Definitely two discussions here, maybe three... the progression of autonomous vehicles, the conversion from gasoline to electric, and the reduction in vehicle ownership as on-demand rentals improve.
I already think I addressed the software challenges being faced in reaching autonomy, which is a key component of reducing costs for on-demand vehicles. Given that, I also think that on-demand really has to be drastically cheaper than vehicle ownership, and vehicle ownership has to become a hardship. Otherwise, it won't happen. At least not in the "owning a car is 80% of how you express your status to your peers" mentality of the United States. I found an article from 2016 that states this:
The increase is slight: 9.1% of American households didn’t have a car in 2015, compared to 8.9% in 2010, a 0.2% change that represents about 500,000 households.0
OK, so it has begun to increase, but it has not been dramatic. Basically, the enlightened few that prefer bikes, mass-transit and on-demand cars have made the change, by choice. For that kind of thing to become mainstream, it not only has to be much less expensive to be on-demand, but it has to be
better. More convenient. Less expensive, and not just a little. Maybe even recognized as something "better" people do, so valid as a social cue.
I think the shift to electric will happen much faster than the switch to autonomous, on-demand, ownership-less driving. But even that has a lot of hurdles to cross. It's easy to look at a sedan and see it being replaced by electric. And with that example proven enough to go mainstream, other examples can follow. But it was already pointed out that gasoline has huge advantages over batteries. It's a factor faster to refill. You can put it in a gas can and refill almost instantly for all the other things we use gas for: lawn care, forestry, power tools, etc. Look at landscaping companies. How many do you see that have an electric fleet of mowers and weed trimmers? Are snow plows and road crews using electric machines? And can they stop in the middle of their work to recharge for 20+ minutes (one would presume much longer for a battery packed snow plow!)? Many people even have gasoline generators for making their own electricity when the infrastructure fails them... All of these things will have to shift to
majority electric before gasoline infrastructure starts to become less necessary, and can become sparse. Obviously we can envision a future of all-electric, autonomous tractor trailers, and once we move rapidly there, gas consumption will decrease quickly. But I don't believe we're going to see this happen rapidly, at least not for quite some time.
0After decades of decline, no-car households are becoming more common in the US