How Much Americans Could Save by Ridesharing Driverless Cars Over Owning 388
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.
Misleading title... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
Which means New York? That's about the only US city that qualifies. Taking 3 buses and spending 2.5 hours to get across town doesn't.
Re: (Score:2)
Which means New York? That's about the only US city that qualifies. Taking 3 buses and spending 2.5 hours to get across town doesn't.
Depends how far out you are. A large part of New York City is covered by a fairly efficient subway that is much quicker than that if you don't mind walking a couple blocks. Some parts of the city, you'll get around faster by subway than car. If you're in an area you have to take the bus though- that sucks and those are slow and an inefficient use of your time.
Re: (Score:3)
Which means New York? That's about the only US city that qualifies. Taking 3 buses and spending 2.5 hours to get across town doesn't.
New York is frequently in the news for their transit system that is crumbling before their eyes with constantly delayed or cancelled subway trains.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
It's true that in NYC you can go pretty much anywhere using public transit - but it's not necessarily a quick trip. If you need a cross town bus or something like that, you might as well walk. It's the only place I've lived where 3 miles == 45 minutes. In NYC you need to make the same calculation that you do everywhere else, trading cost and neighborhood for commute times. You could easily get a place in Philly on one of the subway or commuter rail lines and live without a car, but you'd need to think about
Re:Misleading title... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Try taking the subway in NYC for any trip that doesn't involve Manhattan. it's either a 3 hour one way ordeal, or a 3 hour one way ordeal through Manhattan because virtually every subway line goes through Manhattan.
Re: (Score:2)
The more apropos question is whether it is overall cheaper to have privately financed autonomous vehicles providing the equivalent to public transit. Will city and state governments discover that they can simply stop expanding public transit (and possibly scale it back over time) as lower cost and more efficient use of the roads can be found with autonomous vehicles?
Re: (Score:3)
2025? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Yup. I don't expect to have true autonomous vehicles till 2025. And I suspect only for highly repeated, well known/mapped, and simple routes. I don't think we will see autonomous vehicles being as common as backup cameras till 2035. Heck half of 2017's sedan's and SUVs across the vendors didn't have good UIs nor integrated their touch screens properly. They were all designed old school with physical buttons for everything as if the customer may opt out of the screen.
Yeah, right. (Score:2, Insightful)
Yeah, right. Increasing efficiency no longer gets passed on to employee incomes, it just gets captured as profit by the 1%.
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, right. Increasing efficiency no longer gets passed on to employee incomes, it just gets captured as profit by the 1%.
I suspect what they meant to say was that once the household no longer had to pay to purchase/insure/maintain/refuel one or more automobiles, that household's net savings would be equivalent to receiving a 5% increase in income.
We could just run it as public transporation (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You want to spend the increased efficiency on tit suckers? Not everything is a 'do nothing' jobs program.
If I weren't forced to own a car. (Score:3, Funny)
Dodgy math built on broken foundations (Score:5, Insightful)
This seemed pretty wacky, so I looked at the actual "study" [esurance.com]. 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!
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
someone still drives those old cars. they are resold. i have an 8 year old honda that is dirt cheap to maintain and perfectly usable
Re:Dodgy math built on broken foundations (Score:5, Funny)
Ahem...
Re: (Score:3)
While holding on to a paid-off car is sensible, I don't think your numbers are quite right. IHS states average is 79.3 month (~7 years), and this is data coming out of recession.
I guess I'm way outside the average.
- My 1999 Lexus has 290,000 miles
- My 2000 Hyundai has 130,000 miles.
Both cars are fine. If either of them went I'd just get another used car.
The Hyundai only cost me $2000 over 5 years ago.
Re: (Score:3)
Most used cars aren't ground up for scrap when sold/traded for the replacement. They're bought by someone else, and used for years more.
As an example, my cars average about ten years old right now. One of them is seven years old, but new to me (just bought it a month ago).
Re: (Score:2)
first major assumption is that a family pays $500/month to lease
This concept you will find across the entire housing and automobile industry. I find it absolutely idiotic that the industry thinks this way and people kind of fall for it. No one cares about the TCO. So many times I been given and seen the "Its just $25 more per month. That's well within your affordability." And if the rate is too high, "A lease will be really good in bringing that monthly payment down.".
NO one likes to talk about the total cost and the actual "monthly affordability" seems too complex
Re: (Score:2)
first major assumption is that a family pays $500/month to lease
NO one likes to talk about the total cost and the actual "monthly affordability" seems too complex for people (failings of basic education). Monthly affordability should take into consideration things like "retirement funding", "living expenses", "annual vacation", "taxes", etc.
