The thought that cars will run their own "personal errands" when the users are not needing the cars is fantastic, and honestly, an obvious thing I had never thought of.
A couple things will be interesting when self driving cars are a full reality:
* Car drives over to the store and a worker loads it up with the items you purchased
* Car is added to an Uber Fleet when youre not needing it and makes you a few dollar per hour.
* Car gets washed/serviced autonomously
* Car monotnously drives around in killing time/parks free-far-away when your in a Financial District and parking isnt available
* Car is shared between multiple families/households.
* Apartment complexes have a dedicated shared car schedulable for use by tenants.
* Be able to chose the car for your immediate present needs (car/truck/sport)
* Have a car anywhere in the world
* Save money as you no longer need private parking space in your property.
Also most likely the cost of private car ownership is likely going to increase to the domain of luxury.
First because car manufacturer will want a piece of the fleet pie (see Volvo) and that will be a disputed market between Manufacturer/Uber-like/Rental Companies.
Then government are going to like fleets. Working with a few large partners is going to make stuff like dynamic traffic management doable, cities will be able to enforce very strict policies, and minimise the space allocated to car. For example in the EU they are destroying public parking space in the cities, do not allow building of private parking space either for offices or houses.
So car manufacturer won't want to sell you car and government won't want you to own one - good luck :-)
How many gas powered self driving cars are they making?
There is also the issue that car infrastructure dominating humans living spaces and running out of space has become an increasing issue and EV/vehicle automony only embeds the issue deeper into our societies practices. We should be finding ways to replace cars.
Disclaimer, I come from rural South Australia and would have found it very difficult to live without a car due to the long distances involved and complete lack of public transportation outside of the (only) city center. So I empathize with the rural need for cars. But the majority of people who would buy an autonomous EV are not going to be rural, and probably have better alternatives.
I've owned an unreliable car, that didn't start every time, and it totally sucked.
Think cattle, not pets.
So when I wrote "In the long run" I thought I could rely on HN readers to connect the idea that electric cars will fully replace fossil fuel ones and that self-driving will be ubiquitous.
I believe that that presentation on A/B tests has had more of an impact than anything else that I've written. :-)
oooh I didn't even consider that, an excellent idea. I hope this comes to fruition.
And what's left for you to repair? The simplicity you ask for will be introduced exactly where these home repairs used to happen: oil, filters, spark-plugs, a hose here, a cap there, etc. But the rest of the car stays mostly the same or gets even more complex. Most mechanical parts that aren't touched by the transition from ICE to electric motor could stay the same (suspensions, brakes), while the interior electronics will become more or less the equivalent of today's smartphones. Too complex for most people to try fixing themselves.
Who says that you need to own it either? Perhaps you just subscribe to a car service like zipcar or somesuch and you text msg the car to drive over to you when you need it, and when it's not being used or books it goes off to get itself serviced and whatnot. Sounds great to me.
That's where it's going, my friend!
As a city dweller I got rid of owning a car in 2015. Now I just hop in someone elses car using a ride sharing app if I'm going a short distance. If I am going a long distance I can rent someone elses car, either from a company that owns a fleet or from an individual using Turo / GetAround.
In SF you can rent a car to drive somewhere using Uber's GetAround integration for as little as $8/hour. Crazy.
I would expect to see market segmentation not only by model but by average car age and care standards, so the fleet operator can potentially demote cars from one tier to another to get more service life out of them. I imagine you will see budget subscriptions that are more likely drawing from a pool of 3-6 year old cars and more premium subscriptions that are drawing from a pool of almost new cars, as well as potential tiers in between.
I have no insurance to pay.
I have no fuel costs to pay.
I have no parking costs to pay.
I have no maintenance costs to pay.
I have a car whenever I want, for an affordable price, that is relatively modern, sometimes with a driver and sometimes I drive myself.
The true cost of a vehicle is much higher than the car payment.
There's also the loss of being able to buy and customize a car that's exactly what the end user wants. This doesn't matter at all to a lot of drivers, but matters a great deal to some.
What happens when I drink too much before needing to go home?
What happens if my car gets hit in the parking lot or broken into and I need to deal with calling the cops and trying to obtain the security camera footage before leaving?
The truth is no solution is without problems.
The transportation as a service model has more pros for me than cons. Plus it would mean fewer cars on the road overall and less need for parking spaces when autonomous vehicles can take us places and no longer need to be parked to wait for us.
For alot of car buying folks, the financing and available inventory determines the 'want'.
Though it will be interesting to see if self-driving cars reverse that trend. If a long commute becomes a pleasurable chunk of me-time instead of a grueling slog staring at the brake lights in front of you, maybe people won't place such a premium on living close to work.
Cars are a terrible way to get around in a crowded city. The city is far too dense to drive easily, cars take up way too much precious space and are huge increasers of smog.
In germany and other european cities, they already started banning diesel and other high pollution vechiles from entering major city centers because of both smog and congestion issues.
This kind of ruling will only increase.
Also, just realized who I was replying to.
Thanks for all the things you've written over the years Ben. When I was first getting back into tech your presentation on split testing was invaluable and your articles and HN comments are always great.