if you've ever actually sat down and priced out how much each usage of your car costs you, it's not that good of a deal. Personal vehicles seem cheap because people treat them as a non-optional fixed cost, but between the cost of the vehicle itself, insurance, fuel, maintenance, and your time spent driving you can price a car service fairly high and still have it compare favourably to owning a car.

The trick will just be to convince people to start thinking about a car service the same way they currently think about their car payments or fuel costs. I'd be curious to see what a per-month subscription service would look like instead of a per-ride fee structure like taxis or ubers currently use. $300-400/mo for unlimited rides would be, for me, a better deal than owning a car. I'm curious if that could be profitable.

It's roughly a $50-$70 ride for me every morning to work. That already puts me over triple my car payment. The other random trips to the store/etc would be far cheaper, thankfully, but depending on usage I can't imagine it being less than my gas costs in a month (roughly $50/m). There's still repairs/insurance/licensing/etc, but I doubt they're costing me the $700 extra that just driving to work would be costing me via taxi.

The problem is I don't live in the city, so my distances are greater, and tend to be very anti-taxi.

I actually want to take an uber to town on the weekends so I can drink/etc at dinner, but I usually don't because of how expensive it is.

Mind you, I don't think it's unfairly priced currently - but that still doesn't make it as cheap as I'd need it to be to use all the time.

That being said, owning a car is still a must if you have anything close to an outdoor lifestyle. For example:

Leaving the car at the trailhead several hundred miles from home for the whole weekend.

With Uber and Lyft, I already see my friends living an Urban lifestyle completely dumping their car. When this will become automated, another portion will likely dump their car.

But for now at least, I cannot see the outdoor crowd, or the ones living in a real rural area (think opposite of the SF hipster) dumping their car.

You can take the Long Island Railroad to Montauk.

New Jersey Transit will take you to the shore.

There's a bus that will take you to Hunter Mountain to go skiing in the Catskills.

Look up maps of the above 3 train systems. In many cases you can take a train, then bike the last couple miles, and end up in a very very isolated place.

I can also go to places that feel isolated and rural like the Jamaica Bay, the Pelham Bay Park area, or Inwood Hill Park, but are technically not because they're so adjacent to developed areas. But they do feel locally rural if you avoid a view that lets you see the city, because there is a jump discontinuity in density.

Also, you can do traditional car trips and just rent a car for the weekend. City people do this crap all the time. You really think we don't get outdoors, huh?

Demand more from your transit systems!

Personally, I live in the city and like getting out but I just use Gocar (pay by hour car rental)

Nothing honors the beauty of nature like polluting it.

Yup, that's my concern. Hypothetically a lot of things should be cheaper, but without market pressure, there's no reason for it to be cheaper.

Eg, if we pretend that an AI company releases an amazing self driving car everywhere tomorrow. Years ahead of their competition. That means the only market force they have is to price it under taxis. Perhaps they could price it at as low as possible to get more people using it, but without the market pressure it seems less likely. ... then again, I'm clearly talking out of my element here, not an educated response haha.

(Lyft was originally just a little side project of Zimride, which was meant to link people who were already going on a trip between the same points)

Personally, I'd much rather buy a car with this technology, than rent it.

https://newsroom.aaa.com/tag/cost-to-own-a-vehicle/

If you have a cheap reliable car, paltry insurance, and don't drive much you might just get down to $300-400 a month, but I think you're also underestimating your cost.

If we assume the worst case scenario where the car is worthless after the next 60k miles and I have to spend $1k repairing it, that's a total cost of 5.8 cents a mile. At 10k miles/year, that comes out to $48/month. I don't pay interest on a loan for it, but even if I did it would only be another $8/month at 4% APR.

It gets 25 MPG, at 10k miles/year and $2.50/gallon, that's another $83/month.

My insurance is $30/month. $48 + $8 + $83 + $30 = $169/month, well below $300-400.

FWIW, I actually only drive about 6k miles a year, so my actual cost is only $29 + $8 (opportunity cost) + $50 + $30 = $117/month.

I also had a car that was reliable, a 2002 CRV...well, it was reliable until we got past the 150k mark or so, then it started costing us big time to replace shit.

As others have noted, your repairs probably don't even cover basic maintenance like battery, oil changes, or fluids.

You don't have registration/sales tax in your value of the car.

Do you ever pay for parking or a car wash?

You should probably also add in any taxi or Uber/Lyft rides you already take to get a total transportation cost.

I don't think so, it's just a cheap car. It is well above state minimums (I think minimums are 25k/50k and it's 100k/300k). It includes comprehensive coverage but with a $2k deductible (mostly just useful for rental cars since $2k deductible is most of the value of the car). It has been as low as $20/month in the past.