When we bought my car a few years ago (new, but with an employer discount and a good trade-in) the salesman literally staggered back when we told him we wouldn't pay over $125 a month. It was actually mildly amusing to watch and how I am going to approach car buying from now on.
Re: (Score:3)
When my wife and I were just finishing up grad school and looking for our first house, we ran into the same thing. We looked at our current level of income and based buying a house on that. Knowing full well that it was likely we would be earning more soon, but that wasn't something we'd gamble a house on.
So we did up our monthly budget, figured out the max we could pay, backwards calculated a 30 yr fixed rate loan, and had our maximum house price. We scraped together the down payment, and were ready to go.
Hatfields & McCoys (Score:4, Informative)
Won't help a lot of people (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
You'd be wrong. Roll out started back in 2017 (http://www.latimes.com/travel/deals/la-tr-las-vegas-first-driverless-shuttle-to-loop-the-city-20171228-story.html). Yes, limited roll out, but there are driverless buses in a few places already. Cars aren't far behind (if they aren't already) -- in limited number, in limited zones, but starting to roll out none the less.
Renter economy (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
If Uber runs the market, this is true. If the city does as a public utility (like trains/buses are run), a lot of those problems start fading away.
and when there an crash the eula says you are at f (Score:3)
and when there an crash the eula says you are at fault and that log access starts at $250 per event.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Still looking for ethnic slurs on Belgians.
All I've got are the python ones: Sprout and Phlegm.
Anybody?
Well.... (Score:4, Informative)
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.
A very definitive maybe (Score:2)
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 relea
Here comes The Judge (Score:2)
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.
Doesn't make sense to me (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Share cars that they're not driving? (Score:2)
You mean, like, with STRANGERS?!
Ok, so explain to me how this is different that (horrors!) taking public transit.
Empty promises! (Score:2)
Self-driving cars promise safer roads, less traffic and increased mobility.
{Citation Needed} -- and not from marketing departments or from SDC fanbois.
Ha ha ha ha (Score:2)
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).
Re: (Score:2)
lots of people take bus or taxi or train to work. there would be number to call if interior needed cleaning and another vehicle needed to be sent. I'd expect the last user to get extra charges on their card.
see, not that hard to solve
Would this model end up being like scooters? (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Excellent job taking averages and making it look like it will work.
Well, that means for half of the population it will.
Some people still own horses for recreation, sport, etc. No one took away all the horses. But for the average population the car worked better.
Re: (Score:2)
Only if the average is the median. If it's the mean, a skewed distribution would mean more (or less) than half.
Re: (Score:2)
By some accounts, the number of horses in the US today exceeds that of the late 1800's and early 1900's. They just (mostly) don't get used for transportation to and from work etc.
Re: (Score:3)
Not averages. $500/month for a car _lease_? WTF?
Not too many assumptions, bad assumptions.
Re:Way ahead of you... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The old 80/20 rule applies here. The first 80% of the usage will be by people that don't live in or need to drive in any of the conditions you describe. And for the 20% of the people that do the existing solutions will work perfectly fine.
There is simply no reason for the 80% that can use it as soon as available to wait until it can also be used by the last 20%.
Re:Way ahead of you... (Score:4, Informative)
Now, Eyesight is not a complete sensor suite. It's optical-only and sees straight ahead in a limited cone, a full suite with RADAR/LIDAR etc. should have seen the deer coming down the hillside. It's an unusual environment and I'm curious if it would have reacted correctly in an environment where a mountain slope is almost touching the road.
THIS is one of the reasons why I'd like to see autonomous vehicles tested up here! Sooner or later someone is going to buy an AV when they go for sale in the general market, and they're going to be brought up here by vacationers, and they probably won't work well because they weren't tested up here extensively.
Re: Way ahead of you... (Score:3)
The sensors and software detected the pedestrian just fine, but had automatic braking disabled, since the human "driver" was expected to handle that.
No. One set of software and sensors (the ones installed by the manufacturer) detected the pedestrian just fine, but had automatic braking disabled because the OTHER set of software and sensors (the ones installed by Uber) were expected to handle that. The driver was just a backup for the Uber sensors/software.
There's no question that the driver was criminally negligent, but the Uber software/hardware failed as well.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, you can always move to tornado country, brush fire areas, and tsunami islands.
Re: (Score:2)
Luckily, I live in a land of earthquakes, where the roadways buckle and bridges and overpasses collapse! Transportation problem solved! There isn't any!
