Lyft president John Zimmer: Car ownership will 'all-but end' in cities by 2025

[Shane]

Our local government is currently in the process of spending upwards of $8 billion dollars to build a light rail line that will only really benefit a minority of people if it's ever actually completed.

This is just bonkers, sure 20 years ago it was a good idea. But not now, consider the construction timeframe is 10-15 years away at best, they'd be better of investing 8 billion on a public fleet of autonomous vehicles.

8 billion buys 250,000 autonomous vehicles. If each vehicle averages three people per trip, and six trips per day that's 4.5 million individual journeys per day. And that's door to door service.

It's scalable (you don't need to buy 250,000 cars on day one). The ROI is much quicker too, start small, use the income generated to expand, rather than borrowing 8 billion and saddling all taxpayers with the cost.

It has redundancy, if a car breaks down enroute there are 249,999 others available to pickup the slack.

Sounds good to me! :) I agree that what our government is doing is nuts.

[Shane]

Our local government is currently in the process of spending upwards of $8 billion dollars to build a light rail line that will only really benefit a minority of people if it's ever actually completed.

This is just bonkers, sure 20 years ago it was a good idea. But not now, consider the construction timeframe is 10-15 years away at best, they'd be better of investing 8 billion on a public fleet of autonomous vehicles.

8 billion buys 250,000 autonomous vehicles. If each vehicle averages three people per trip, and six trips per day that's 4.5 million individual journeys per day. And that's door to door service.

It's scalable (you don't need to buy 250,000 cars on day one). The ROI is much quicker too, start small, use the income generated to expand, rather than borrowing 8 billion and saddling all taxpayers with the cost.

It has redundancy, if a car breaks down enroute there are 249,999 others available to pickup the slack.

Yes, but that doesn't do a lot about this:

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_9F9_RUESS2E/S7tbclwxiPI/AAAAAAAACmw/uI1bCpNuKNA/s800/picoftheday0012-space-60people.jpg

A fleet of autonomous minibuses could work to fill in the gaps, but in larger cities, the heavy lifting will continue to be done by trains, trams/streetcars and buses, because they can carry far more people.

Why else are cities around the world building/expanding metro systems?

My impression is that governments seem to favor massive centralized construction projects over decentralized solutions to the same problem, maybe because politicians get bigger kickbacks from large construction companies than they would from many individual autonomous car owners?

[Shane]

Maybe the effort to use networks and smart phones to summon cars ought to be used to build spontaneous carpools. I need to go downtown, who is already on their way downtown and would like to have their expenses covered by picking up a few passengers along the way?

^+1, Even if a driver only picked up one passenger on his way to work or wherever, that would cut the number of cars on the road in half. If a driver picked up 2 passengers, that would cut the number of cars on the road down by 2/3. Rather than building massive new infrastructure projects, governments could think of creative ways to nudge citizens in the direction of using car pools, maybe by giving discounts on tolls to use highways based on how many people are in the car and maybe giving discounts on parking to people who arrive with a full car...

Also - the idea of rent out your self-driving car unsupervised - who would want to do that without vetting the passengers? I've given rides to friends I like who fiddle with the radio too much, slam the doors too hard, run the windows up and down out of boredom, etc. One friend that I'll never forget nearly burned the window motor up in my brand new car b/c he kept idly clicking the window switch in the up direction and the window was already up. Who does that to a person's new car? (year and years ago) When I realized what he was doing I silently reached over and locked out the windows (child lock button).

No way I'd pay $50K for a self-driving car and then "loan it out" to strangers - if they were unsupervised.

Thousands of people, all over the world, are renting out their houses and apartments to strangers on Airbnb, homeaway, vrbo, etc. Sometimes there are problems, but those companies have systems in place in which owners of properties rate tenants and vice versa. Generally, vehicles are much less valuable than homes and apartments, so it seems like there would be less concern renting out a car than a house.

Maybe autonomous vehicles could come equipped with cameras inside to monitor what riders are doing? If a vehicle came back damaged in any way, owners could review the vehicle's internal surveillance camera footage to see who did it and then require that that person pay to fix it and/or give him a poor rating, so that other owners would be less likely to rent to him in the future...

[Shane]

This article, The Self-Driving Urban Nirvana Fallacy, presents an alternative view of the future of self driving vehicles.

The author believes that a more likely future scenario is that individuals will continue to own their own vehicles, but that after their self-driving cars drop them off at the office in the morning, the vehicles will set off on their own to run errands for the owner, stopping at the dry cleaners, the supermarket, picking up kids after school, etc., and then come to pick up the owners at the end of their work day with bags of groceries, prescriptions, kids, etc., all loaded up in the vehicle and ready to head home. It's an interesting alternative vision, IMO.

[Metric Mouse]

This article, The Self-Driving Urban Nirvana Fallacy, presents an alternative view of the future of self driving vehicles.

The author believes that a more likely future scenario is that individuals will continue to own their own vehicles, but that after their self-driving cars drop them off at the office in the morning, the vehicles will set off on their own to run errands for the owner, stopping at the dry cleaners, the supermarket, picking up kids after school, etc., and then come to pick up the owners at the end of their work day with bags of groceries, prescriptions, kids, etc., all loaded up in the vehicle and ready to head home. It's an interesting alternative vision, IMO.

