Owning a car slowly becomes a status issue, like keeping horses, rather than a necessity.
There is no reason to expect this to be true. Outside of densely populated urban centers, it is likely that most people would still have good reason to prefer ownership. Providers in less dense areas could not deliver cars as quickly to riders as they could in densely populated areas. The main benefit to consumers of cabs in big cities is that you don’t have to worry about parking, which is expensive, rare and time-consuming. In suburban and rural areas parking is very easy.
Bike-share programs have been noted for a tragedy of the commons, with people vandalizing, stealing, and just generally abusing their borrowed bikes, because they don’t own them and security is hard. Robo-cabs will have similar problems, which will increase costs and reduce desirability at the margins.
Think of cities that already can’t be car cities, like Manhattan or London. I live in London and owning a car would be an expensive liability. I borrow or hire one roughly once a year.
Think of robo-cars as public transport infrastructure—more so than cabs.
There is no reason to expect this to be true. Outside of densely populated urban centers, it is likely that most people would still have good reason to prefer ownership. Providers in less dense areas could not deliver cars as quickly to riders as they could in densely populated areas. The main benefit to consumers of cabs in big cities is that you don’t have to worry about parking, which is expensive, rare and time-consuming. In suburban and rural areas parking is very easy.
Bike-share programs have been noted for a tragedy of the commons, with people vandalizing, stealing, and just generally abusing their borrowed bikes, because they don’t own them and security is hard. Robo-cabs will have similar problems, which will increase costs and reduce desirability at the margins.
Think of cities that already can’t be car cities, like Manhattan or London. I live in London and owning a car would be an expensive liability. I borrow or hire one roughly once a year.
Think of robo-cars as public transport infrastructure—more so than cabs.