>As others have noted, your repairs probably don't even cover basic maintenance like battery, oil changes, or fluids.

I specifically mentioned that they did.

>You don't have registration/sales tax in your value of the car.

Ah that's true, that adds about $20/month with emissions testing too.

>Do you ever pay for parking or a car wash?

Fair point, but that's less than $2/month on average.

That's crazy cheap. The cheapest I could find for state minimum in Georgia was $60 and that was answering the questions as a perfect driver.

>I specifically mentioned that they did.

But the numbers don't add up. There's no way you spent just $300 in 60,000 miles on maintenance. Oil changes alone would be $300ish. It should also be a brake job, new tires, and things like new wipers. On top of that you replaced an alternator, battery, and a belt change?

Hm maybe it's just cheaper in Arizona for some reason then. Could definitely see a significant difference in state regulations causing that.

Oh shit I forgot about tires, you're right I was missing some things. Better numbers look like this I think:

Battery: $100

Belt: $20

Alternator: $170

Coolant: $20

Windshield washer fluid: $5

Air filter: $10

Tires: $500

1x Wiper blade: $20

4x oil replacements (I replaced when oil looked discolored, not at 7k miles): $100 ($25/each)

No brake job yet, but that's probably coming soon...

Total: $845

Lack of rain/snow/salt on roads probably reduces maintenance costs by a lot in regions like this, so national averages might be higher.

So after both adjustment my numbers are probably closer to $200/month, and I'll accept that's probably an outlier and $300/month is a reasonable estimate for a cheap car.

As long as the car payments aren't high and the commutes not really long, it's pretty reasonable. If your commutes are that long, a service would be outrageous. E.g., a company paid for my Uber trip from SF to Los Altos back in 2012, and it cost $125.

I'm a statistical outlier fortunately. My car with excellent insurance costs me < $100/month.

For my truck the numbers are different, but every time I check it turns out you can't actually use a truck for a lot of the things I use my truck for, so even though my per miles costs are something like $5/mile I don't really have a choice for those uses.

this is probably the differentiator. I bike to work about 20% of the time in the winter, 80% of the time in the summer, and don't use my car for too much else. So the cost of the car and insurance amortized out over mile driven ends up being pretty high for me.

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/googles-waymo-reduces-lid...

Sure, costs will come down, but the people who have the data (e.g Waymo and GM) seem to be banking on the taxi market, rather than selling these cars.

Seriously I do wonder, though, if the design of townships like yours will be directly affected by the rise of AV's. It would seem to make sense for Waymo and others to effectively lease depots (holding pens?) for when you and your fellow travelers need to hail a car. Are you/we effectively trading your individual garage space for a collective AV parking lot on the outskirts of town? And whether that development would compare favorably to investing in more intercity trains?

I don't understand why everyone wants to live in these horrible suburbs with grass you have to mow and a pool that every single person needs to build. I seriously have never once understood suburbs. I get living on 5+ acres, you got stuff you can build and do (tree houses, chicken coups, etc) but what is the point of putting yourself somewhere with nowhere you can walk and nowhere you can build?

Also, can we talk about grass for a second? Why? Just why do we do it at all? Trees, shrubs, and flowers are so much nicer and easier, why do we need to make bright green rectangles with most of our lawns?

The appeal of the suburbs is pretty obvious. There's enough room for you to build a bigger house, some out structures like pools and sheds, and some grass for your kids/dog to play in. The downside of that is it isn't walkable. That downside might not make it worth it for you, but it's worth it for others.

I think for a lot of people the appeal of the suburbs is mostly "I could get a mortgage and I can commute to my job". Living in walkable areas in cities is really expensive (maybe because lots of people want to do it but they've been illegal to build for most of the last century?)

I'm looking at homes and as housing prices have gone up 60% over the last 5 years where I am it's a question of "uggg do I just keep paying rent in the city centre forever or do I buy a place where I can afford one, which is mostly shittacular suburbs". I think a lot of other people are there by necessity, not choice, as well.

The GP makes a good point actually because in that background to this decision there's always "screw this, I'll just move way out in the middle of nowhere and get a bunch of cheap land and a giant house, and work remote" but having a spouse who can't work remote affects that. The suburbs are the worst of both worlds.

As a very much secondary benefit, I get some exercise and a minor outdoor hobby.

Your local fire marshal might have something to say about that.

Money. Lack of.

In lots of US metro areas, the suburbs are the only route for working and middle classes to own property and hopefully pay it off before or by retirement, and only have to worry about property taxes (capped for over-65 homeowners in some states) and maintenance thereafter.

