Car on demand would mean less cars per person. Perhaps the UAW sees this coming?
Forecasts give days of notice, so I guess an autonomous vehicle ride-hailing service could have a million extra cars drives themselves in overnight. But refueling them would be a challenge. It's already a challenge for normal cars today (without using more fuel by rearranging fleets of cars between cities).
Also, sometimes they change traffic flow for evacuations, like contraflow lane reversal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contraflow_lane_reversal) or using the shoulders as extra lanes. I wonder how well autonomous vehicle software handles that.
I use a car that it’s more efficient to buy it. Not because I love buying cars. Cars are just an expense and having a fixed cost is nice.
Id love to live in a city that doesn’t require a car. Maybe one day again.
We buy lots of depreciating assets because we need them. That’s not bad, necessarily. But don’t buy a car as an investment.
I brought up food because it’s a depreciating asset. You buy it, you eat it, its value depreciated to zero. It’s not cute, just pointing out that “don’t buy depreciating assets isn’t a very useful life choice.”
An given society that's based on personal transportation (e.g., USA) at any given moment has a significant amount of resources sitting around doing nothing. In a world now based on not-so-infinite resources less cars (via, car on demand) is more than just a biz model. It's good for the world we live in.
You can live without a car. You can't live without food.
You can take raw food goods. Prepare it. And charge more than the cost of the goods. Restaurants do it all the time. Or even if you prepare it for yourself, you saved money.
I think we can do better that car v food :)
If you look at a car as an investment, "you're holding it wrong" is the best I can come up with as to how I feel about it. To me, a car is just a really specialized tool. I don't expect my wrenches and socket sets to appreciate in value the longer I hold them. Cars are made by the thousands every day/week/month/year. We don't expect our mobile devices/laptops/desktops to appreciate either. This whole depreciating argument confuses me. Maybe some people just have a hard time equating something with that kind of price tag as simply a tool?
There are very few cars that are investment worthy, and if that's the kind of car you're after, then so be it. But to the 99.99999% of people looking for a car, it is simply something to serve a purpose.
I'd like to pay a reasonable monthly subscription with a small fee per mile once I go over some minimum for my tier.
Once autonomous vehicles are stable, I'm presuming I'll be able to hail a car in 5 or 10 mins via app. I guess the only question is what to do in full-on emergencies. For example, when the zombie apocalypse begins, or the aliens final attack. How do I get out of town?