plus there will be additional benefits Safety: Less drunk drivers on the road, less accidents from fatigue, etc. Cost: at a minimum, it will bring cab prices down Efficiency: Less traffic jams as autonomous systems won't slam on the brakes when they see a police car, etc. Smoother flowing traffic, higher legal road speeds if reaction time is shorter
And then there are other non-car transport which will benefit: logicistics, mail, deliveries etc. Minibuses that could pick you up door to door through automated route planning etc.
Maybe there will be a stratified market for rental self-driving cars; one for "just this trip" and another for "five days of exclusive use for a road trip."
Cost is a short term problem. Costs will go down. Liabilities can be insured against.
Here is where I see it going:
Stage 1: Taxis start being replaced by self-driving vehicles at much lower cost. Car rentals too - liabilities potentially go down once they reach a certain level of safety as you don't face the risk of a poorer than average driver. Usage skyrockets as costs drop, and as services can cut pick-up times drastically by more optimally having a larger fleet parked around town and/or driving around town.
Stage 2: We start seeing pooling options from more and more rental providers to deal with high demand situations. E.g. Rental company crunches their numbers and see that my road => the local train station always maxes out capacity during rush hour and decides that rather than buying more vehicles, surge pricing coupled with offering a discount that brings the price back towards normal for each rider as long as it at most takes X minutes extra will be popular and more profitable.
Stage 3: They put in minibuses on some of the most congested streches and/or team up with the local bus companies to launch apps where you can tell them you're at the stop and get guaranteed pickup within Y minutes by either the regularly scheduled bus or a car. You pay a slight premium for the guarantee, which covers the car when the bus won't be there and a profit share with the bus company. (For me the only reason not to consistently use the bus is that if I need to be somewhere urgently, I can't always risk waiting for a bus that might be full; if I had a guarantee that if I press the button and walk to the bus stop, I will get picked up in 5 minutes, it'd make me use the bus more)
Stage 4: As self-drive increase in general, cities put the thumb on parking spots. E.g. in parts of London you already won't get planning consent for housing with more than 1.5 parking spaces per living unit as a means to cap car ownership. Expect to see that gradually driven down, with the expectation that people will buy parking space for their self-driven car elsewhere and/or forgo having one. Driving down the limits on parking will allow for denser developments, making ride share options etc. even more viable.
Stage 5: Youth grow up without depending on their parents to drive them anywhere from the moment they are trusted to go by themselves.
Basically, I see it as a process where the convenience of apps to get you somewhere will keep increasing to the point where people will find themselves increasingly opting to check these apps first and find themselves needing a car less and less. Some transport apps are already combining route-finding with then offering to order an Uber for you.
Expect to see more of that making it less attractive to get a car over time.
Especially as youth get used to a greater flexibility and level of freedom using these type of apps before they can buy a car. Car ownership many places represents freedom from parents driving you around, but more and more teenagers can expect to be in situations were parents opt to order them a car instead of driving themselves.
Before long, a whole generation will experience car ownership as irrelevant to the ability of liberating their transport options from parental control.
Sure, some people will still opt to own one, but many already forgo car ownership, and that number will certainly rise rapidly.
Problems include:
- Cost. All of the (limited) Tesla automation technologies cost more than my last car.
- Liability. Who is liable for mishaps? As Uber has demonstrated accidents and traffic violations happen with automated tech.
- Utility. The majority of users aren't high income people in SFO and NYC. We have parking, getting picked up is cool, but not high ROI.
- Pool vs own. As we've seen with transportation services as varied as stagecoaches, cabs, railways, and airlines, service based transportation models aren't cheap. Service price is always demand driven, it will cost more when you need it.
- Owning a car in the US is one of the greatest values available in any market. I can be at any point in the CONUS in <3 days for under $500 with most cars.
I think self driving cars may put the bullet in some cabs for good after Uber and Lyft implode, and may bring train-like scale to intercity transit. But the fantasy being sold today is just that.