Where in-town living is not more expensive than suburbs, city politics driving assessments plus millage rates and aging building maintenance of generally crappy US construction practices make for a much more volatile financial picture long-term for retired urban dwellers.

In a suburb, on their own lot, it feels like they have more control because they don't have to negotiate as part of a group or even participate within a group for basic maintenance, and property taxes are generally not as high per unit area. Even crappy construction practices in SFH's can be remedied for all but the most egregious cases. When a contractor screws up a boiler installation in a high-rise condo, it's a massive capital investment and logistical headache for all the residents when that boiler calls it quits early, especially if replacement requires some demo to get at and extract the boiler, DIY is not an option, and pipefitters are not cheap. A home hot water heater replacement isn't a financial picnic for working and middle class homeowners, but it is still within the DIY realm for those willing to put in the time to save precious capital.

The operating environment looking forward for the next few decades in the US is most of the population is scarce on capital but have time (for example, retired working and middle class), a substantial portion are scarce on capital and time (for example, households with children), and any solutions (like moving more people into urban areas) that involve capital they don't have are non-starters. Yes, we should be encouraging people to move into urban areas in the US, because the per capita energy expenditures are much lower, environmental impact per capita are lower, people are given greater opportunities to form and maintain communities, etc., but the way incentives are currently structured in the US prevent that from starting.

Just by participating on HN statistically makes it likely you and I are in a rarefied environment where we don't have our noses rubbed into that reality I described above every single day, but we're a tiny, tiny fraction of the US, not to mention humanity, and moving the needle to make a difference in the world requires that we figure out solutions that sit on the other side of that fraction.

Kids are a major kicker, for much of the population, until cars are not only self-driving, but can also on-demand automatically reconfigure with a variety of different configurations of child restraint systems, so that you can on-demand get a vehicle configured for your number, age, and size of children.

If the safety promise of self-driving is delivered, car seats will become unnecessary.

If the total rate of accidents with self driving cars is so low that adults don't need seat belts and airbags, that might be true.

I don't think anyone projects that to be the near-term result of self-driving cars being mixed with human-driven cars on the road.

First of all, what is a lot? 1% of the US would be around 3 million people, which is a lot of people and yet 1% is not very significant. Of course we know some people don't own a car, you can make your numbers look bigger or smaller depending on if you count them. (there are books on how to lie with statistics if you want to continue this line)

There are people who are already close to giving up their car who will.

I believe that most people will not give up their own car. Rush hour is a thing for a reason: most cars are driving during those hours, so your costs for a self driving car ride rental needs to account for that. Once your costs are not much different the utility of your own car is a price worth paying. I know that I can go shopping over lunch and leave my new toys in the trunk. I keep a spare diaper in my car just in case my kid needs one. When I go on vacation I often start packing the car a few days before.

If you are frugal rides in a self driving car is probably more expensive than rides in your own car. Your payment has to cover oil changes (I change my own oil - I've concluded that it actually saves me time over driving to a mechanic). Your payment covers inspection/cleaning after every ride - nobody cleans their personal car that often. People who ride in a self driving car will demand newer cars even though a 12 year old car (if well maintained) works perfectly fine for the same task.

Also, if the taxi fleet knows where everyone is going, they can easily organize a car-pool. If you're frugal then you'll be okay with pooling, pay more if you want the exclusivity (or, if you have the frugal plan, you can pay 10 bucks more this morning if you want to be left alone...).

The Jaguar vs Tata would make a fun algorithm. Say you're the frugal one, you order a car, and a Jaguar is heading your way. Suddenly your neighbor (on the premium plan) orders a car, and someone else a few minutes away cancelled their Tata. Oops, sorry, he gets the Jaguar.

Edit: Changed "Mercedes" to "Jaguar"

Same thing with the car age. They aren't going to cycle new cars in every few years. At best, they are going to replace the interiors in that time frame.

It also doesn't account for the size of the car. People buy 4 seaters for the 10% (or whartever) of the time that they have passengers. Commuters will be perfectly fine with a 1 seater if they can order a bigger car when needed.

The auto rental industry does. The average holding time in the rental car industry is 13 months. Enterprise Holdings (Enterprise, Alamo, and National) owns over a million cars. Lots of companies talk about "transportation as a service". Those companies do it.

Among other things, they own enough parking spaces to park all those cars.

They're going to recycle the cars faster than today, because they'll be used for closer to 100% of the time, rather than 10% today.

I don't see any reason to think a similar price-sensitivity wouldn't apply to other forms of seat-rented transportation.