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Way ahead of you... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, for you the calculation is quite simple. For others, it's not so simple. For instance, most of my usage is at peak commuting hours - an Uber currently costs me around $10-12 each way. 5 days a week 48 weeks per year this is around $8000. My van cost around $27000 and I'll get at least 10 years out of it, so my annualized capital cost is around $3000 (including interest payments). Annual maintenance averages around $1000 or less per year. Fuel costs are under $2000 per year. Insurance is another $1500. So for just my commute I'd be looking at almost break-even: $8000 vs around $7500.
BUT, I have kids. They need to be ferried to sports, before-school activities, certain friends' houses, etc. The kids blow the calculations out of the water. Kids are expensive. Then add in weekend travel and shopping/grocery trips and it isn't even close.
Re:Way ahead of you... (Score:5, Interesting)
You've got the money part covered but notice the headline includes saving time. This is the real comedy; waiting around for a ride share is supposed to save time somehow?
Re: (Score:2)
Fewer cars on the road at peak periods = shorter journey times.
Re: (Score:3)
I can see while there will be fewer cars total. This doesn't mean there will be fewer cars on the road, especially at peak commute hours. For example, in the morning there will be cars dropping people off at work (what we have now) and empty cars returning to pick up next wave of peo
Re: Way ahead of you... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Also, people may not try as hard to avoid rush hour if they can sit and browse the internet or watch a movie.
They can do that already... it’s called public transportation.
I take the train to work, so I am free to read, watch movies, listen to podcasts, or nap during my commute.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The handful of times I've used Uber to get for work the waiting time wasn't a big problem. As I ate my breakfast I checked out the wait times and they were around, for example, 10 minutes, so I scheduled it 10 minutes before I wanted to walk out the door. Same thing on the way home - I just called it to roughly coincide with my normal leaving time at work.
But yeah, you have a great point - it's the same mode of transport so how could it be faster? Maybe they are including time paying bills, taking it in for
Re: (Score:3)
Ah, parking. Parking could be a huge time sink depending on your job and home locations. I've cruised around San Francisco looking for parking near my girlfriend's apartment for easily 45 minutes. The parking garages downtown in some cities can be a few blocks away and expensive as hell.
Re: Way ahead of you... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Parking could be a huge time sink depending on your job and home locations
Just wait until you see how much of a time sink the queue to be dropped off/picked up ends up being.
Re: (Score:2)
You've got the money part covered but notice the headline includes saving time. This is the real comedy; waiting around for a ride share is supposed to save time somehow?
Dunno how it is where you are, but here in LA I can call up an Uber and have one arrive at my door pretty reliably within 5 minutes.
Or, I can drive my car, and often spend more than 5 minutes trying to find a parking spot.
So yeah; in certain environments, ridesharing is faster than driving.
Re: (Score:2)
You've got the money part covered but notice the headline includes saving time. This is the real comedy; waiting around for a ride share is supposed to save time somehow?
The number of times I need a car with only a moment's notice is very low. Even when my child was screaming with an ear infection last weekend it still took 5-10 minutes to get everything ready and packed to get out the door. A few clicks on your phone is all it will take to hail an autonomous car.
It takes less than 5 minutes to hail an Uber in major cities now, and that will be go down with automated cars and wider adoption. People living in rural areas will likely continue to need at least one car per hous
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
For me, if I take Uber it means walking 5 miles from the guard gate to my office since Uber isn’t allowed in the secure area. Vs my car were I can just drive to empty parking spot directly.
Owning a car is cheaper.
Re: (Score:3)
And if enough people start doing it then maybe your employer will be forced to start letting autonomous vehicles in. Or setup a secure path for them to follow. Or start running shuttles to the gate. Or, I don't know, start enticing new hires with free shuttle rides to and from work.
We'll work it out, since some people know how to actually solve problem.......
Answer it: it depends [Re:Way ahead of you...] (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: Answer it: it depends [Re:Way ahead of you...] (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Just like science fiction except that it does exist currently.
Re: Answer it: it depends [Re:Way ahead of you... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
So for just my commute I'd be looking at almost break-even: $8000 [for Uber] vs around $7500 [for car ownership]. BUT, I have kids. They need to be ferried to sports, before-school activities, certain friends' houses, etc. The kids blow the calculations out of the water. Kids are expensive. Then add in weekend travel and shopping/grocery trips and it isn't even close.
