Shared robo cars will destroy car industry as we know it

Even if we could do by only this amount of cars ppl will own their own.

I did not see a timeline associated with the prediction that car ownership will go down by almost 100%. By 2050? Maybe, but I doubt it. A lot of sweeping, dramatic predictions have been made regarding the future that haven't come to fruition.

Will autonomous driving fleets impact the automotive industry as we know it? Certainly. But will it result in a catastrophic implosion of the industry overnight? Doubtful. I could see urban-dwellers and some early-adopters giving up their personal vehicles for a fully autonomous rideshare service, but many owners, assuming they have the financial means, will continue to own a private car, even if it is also self-driving. I don't know if I'm ready to give up my private vehicle.

Very interesting speculation. Some of what the writer predicts may well come to pass, but it likely will not happen nearly as rapidly as he predicts, and I think the percentage of people who will continue to own their own cars will be much higher than he forecasts.

It seems to me that it will depend on the limitations of the public autonomous fleet. If it will come in less than 10 minutes, can take me anywhere (and I mean everywhere not almost everywhere), or if I can override and drive it myself in the few cases that it can't autonomously drive somewhere, and the cost is reasonable, then it could happen really quickly. Cars are a HUGE expense and being able to eliminate that expense will be very attractive to lots of people.

The availability of taxis or Uber has some effect on who owns a car - but it hardly seems to be destroying the ownership of private vehicles. The only difference with autonomous cars would seem to be cost?

Also he seems to forget that the population of the world will plateau at 9 billion and that several billion people in Africa, Asia, South America who today could never afford a car will become affluent too.

The prediction is somewhat in line with Tony Seba: A drastically reduced number of automated shared cars will do the same amount of transportation as today's individually owned cars that are parked >95% of the time. Cities will do away with parking lots, highways will allow only autonomously driving vehicles.

See his keynote at Alt Cars Expo, 2014.

<irony>Yes, people are perfectly sensible when it comes to car ownership. Just look at how many people are already ditching individual car ownership in order to instead have a membership in a car pool sharing service.

Also, the P85 0-60 isn't quick enough so a lot of people upgraded to P85D</irony>

@Johan...see elsewhere on this forum about pickup truck ownership for example of rationality. </sarcasm> :smile:

A shared car is just like a rental car. You never know what you get, how it's been maintained (This is life or death in rural Northern Canada in the winter), whether it's filthy. (I've had many rental cars where the steering wheel stuck to my hands.) They could replace taxis and buses--especially around here where it takes over 80 minutes to go ten miles by bus.

Individually owned cars will eventually disappear. Autonomous autos enable vastly superior traffic flow. Initially there will be just a few autonomous cars. Then there will be autonomous only lanes. At that point people in cities will find the financials strongly in favor of cars as a service with rentals for the longer excursions. Then, that need will go away and cars as a service will slowly expand into the suburbs and then all over. Add in the increased reliability of electrics and you begin to talk a car market of around 10 million cars a year instead of 100. Already I find 18 year old less into cars than when I was 18. Yeah, they still love them but it seems more muted.

No way car ownership will go away in my lifetime.

I'm keeping my Teslas.

In the long term - less sure.
In the long term we will all be dead.

Shared robo cars would cost me a fortune in coats left in them. It will be like always driving a rental car (yuck).