Thanks for the alternative view. I hadn't seen this article.

[dilinger]

I think it car ownership will go down - but what if you want to go to the mountains or beach with the kids, or pickup several pieces of lumber and paint at Home Depot, or other bulky items.  It gets pretty expensive to rent a car or use something like Car-to-Go if you want to go hiking or mt. biking.

I live 4 miles from Home Depot.  I bike there for lumber and paint.  The only time I ever rent a truck or trailer is when I need lots of really big stuff, like 20 sheets of plywood or 1000 lbs of flooring.  And let's be honest, I'm not about to fit that stuff in a normal car; I'd be renting or borrowing a truck for that stuff either way.  I also live in a hilly city (Seattle), with no e-assist on my bike.  Throw in an e-assist or consider a flatter city, and HD runs would be downright easy for most people with a bike, given safe/inviting routes.

8ft long grounding rods and trim? Not a problem. I recently carried some 10ft long PVC conduit for replacing my meter base, but I can't find pics of it.  Same setup, though.

400sf of cork underlayment (around 50 lbs each)?  Again, not a problem.

Random paint, drywall mud, and other stuff?  Easy.  Best part is, at big box stores you can just take a bike in with you and use it instead of a shopping cart.  Much nicer than having to transfer stuff between your shopping cart and your car later on.

Those boxes are filled with 150 lbs of metal and leather stools.  In hindsight they were a mistake (cat claws + leather = fail), but at least they kinda look nice.

It's so easy hauling this stuff on a bike.  Often I won't even bother with the proper cargo bike and I'll just use my regular road bike.  A can of paint or a bag of joint compound is no problem with a decent rack and pannier system.

[Scandium]

Our local government is currently in the process of spending upwards of $8 billion dollars to build a light rail line that will only really benefit a minority of people if it's ever actually completed.

This is just bonkers, sure 20 years ago it was a good idea. But not now, consider the construction timeframe is 10-15 years away at best, they'd be better of investing 8 billion on a public fleet of autonomous vehicles.

8 billion buys 250,000 autonomous vehicles. If each vehicle averages three people per trip, and six trips per day that's 4.5 million individual journeys per day. And that's door to door service.

It's scalable (you don't need to buy 250,000 cars on day one). The ROI is much quicker too, start small, use the income generated to expand, rather than borrowing 8 billion and saddling all taxpayers with the cost.

It has redundancy, if a car breaks down enroute there are 249,999 others available to pickup the slack.

Yes, but that doesn't do a lot about this:

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_9F9_RUESS2E/S7tbclwxiPI/AAAAAAAACmw/uI1bCpNuKNA/s800/picoftheday0012-space-60people.jpg

A fleet of autonomous minibuses could work to fill in the gaps, but in larger cities, the heavy lifting will continue to be done by trains, trams/streetcars and buses, because they can carry far more people.

Why else are cities around the world building/expanding metro systems?

My impression is that governments seem to favor massive centralized construction projects over decentralized solutions to the same problem, maybe because politicians get bigger kickbacks from large construction companies than they would from many individual autonomous car owners?

Does everything have to be a conspiracy these days? There are over a billion trips on the London underground per year, and almost 6 million rides per day in NYC. If those people switched to self-driving cars nobody would get to work ever. We need both.

[Metric Mouse]

Our local government is currently in the process of spending upwards of $8 billion dollars to build a light rail line that will only really benefit a minority of people if it's ever actually completed.

This is just bonkers, sure 20 years ago it was a good idea. But not now, consider the construction timeframe is 10-15 years away at best, they'd be better of investing 8 billion on a public fleet of autonomous vehicles.

8 billion buys 250,000 autonomous vehicles. If each vehicle averages three people per trip, and six trips per day that's 4.5 million individual journeys per day. And that's door to door service.

It's scalable (you don't need to buy 250,000 cars on day one). The ROI is much quicker too, start small, use the income generated to expand, rather than borrowing 8 billion and saddling all taxpayers with the cost.

It has redundancy, if a car breaks down enroute there are 249,999 others available to pickup the slack.

Yes, but that doesn't do a lot about this:

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_9F9_RUESS2E/S7tbclwxiPI/AAAAAAAACmw/uI1bCpNuKNA/s800/picoftheday0012-space-60people.jpg

A fleet of autonomous minibuses could work to fill in the gaps, but in larger cities, the heavy lifting will continue to be done by trains, trams/streetcars and buses, because they can carry far more people.

Why else are cities around the world building/expanding metro systems?

My impression is that governments seem to favor massive centralized construction projects over decentralized solutions to the same problem, maybe because politicians get bigger kickbacks from large construction companies than they would from many individual autonomous car owners?

Does everything have to be a conspiracy these days? There are over a billion trips on the London underground per year, and almost 6 million rides per day in NYC. If those people switched to self-driving cars nobody would get to work ever. We need both.

Excellent point. Automated vehicles would only have a relatively small change on how people in large cities get around.