“door within 40 seconds” somehow I suspected don’t live in a distant suburb or a rural area.
Well, those same rural areas didn’t stop cell phones from taking over. The attributes that make rural areas hard to solve also limit the potential impact - just not enough people.
Is there hard evidence that Uber has reduced car sales? Because in fact L5 cars are taxis and Uber sans driver.
Read the report (link provided in my previous response in this thread). L5 BEVs have a number of advantages over humans driving their own vehicles. Maintenance frequency and costs. Cost while in operation. Insurance costs.
Me I am an old fogy who invests so that I can afford stuff like my own car. And will not be giving it up.
And there are people still using answering machines instead of an answering service. And there are people who call a travel agent instead of booking online, or go to ATMs instead of banking online. There are even people using fax machines instead of email. Heck, there are people still using film. But they’re just blips on the trend.
It is not a simple matter of spreading the total miles traveled over a set of cars that are used 100% of the time. You need to be able to handle the peak usage/rush hour traffic. That will take just as many cars as we have currently, right?!?!
First, autonomously driven cars will be able to go faster on the same roads, because you won’t have slow pokes in the left lane, rubber-neckers, etc. Second, you won’t have “return” trips, like dropping your kids off at school and then having to drive yourself home. And maybe AEVs won’t improve traffic much, but they won’t hurt it. And if you’re getting work done in the car or catching up on the news or a movie, a slow commute will at least be more tolerable.
I suspect the TaaS software will allow for lots of luggage, as that is a frequent-enough use case. But how many TaaS services are going to give me an option to request a bike rack and, even if the vehicle that arrives has a bike rack, can I be sure it can accommodate my bicycle’s over-sized tubing?
Low volume edge cases won’t kill the trend. Besides, the best bike racks hold the wheels, not the frame. Just request a vehicle with a 2" tow hitch and use your own rack if the difference means that much to you.
How long would I have to wait for another car with a bike rack if the first won’t work, especially if I’m in a remote location on the Upper Peninsula?
Don’t you imagine that reservations could be made in advance?
I might feel safer driving the roads if most of the cars were autonomous, but it would depend on their predictability.
The real issue is going to be how human driven machines are phased out. We’ve already seen London tax regular cars heavily, and there are now proposed bans on diesel cars entirely from 4 European cities, even some to ban all cars in cities to stop that as a terrorism mechanism. I can easily see big cities banning human driven cars during certain time periods.
But “sitting in the garage not being used” would equally apply to jet skies, boats,and motorcycles, all of which have adored my garage at one time or another.
Apples to Oranges. Remember, we’re not talking a rental where you have to go out of your way to the rental place, we’re talking the rental vehicle coming to you. And, don’t overlook the economic differences. Using BEVs greatly reduces the cost to fleet owners in terms of maintenance, insurance, etc… Many younger people would rather rent a jet ski a couple times a year rather than own one that’s used maybe 40 hours total a year.
And then there is the main car, often loaded with options of no practical value, moon roofs , fancy wheels, leather upholstery etc. That so called "economic man " is quite rare.
Rental companies already provide opportunities for choosing Audis or BMWs instead of Hyundais.
And, don’t forget, the report doesn’t say that all ICE vehicles are going away. It says that about 40% of the vehicles will still be powered by oil, but they will account for only about 5% of the miles driven. So, you’ll still have your Ferrari or motorcycle or even monster truck, it just won’t be driven very much.
We are all going to have time to adjust to this reality. Heck, look back just 10 years and tell me which of us thought that we’d have a 200+ mile BEV that functions as a regular car for under $40K in 2017 (Chevy Bolt)? It was just 9 years ago that Tesla sold the first Roadsters, and even so for half a decade people doubted electric cars would grow in numbers. And while some still doubt their eventual dominance, there are a lot more believers, including now BMW and GM. From not understanding what it meant to start off with a full tank every morning to not anticipating Tesla’s world-wide Supercharging network to not believing that battery costs would be under $200/kWh before 2020, few believed that the future would be BEVs.
The same will be true here. As AEVs start hitting the roads in quantity, we’ll get accustomed to them. Did you know that in 1891 President Benjamin Harrison was afraid to touch the light switches in the White House? With technology improvements and time, we humans readily adapt to a better future.
