tolerance for a robot car injuring or killing people is near zero.
But a freeway full of cars? How many different active sensor frequencies will be needed? I don’t want my car responding to emissions from a car two lanes over.
Those are areas that already have public transport. I don’t see why people would suddenly switch from public transport to self-driving Ubers.
Demand for vehicles is fairly predictable. The self-driving cars will be arriving from outside the city at a rate sufficient to meet the demands. Some of them will park, others will circle around.
Gasoline powered cars will have long disappeared by then. Electric cars need very little power to move around at low speeds. And they can talk to each other and find places to loiter that won’t get in the way of traffic.
So? The self-driving car operators can contract with them, if that makes economic sense.
Each car would periodically go back to one of the operator’s facilities for cleaning and recharging. But there will always be many on the road or parked, available for hire.
Parking space for self-driving cars can be in less desirable places (i.e. many blocks away from major businesses and destinations), so they would cost less to provide. But parking isn’t strictly necessary. They can just loiter in outside lanes of 4-lane roads, for example.
If all cars are self-driving, your customers don’t need parking space!! Even if someone comes to your restaurant in their privately owned car, the car can just go and find a place to wait somewhere else. Or circle the block waiting for the owner.
I can easily imagine why a person who is currently riding the bus and walking from the bus stop would prefer to get dropped off at their office door by an Uber. Can’t you?
If we’re talking about actual Uber, where the cars are owned by individuals who live an hour and a half away in the suburbs, I’m finding this claim implausible. Is the app going to predict that X number of people will punch their ‘call Uber’ button at 4:45, and summon the cars an hour before that? What if the car isn’t used? With the car owner be compensated by Uber itself for the wasted trip?
If the Ubers are owned by Yellow Cab, on the other hand…they’re not going to dump them all on the streets early either, but at least their parking lot is closer to the city than the suburbians are.
I get that this is the Monty Python argument sketch and you’re automatically gainsaying everything I write, but are you seriously dismissing the notion of all cars everywhere being on the road constantly as being a non-issue, from a cost, wear, and traffic standpoint?
If they’re private owners who live out in the suburbs, you want them to contract with all the parking garages individually, on their own initiative? Fat chance.
Had you suggested that Uber would contract with them (and increase their cut accordingly), that might have been better, but you’re still talking about a not-inconsiderable infrastructure change that would also involve alterations to the cars themselves (so an Uber can be recognized by the garage and the right person billed). That ain’t happening overnight.
Yes. This is beside the point though, excepting as an acknowledgement that the ones that do go home are now in the wrong place, and that the remainder still have to find a physical space to put themselves into.
You’re seriously going to run with “running the cars down the roads 24/7 even if they get no passengers whatsoever for that period is an excellent idea with no negative side effects whatsoever”, are you?
Of course stores will need parking lots, and of course some of those cars will sit outside patiently waiting for their designated passenger (slowly ticking up the meter for that customer). Consider the average shopping trip. You call your car and go to the store, and buy some stuff. Then you call another car and go to another store nearby. And…take your previous stuff into the store with you, so the first car doesn’t drive off with it? Do you go all the way back home between each and every store just to drop off each load? Ha ha, no.
Or say you’re going on a trip. I’ve seen it mentioned that a perk is that you can hire an Uber and get driven to a city six hours away, and that’s no problem because the suburbian who owns the car doesn’t have to go with you and never wants to see his car again. Okay, I can accept that, that makes total sense. But what about your luggage? When you stop your car at a public toilet you don’t really want the thing haring off to give somebody nearby a lift to Canada. Besides all your stuff rolling away, you also are going to have to wait another hour for a second car to drive up from the nearest town and give you a lift for the rest of the way.
Ha ha, no again. You’ll be able to ‘hire’ a car for more than a single ride, and make the car sit around waiting for you to get back into it. That’s a given in this new world order. And it’s worth noting that the stores will be okay with that - you’re a customer, so your Uber waiting for you is fine.
It’s the between-customer ones who have nowhere to rest their weary heads away from home.
My point about the public transit was that there are some people out there who ride public transit who are seriously dirty, stinky and slobby, yet who can manage to pay for a bus or light rail ticket, and there wouldn’t be any way to prevent them from eating in your ridesharing car, infesting it with bedbugs, or stinking it up with their BO or whatever. A lot (most?) people would consider this a non-starter for sharing their personal vehicles out, or even riding in cars subject to that.
I think more people would farm their cars out, but the fundamental attraction to cars is the flexibility and control that you get from owning and using your own car. You get to drive where you want, when you want, and you can trick your car out however you want, set your AC however you want, etc… If you’re running late (or early), you can do that as you feel like with your own car. You can make impromptu stops as you like.
I think that is not going to be overcome by people’s desire to save what will probably be a small amount of money over the life of a car by doing ridesharing with autonomous cars, and by sharing their own cars out if they happen to own one.
From the consumer perspective, why haven’t Lyft and Uber supplanted private car ownership significantly in the years since they started? From the consumer perspective, there should be no difference within a metro area whether or not the vehicle is autonomous or not. I suspect it’s because they don’t want to be constrained by having to call up a car for every stop of a multiple stop errand trip, or find out that their Uber smells like mildew, or keeps the AC too hot, or whatever it may be.
