I agree, but I wonder what the crossover point is. Is a 15 minute wait too long? What if the cost were half the cost of car ownership?
In my case, I think the crossover point is already here. If the cost is less, then it’s just a matter of scheduling.
There are many people who don’t want to be in the situation of waiting. They like the freedom of being able to go and do what they want when they want. Scheduling a taxi doesn’t fit that.
Nobody likes to wait. But there are millions that already do wait to some degree and whether or not it is a taxi with a driver or one without, that won’t matter to them. Again, nobody likes to wait but everybody has a price as well. If you told them for the minor inconvenience of waiting 15 minutes they could save $3k per year and no hassles (time and money) of car maintenance, how many would change their tune?
It is not the waiting that will determine whether this car sharing thing works. Hygiene will be the key.
When significant numbers of autonomous cars show up reeking of body odor, smoke, urine or worse, and filled with trash the offering will implode and fail. Disgusting New York subways are common themes in news articles. Ride a non-air conditioned train into Paris on a hot summer day if you want a little “sniff” of things to come. Ride a bus in Detroit! Not all public transport is nasty or unsafe, but it doesn’t take many like that to put people off a public transport offering. People don’t want to sit in another’s filth.
Mustangman,
You bring up an interesting problem - HOWEVER:
If I were in charge, there would be a complaint button in the app where a new car would be dispatched (with high priority!) for any such problems - AND - I would change the previous occupant for the cleanup (or at least give him the option of no longer using the service). I suspect there are ways of making this work that are beyond my feeble brain to envision - like a refundable deposit.
This is totally different than a bus or a railway car where a hundred people go in and out all day. It would be easy to take a car out of service when there are literally thousands driving around. Not to mention that this would be private enterprise and not the government.
I’ve refused cars at rental agencies that were suppose to be NON SMOKING and the stench was so bad it made me gag.
I probably bought my last car (truck, actually) eighteen years ago.
I live in a city where all the essential services are within walking distance or a short bus ride. My 24 year old “ride into the great beyond” gets used less and less every year but runs perfectly. If it quits tomorrow I doubt I would bother replacing it.
The only thing I would miss is engaging with the admirers I encounter when I’m out and about with it.
We went to a wedding last weekend in Philadelphia. There were 7 of us in our group. My daughter rented a condo for the weekend and we all stopped there, then a group of three got an Uber and a group of four got a Lyft. Both were on sight in less than 4 minutes. On the way back after the wedding, the cars picked us up in less than one minute.
There’s definitely a difference in the way urban and rural people use cars. I’ve lived both ways and I know. In the country I did what @bing did and took my trash to the dump, got my mail at the Post Office, drove 10 miles to get groceries, etc. For that you do need vehicles, more than one, and so far there’s really no choice.
In urban areas, where most of the population lives, a car is a mixed blessing at best. We can hop in a car to go somewhere, but parking when we get there can be a challenge. There have been times when I’ve driven to a store and gave up in disgust and went home because there was no place to park. These days I use a motor scooter to get around because I can park it anywhere. When I was working I had to drive about 1.5 miles to a rapid transit station, pay $3.00 to park if I got there before 7:30 am or reserve a space for $6, every day. If I could have called for an Uber or Lyft it would have been no more expensive and I could have owned one less car.
Both my wife and I are retired. We live in a suburban neighborhood. Yet, we need two vehicles as both of us are on the go all the time with our various activities.
Twenty years ago they were called “programs”.
2 days ago a fellow down the block hailed me as I went by. He took a few seconds to say the word ‘cable’ - he wanted a jump. So I went back home to get my car keys & stuff. I usually need a boost to start my pickup so I brought the booster battery too. I tried to start his RAV SUV with it, but failed. The negative connector was lying on top of the battery, not clamped, and the battery was at an angle to its seat. I couldn’t get it seated properly, couldn’t figure out why. When I searched my pickup for the jumper cables I remembered they had gone missing in the last theft and I hadn’t replaced them. Uber would costs him a bundle.
Today I went that way again. His RAV was in the same spot, the engine running, the headlights on (at noon), driver’s side window open, heater running, he snoozed out, snoring. I guess he thinks this is a safe place to park. He may need a car for the rest of his life, maybe something to shut off whatever’s discharging the battery when the engine stalls. Uber would cost him a bundle.
I have been thinking this over and there is a possibility that people not owning cars and relying on being able to hail a self driving car to take them places may have an unintended consequence. More traffic congestion. A large percentage of the traffic will be empty self driving cars on their way to a fare, or coming back from a fare, just like the taxi fleet in NYC where a lot of people already don’t own cars and rely on cabs to get around. Self driving cars amount to unmanned taxi cabs.
I agree. Increased congestion should not last long, though. Cab drivers, and really any drivers for hire like Lyft and Uber, will be gone shortly after the public accepts self driving cars for hire. The companies paying drivers won’t be able to pay drivers and force the, to go to driverless cars. Just as automation led to the decimation of factory workers, automation in driverless cars will do the same to cab driving.
In NYC, about 39% of the mileage driven by cabs are “cruising miles” without a passenger in the car.
I got that info from page 19 of this pdf document.http://www.schallerconsult.com/taxi/taxifb.pdf
If cruising miles could be completely eliminated, there would be about 39% fewer taxicabs on Manhatten’s streets and a markedly reduced amount of congestion.
In cities where the traffic is predominantly private cars, you don’t have that cruising miles problem, after I arrive to work, my car is not out cruising for fares, although I guess a lot of people who work in downtown spend a lot of time cruising for a parking spot.
When I had jury duty in downtown Austin, I opted to park in the outskirts of town and take the park-and-ride bus to the courthouse just so I wouldn’t have to deal with downtown parking.
I get the impression from your comment that you may think that driverless cars would eliminate cruising for fares. It seems to me that driverless cars would increase cruising for fares. If the cost to run a car for hire drops, then even with today’s riding population, the number of cars might rise to reduce the time to pickup. Add to that the increase in the riding population of lots of people give up,their cars, and the number of cars on the road could go way up.
Well, since driverless cars are essentially automatic taxi cabs, there is going to be a percentage of miles driven that are analogous to what the trucking industry calls “deadheading”, driving an empty truck after dropping off a load or on the way to pick up a load. You don’t make money when you are “hauling sailboat fuel”.
A good computerized dispatch system can minimize empty taxis on the roads. I imagine the driverless cars might just stay parked after dropping off a fare until it gets a dispatch to a new fare, preferably one that is close to the car.
My real point was to point out that driverless car systems could actually make traffic more congested due to unavoidable deadhead traffic.
May have more driverless cars on the road, but if they are all driverless, then it has the potential to be LESS congestion because of the efficiency of all these cars will be networked with each other and traffic.
I’ll pass. Chain saws and gas in the trunk. Lawn tractor loaded on the trailer. Ready for a trip to the country tomorrow for a workout. Elbow room cried Daniel Boone.
Driverless cars will be owned by large fleets, possibly 1 in the end, and will coördinate dispatch as well as computers can. Ideally they won’t deadhead at all, or only a block or 2 (in NYC, more in less-dense cities). There’ll be a lot fewer cars because the only ones will be carrying people all the time, not parked, as our most of our cars. That’ll mean way less of the congestion caused by parked cars.