Google tells me that vinyl record sales have been increasing for the last 18 years…
DB2
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OK
I expect vinyl record sales to decline with the decline of boomers.
“Who is buying vinyl records?”
Vinyl records are being bought by a diverse audience, withGen Z and Millennials driving new sales for current artists (Taylor Swift, Harry Styles) for the analog experience, decor, and artist support, while older Gen X/Boomers buy classic titles for nostalgia
Not that it’s important, but it’s good to challenge your assumptions. Always.
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I think the analogy holds. Vinyl records are still a thing. They are a pale shadow of what they used to be though.
Similarly, I don’t think car ownership will ever go away completely. There will always be cases when people will need or want their own vehicle as opposed to ride share.
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I’m pretty sure that I read somewhere that is isn’t Boomers who are primarily buying vinyl today, it’s the younger generations!
[EDIT: I’m even more sure that I should read the entire thread before replying!]
I am surprised. I remember carting around records as I moved around. It was a PITA.
Once music was on CDs-bye bye records.
And now music can accessed online. So bye bye CDs.
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Yep. Back when I had 2 legs, it wasn’t uncommon for me to go 2 weeks without taking the car out of the garage because I walked everywhere with a 3 mi radius of my home. I was only driving about 1,500 miles per year. Under those circumstances, owning a vehicle is a big luxury – and paying “$40 or $50K for a depreciating asset” is completely nuts.
intercst
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And yet the average car in the US travels about 12,000 miles per year.
So are you willing to accept that 1) you’re out on the fringe of the bell curve of driving, 2) you’re out on the fringe of the bell curve of spending, and 3) you’re out on the opposite fringe of investing? (I.e. far more attuned to waste, skim, etc. than the average person?)
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Color me skeptical (as usual.) The only thing autonomous taxis do is eliminate the driver. All the other expenses remain: you have to buy the vehicle (capital cost), you have to maintain it (maintenance cost, cleaning, tires etc.), you have to power it (energy cost), you have to license it ($) and insure it ($), and now you have to split revenue with Tesla (*or whoever) and buy a software license to run it on their self-driving software.
Now you have eliminated the driver cost, true, and EVs are cheaper to run than ICE, so it’s hard to make a true 1:1 comparison with, say, a taxi. You’ll note that the lower early costs of Uber and Lyft were helped by the fact that they were subsidizing rides in the beginning to get scale, and now their prices have started to rise. (Worth noting that it’s often cheaper to use a cab than an Uber in big cities.)
I don’t think Tesla is going to be subsidizing rides, but perhaps individual owners of cars will? How would that make sense?
I’m not saying it can’t be cheaper, it can. But unlike making software and distributing a million copies at no incremental cost, there is a significant incremental cost with every addition to a self-driving fleet. People are thinking it’s going to scale like an internet business, but it’s surely a hardware business with some internet application.
[For the maker of the software, ie. Tesla et al it has internet scale applications via the software & licensing, and bonus for selling the vehicles to whoever, unless they’re going to do it themselves, but it isn’t really the same.]
That said, if/when the day comes when they can just flip a switch and make every Tesla ever sold a full-self-driving taxicab, yeah, that’s cool. But I expect the brutal laws of thermoeconomics to take hold, and prices will be what they will be. Taxicab drivers weren’t exactly living the high life, were they?
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Yep. Predictions of widespread conversion from self-owned cars to TaaS often seem to assume that the cost of using TaaS on a regular basis will be pretty low. But as a very rough matter, we should expect that the cost per ride will end up at a place where it costs you about as much (if not more, see below) to use TaaS on a regular basis as it would if you owned the same car.
Because as Goofy points out, almost none of the costs of the car disappear, or are even reduced. They’re just borne by the TaaS company instead of an individual, but the TaaS company has to charge enough for rides to cover all those costs.
There are some savings, mostly in financing costs and parking. But there are some increased costs, mostly in deadheading and higher interior maintenance/operations costs that come with shared vehicles. We don’t yet have good numbers on deadheading for AV TaaS, but if they’re anything like taxis, they’re going to be high enough that the TaaS might even be the more expensive option.
So while an truly AV ride will almost certainly be cheaper to provide than a taxi, it probably won’t be much cheaper than each ride in a self-owned equivalent vehicle.
That’s on the whole, of course. Undoubtedly some people will have situations where the TaaS ends up being cheaper than owning the same car themselves (people who have very high parking costs and drive fewer-than-typical miles, for example). But we shouldn’t expect TaaS to be all that much of a bargain for regular users (10K+ miles) who have a parking space at home.
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Not to mention the necessary profit margin for the company providing the service…
DB2
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I am talking about autonomous service like Tesla & Waymore provide. Other competitors very well might enter that market. No need for your own vehicle. You use a cellphone to bring the vehicle to your door and off you go. No buying a vehicle, no insurance, no license plate, no maintenance and the big one depreciation, etc. In fact a person would not need a drivers license. Every city will be like NYC where owning your vehicle is a hindrance.
The vehicles that these services will use will be utilitarian with interiors easy to clean.