I mean, if I wake up on a Saturday and want to go to Home Depot, I can just go. I don’t have to call up an Uber, wait 15 minutes for it to show up, and then repeat the process each time I choose to go somewhere else before going home. That’s a monstrous pain in the ass, plus it’s pretty clear that Uber is drastically more expensive to make that trip- their fare estimator quoted me $6.53 to get from my house to Home Depot one way. Based on 10 mpg, which is probably really low, even considering a cold, non-warmed up pickup on an all-city trip, I’m estimating 1/10 of that for the trip (65 cents - 2.5 miles @ $2.60 per gallon) in gas, plus whatever costs for maintenance, tires, etc… So let’s say $1 for the trip each way. Still beats the shit out of paying $6.53 each way.
And what do you do if you go on camping trips or hunting tripos? Hire the off-road autonomous uber? What if you own land that has dirt roads or is far off the beaten path? You’ll then have to wait for someone willing to part with their car for some extended period while you go to the family farm 200 miles across the state.
One of my ‘cars’ is a plow truck chained up on all 4 wheels. It never leaves my property in the winter. Even after 25 years of plowing, it get’s hinky. No snowstorm is the same. No plowing is the same. I suspect an AV will have a VERY low tolerance for the possibility of getting stuck. And just say ‘uh,uh’. I can’t imagine where it will every have better judgement than someone that has been driving his ‘road’ for 25 years (it actually does have a County Road #, but is not much more than a dirt path). I have a friend that has a new car with accident avoidance. She knows just where one snow drift builds up and can break through it. Opps, her new car throws on the brakes thinking it’s about to hit something. We got a ways to go.
The second part of your quote answers the first part. If you want an Uber, you’re paying for a person to drive you. Driving is work. Work costs money, and if you drive a lot, or close to a lot, Uber is too expensive. Get rid of the driver, and the cost of an AVUber is much reduced, their incremental cost, inclusive of maintenance, cleaning etc, is that $1 each way. Every single penny you pay over that is a penny that goes to fixed costs/profit. Let’s say it’s $1.25, or $1.50 is that worth it? Assuming it’s convenient of course. If 20 people borrow my car for trips like that a day, I could be putting hundreds of dollars towards my car loan and insurance every month, with no more effort than activating an app on my phone.
Depends on how good their current public transport is, and whether they improve as well. Naturally, when cars become self-driving, so will buses. They will run more frequently.
No, we’re talking about a company like Uber owning a huge fleet of self-driving cars. That’s why Uber is investing in self-driving technology. The intent is to eliminate human drivers and private car owners.
It’s a solved issue. In places where most people commute by car, workplaces have parking lots big enough for their employees’ cars. With on-demand self-driving cars, they will require at most the same amount of parking space, and likely much less.
That is what I suggested. The “operator” is Uber and its competitors who own fleets of self-driving cars. We already have technology to pay for toll roads wirelessly - no new technology required.
Yes, but I expect the cars will be stopped most of the time. Perhaps better to say they will be parked on the road, but get out of the way of any car that is carrying a passenger.
The car doesn’t have to be parked next to the store while you shop. It can drive a short distance and find an empty road to sit at, then come and pick you up when you are ready to leave. It can wait on a road, or find a nearby parking lot, or keep driving around the block if that’s the only option available.
The owner of the car is a national corporation, so a road trip is no more of a problem than a one-way car rental. And of course such a service will allow you to retain a car (for a small hourly fee) while your stuff is in the car. You would do the same if you go on an all-day shopping spree.
Your Uber doesn’t have to wait at the curb, or in the store parking lot. It will wait wherever it can, and pick you up when you are ready.
If you decide to buy your own self-driving car, it will do the same.
First, cost has absolutely NOTHING to do with price. Price has to do with what the market will bear, and I doubt that it will bear more than the existing cost per mile for car ownership, except in the situations where people are willing to pay a premium- going out drinking, going places where there’s limited parking, or their personal car and public transit are unavailable. Otherwise why would someone pay more for the same service they already get by owning their car?
In your example, the AVUber would have to price themselves under my $1 for that trip and still make a profit in the bargain, which might be difficult, considering that the cars that a person would own themselves and not share and the AVUber cars would be identical, so costs would be similar if not identical.
I also imagine they could want to limit the number of cars that are part of the ridesharing network- that way, they can limit supply and raise the price they can charge, so they’d probably want to charge a fee for being part of the ridesharing network. That would also factor into the per-mile cost.
In short, I think that since the cars are the same, the per-mile costs would be essentially the same, and the AVUber would also have costs above and beyond that (licensing fees, profit, etc…) which a private owner would not have. It is true that there are situations where people are willing to pay a premium, but in the majority of trips, it would cost more for AVUber than owning your own car.
There are also unpredictable demands, and the best way I can put it is this: Try to get a cab in Manhattan when it’s raining! It’s a famous meme but it’s true. Ask me how I know.
It’s a famous meme but it’s true. Ask me how I know.