And then after you add in the cost savings for autonomous Uber vehicles compared to human operated Uber vehicles, it likely isn't close (but in the other direction). If you cut out the driver, your average Uber trip drops to $5-6 each way, making it closer to $4000 for Uber vs $7500 for car ownership. As for all of your kid activities, perhaps you will still need one car in your household but could likely get rid of your second (average cars per household is 2, and average for families with kids is > 2).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
not if Lyft is willing to accept a 3-4 dollar profit...
Re: (Score:3)
Except that Uber is currently highly subsidizing their service in an attempt to establish themselves as the predominant provider.
It is likely that they will have to reduce their subsidies in the long run, and most likely they will do that simply by moving more people to autonomous rides where (possibly) the existing fare structure could cover their cost of providing the service.
Of course, there will be bumps and ups and downs in pricing all along the way as other services jockey for market share (some of wh
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Also to add, self driving cars will not be that much more expensive. The hardware isn't that complicated and most of it is in software. Software is a write once and use many times type of thing. Unlike hardware parts, you don't need to do expensive QA on each and every instance of an installation. Even if software development is 3x hardware development, there is negligible manufacturing, deployment, & installation costs.
The feature will cost what the market is willing to pay. To amortize the develo
Re: (Score:2)
A decent LIDAR unit costs significantly more than a car.
Cheap LIDAR (today) is cheap because it has few beams and is effectively useless.
Re: (Score:2)
Decent LIDAR currently costs quite a bit of money. There is a huge drive to create cheaper LIDAR: https://arstechnica.com/cars/2... [arstechnica.com]
Besides that, decent LIDAR is probably not even really needed to exceed human driving capabilities. After all, we don't use LIDAR data whilst driving.
Re: (Score:2)
Currently cheap LIDAR sucks. 4 beams. Useless.
As to the later claim, you're pedaling vapor. We have no idea what it will take to exceed human driving capabilities, having gotten nowhere near it yet.
Re: (Score:2)
So you don't think that LIDAR will follow the example of other consumer electronics? E.g. the smartphone you have in your pocket? What do you think an iPhone X would have cost to build in 2008?
Once it starts getting into high production prices will start to fall and functionality will increase. There has not been any electronics based product ever that did not follow that pattern.
Permanent and complete dependence (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Most Americans have to own a car (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
What about for people with less than 4 DUIs?
For that to be true, your insurance must be insane.
Re: (Score:3)
I need a car about 4 times a day. so I bought a used one.
Freedom's just another word... (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Free beer != Freedom of movement and association.
Re: (Score:3)
That said, the idea that car sharing is going to ever be preferred over personal ownership is not grounded in reality. We already have car sharing services like Hourcar - and it's a niche market. Automating the driving only adds a small amount of convenience, and that comes at a higher price. There's no reason at all to expect that it's nearly enough to alter the market to any no
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
You just gave me my million dollar invention! I'll hang out at the less-than-affluent parts of the city, selling paper protection products. Much like the disposable toilet seat covers, these would be Uber or Lyft Ride Share Covers. Lightly scented, guaranteed to stop chewing-gum butt!
Re: (Score:2)
Car sharing is perfect for those who .... ...like getting chewing gum on their butts.
That entirely depends on how the chewing gum got on my butt.
Re: (Score:3)
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.
It's a cyclical problem. Mass Transit sucks because few people take it (other than the poor). Few people use it because it sucks. To get people using mass transit you have to make it fast, reliable and safe- to justify doing that you have to get people to use it; but people won't use it because it isn't fast, reliable and safe in most places.
Re: (Score:2)
No. Before you can get there, you have to convince people to live sitting in each others laps. Like Europe and NYC.
It's all about density. Get population dense enough and cars stop working.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a cyclical problem. Mass Transit sucks because few people take it (other than the poor).
I don’t think that’s universally true. If I’m moving around in Seattle, I’m generally on transit - and the vast majority of other riders, whether on a bus or in a train, are middle class folks and young people. But there is the occasional poor person, or Hispanic person, or Muslim person...
Having talked to various people about taking transit, I have come to the opinion that many people’s objection to public transit boils down to being afraid they might have to sit next to someone who doesn’t look like themselves.
It's not universally true; but it is generally true. Seattle is a much larger city than most in the US, and granted larger cities have better public transit. I love the public transit systems in DC and New York- Seattle is also a much wealthier city than most. Go to average-town USA and the only people on public transit are impoverished, and whereas they are probably perfectly safe- they look a little scary to your average middle class suburbanite.
Re: (Score:3)
Essenti