The key benefit of vehicle ownership is the ability to use it at anytime and go anywhere but at the cost of purchase, maintenance, insurance etc. Once an autonomous service is available-poof that need has been met and no need for an initial outlay of $40k-$50k and big depreciation hit. One can be receiving investment asset returns. The time of money. Immediate investment vs buying a vehicle and waiting to accumulating monies for investment.
Yep some folks will still want to own their own vehicles. Because they want to travel in-style-premium seating premium sound system, fancy interior.
That is not what I am predicting but an autonomous robotaxis service providing a corporate own vehicle right to your door. Like Tesla and Waymore and perhaps similar future competitors. No need for a person to buy and own a depreciating $40k-$50 EV. But utilize the service and invest that money in assets.
Vehicle ownership can go the way of the horse and buggy.
This vision makes a strong case for mobility-as-a-service replacing ownership. Seamless handoff between autonomous EVs could redefine long-distance travel, especially if charging downtime is eliminated. The real challenge will be infrastructure coordination and user trust.
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Except the per-ride charge for the corporate-owned vehicle is likely to be high enough that this doesn’t really provide much economic benefit.
The $40-50K EV is going to depreciate no matter who owns it. So the rider is going to have to be charged for that depreciation. They’ll have to be charged the same amount, over time, as they would have spent if they had bought the vehicle itself. And because the corporate entity is putting their money in the vehicle (and not investing it in other assets), the corporate entity will charge that opportunity cost to the riders as well. No money on depreciation is saved by shifting who owns the vehicle.
The only savings are those that have to do with the number of cars/financing costs and for parking. TaaS doesn’t reduce the cost of operating the vehicle or the depreciating costs, but it does mean you have fewer cars in existence which get “used up” faster. Which will lower the financing costs of the fleet and potentially reduce the costs of storing them. But offsetting that is the dreaded “deadhead” cost of shared vehicles - the time and distance spent driving without a passenger. Estimates vary wildly, but range between 20-40% depending on area and utilization. So you’ll save on parking and financing, but you’ll burn an extra 20-40% of vehicle depreciation and operating cost due to deadheading.
A ‘typical’ driver is not likely to see much of a value proposition switching from self-owned to TaaS. If you’re riding 12K miles per year, the amount you would pay to own your own car isn’t likely to be much higher (and might even be lower) than the amount you’d pay for 12K worth of rides from a TaaS - because the TaaS owner will bear all the costs that you would have borne, and has to charge you enough to cover those costs plus a profit margin.
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Time value of money
The individual receives the benefit to receiving a sum of investing money now rather than an identical sum later.
The corporation will utilize the depreciation as an operating cost to reduce taxes. An individual cannot do that unless the vehicle is used in business.
But it wouldn’t be an identical sum. The company that’s putting in the upfront money now (so that the rider doesn’t have to) will account for the time value of money to the company. So the portion of the ride fare that recovers the cost of depreciation will be higher than just the depreciation that the rider would have experience if he owned his own vehicle. And it will be higher by at least the time value of money that the rider is gaining the advantage of, because the corporation is on the other side of that exchange and needs to charge enough to cover their time value of money cost.
Which will only offset the taxes due on the income that the corporation earns by charging for the ride, which the individual doesn’t get taxed on for a self-owned vehicle. There’s no net gain to anyone. If you buy the car yourself, you can’t deduct the depreciation - but you don’t pay any taxes for the value of the rides you take. The corporation monetizes the rides you take, so that’s taxable income - which he can then offset with the depreciation. No one owes taxes in either scenario, so there’s no gain.
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I’m not a “typical” driver. Retired. Drive 6k miles a year. Own a beater vehicle with no physical damage coverage. Live in exurbia. I’m nearing a time where I might not be able to drive. So I have been getting Lyft estimates for traveling to doctors and groceries.
The prices/estimates vary according to when the Uber Lyft service utilizing ICE vehicles is needed.
10 miles to grocery store-$15-$20. 54 miles to pain doctor-$64-$97. Library 14.6 miles $20-$28. Dermatologist doctor 15 miles-$20-$30.
For me, it would be close to even depending on the price of gasoline. But that is only for my necessary stops of grocery-doctors-library.
I imagine autonomous robotaxis EVs might even be cheaper. Mebbe not.
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Sure. But the typical driver is a typical driver. So if we’re trying to get a sense of what the broad market for automobiles will look like if AV TaaS ever becomes a thing, it’s going to be the typical driver that kind of….well, drives the adoption of the new tech. And if the typical driver doesn’t save much (or any) money compared to self-ownership, you wouldn’t expect a complete changeover, and you probably wouldn’t see much of a changeover at all.
Your rideshare prices are around $1.50 to 2.00 per mile, which an AV can certainly beat. But so would any self-owned car. If you only drive 6K miles per year, there’s a decent chance that an AV TaaS service might be cheaper for you than self-owning an AV car - but it really depends on the details. If you’re living in exurbia, providing service to you will involve a pretty serious amount of deadhead mileage - so it might be kind of expensive relative to you having an older beater in the driveway, and even relative to having a newly-used AV that you own yourself.