You want to be able to leave things in your car and have them be there when you return to the car.
You want a level of comfort and cleanliness that can’t be assured in a shared vehicle.
You don’t want to wait the X minutes of delay every single time you want to use a car.
You take enough trips that it’s cheaper to own a car than use a service.
You want to be able to do things in a vehicle that are prohibited by the TaaS TOS (I’m thinking mostly of smoking, but eating/drinking might be there as well).
I can’t see how TaaS works well for people that have children - if I had to completely empty my car of the car seat, stroller, back-up outfits/wipies, and toys every time I got to a destination, I never would have made it.
Not everything works for everyone. But I can see where I would own one car, that I use for long trips, and then use TaaS for everyday use. I can also see a family having one vehicle for the uses you stated, but for going to work using TaaS.
Sure. And look, there’s lots of trips that are taken today in shared vehicles - taxis, uber/lyfts, and of course mass transit.
But you asked why someone would own a car when they could call one instead. There are plenty of reasons. The degree to which TaaS erodes private car ownership will depend a lot on price and coverage. If TaaS trips are expensive and time-consuming relative to private ownership, adoption will be more limited; if they’re cheap and readily available, adoption will be more widespread. Even after the tech is available (if ever it is), it will be a while before we see how the economics actually play out in the real world.
TaaS is a system that requires low prices and widespread adoption. Otherwise, it is not worthwhile to pursue as a business venture because the ROI is too low to justify the initial cost of a fleet of vehicles–especially for a project that would cover at least 10-20 years.
Of course , that is how economics works. That is the whole purpose of the robotaxi. To get the cost of owning a car not worth it any longer and that is why I said why would anyone own a car. When the economics do not work it is not worth having anymore. Of course there will always be outliers, I suspect we will always have ice vehicles if not just for the nostalgia. Just like people still ride horses.
Understood. My point (as we’ve discussed before, I think, though who remembers) is that the cost of the Robotaxi isn’t likely to be all that much lower than the cost of owning the car. Most of the costs of car ownership don’t really change with TaaS. The costs of a year of TaaS rides for many people won’t be much cheaper than what they would pay for a year of self-owned rides. So I think it’s unlikely that TaaS will absorb enough of the market that the remainder will be “outliers.”
I am not so sure about that. If insurance is cheaper because collisions become fewer and fewer where the company is able to insure their own fleet because the cost is minimal. There won’t be any smog tests and the cost of electricity, especially if they have their own solar production is minimal. They don’t have to pay for drivers and the car can work around the clock. (Although peak time will be a problem but if they can have people willing to “rent” their car at peak that would be a partial solution). Since the Cars are always on the road they could have a much smaller lot. So I can see it getting much cheaper than someone “owning” their own car. Especially if it is Tesla with the robotaxi and producing the taxi at cost.
All of that is true whether the car is in TaaS or self-owned. The comparison isn’t between an TaaS self-driving EV and a “dumb” ICE car. It’s between the same car, an autonomous EV. The question is whether people will own their own self-driving EV’s (assuming they ever come to exist), or whether they will TaaS them.
Almost all of the costs are exactly the same. The operating costs are identical: fuel costs (electrons), maintenance, depreciation don’t change at all. Insurance is probably not much different, either. Most of the cost of insuring a vehicle is the risk it presents when it’s moving, so if the TaaS car drives 10x more in a year than a self-owned car, the insurance cost will certainly be higher, and likely proportional to the 10x use.
So if you take ten people who drive 10K miles per year in their own cars, and switch them to a TaaS system where they use a shared car for 100K miles instead, all of those costs of driving 100K miles are the same in either scenario.
TaaS can have lower storage (parking) and finance costs, but it also has deadhead costs that self-owned cars don’t incur. And TaaS will have some operational costs (basic cleaning, “lost and found,” higher wear and tear on interiors) that self-owned cars won’t.
Unless you’re paying a lot for parking, or have seriously below average annual mileage, there’s not a lot of cost advantages to TaaS. You’ll end up paying pretty much the same over the course of a year as you would if you owned your own car. Now, there certainly are people that fall into those first two categories - but the average driver doesn’t. And autonomy allows me to reduce my parking costs for my self-owned car, so it’s not even that big of an advantage.
The above statement is not correct. Ten different drivers means ten premiums collected on ten separate vehicles–each vehicle representing a risk to the insurance company based on ten different drivers AND vehicles. With TaaS, it is ONE vehicle–and no human drivers. So the insurance company (if one is needed) has ONE driver risk–the software. If operating properly, there is minimal other risk to the insurance company (because there are no other drivers), so the rate per mile or ride (for driver error) is substantially reduced (or eliminated) for all users.
Again, the comparison is between the same vehicles. I either own my self-driving car, or I share my self-driving car through TaaS. The insurance company isn’t going to face especially different costs between 10 self-driving cars and 1 self-driving car that’s driven 10x the mileage. So the insurance cost per ride or per mile is going to pretty much be exactly the same.
So if driver #1 and his/her car hits driver #8 in his/her car, the insurance company has a 2+times payout. Can’t happen when they all use the same TaaS vehicle. And FAR less risk of accidents overall given a valid TaaS model. So costs/risks drop dramatically for TaaS, which can’t happen otherwise.
Not a relevant factor. If driver #1 and driver #8 were going to be on the road at the same time in their self-owned cars, they’d need to be in different TaaS vehicles to have their driving needs met. And those TaaS cars are no less likely to collide than any two self-owned cars - they’re the same vehicles. If there’s a hundred people that have to drive at 3:55 p.m., they present exactly the same collision rate whether they’re travelling in self-owned autonomous cars or TaaS cars.
There isn’t FAR less risk of accidents over all - the same people are still traveling the same routes in the same vehicles, so the per-mile cost is exactly the same.
(Actually, it’s rather higher - because TaaS requires deadhead travel while self-owned vehicles do not. But the per-mile cost is pretty much the same).
But as an individual you probably will not self insure. Not unless you want to gamble.
The same thing could be said about renting a house vs buying. Only with a house, hopefully, you have an appreciating asset. Yet people, some very wealthy, still rent. I would never buy a summer house because I don’t want the upkeep. I could buy one but I don’t want the trouble. The same could be said about owning a car.
All of that could be designed away by Tesla’s robotaxi. It would be that far fetched for musk to design a vehicle with gull wing doors that can drive into a robotaxi wash and open the doors up and spray washed automatically, all robotically.
I disagree, especially if insurance keeps climbing. The insurance companies are a stumbling block for you that a rental company will not have. I doubt you would self insure.
Of course not. I would have auto insurance like I do now. My insurance premium for my self-owned autonomous car may even be a little cheaper than it is now.
But the actuarial cost of auto insurance doesn’t change between self-ownership and TaaS, because almost all of it derives from the the vehicle moving. So if you have ten people that drive 10K per year, and one TaaS company with a car that drives 100K per year, the insurance cost that the ten people (collectively) incur for their ten policies won’t be particularly different than the insurance cost of the TaaS company to cover its one car.
The same is true of almost all of the other costs - whether it’s ten individuals or one company with 10x the mileage, the costs are pretty much the same.
Seems pretty unlikely that you’d be able to - or want to - have a car that would be able to go through that. And it doesn’t solve the problem, which is that the car has to go out of service and travel to a place to get cleaned out, rather than the owner (or uber driver) just clear out the half-empty Starbucks or water bottle from the back seat.