Thanks
@Dr. J good food for thought
the car itself is likely to last much longer (3x ?) than a conventional car.
I expect that an electric car has many more miles "lifetime" than an ICE (and needs far less maintenance), but if it is doing 5x the miles (might well be 15x the miles, maybe more?), per day, because utilisation is increased dramatically, it ill wear out 5x quicker (i.e. wear out at probably a higher mileage than an average self-owned car achieves, but at a younger age). Thus it will be replaced "sooner". Maybe the overall fleet is dramatically smaller if everyone uses ride-hail?, but we still need enough vehicles for peak-time travel etc., and I can't quite get my head around the maths! but the replacement-rate for this higher-mileage, but smaller, fleet looks like being substantial - and perhaps not much less (once things settle down) that current car production - my guess is that my current car has a 15 year life (10-20K miles p.a. = 150K-300K miles), and a 24/7 ride-hail car only manages 5 years (100K miles p.a?. = 500K miles)
Many people can't drive right now: underage, disabled, very old, for some examples. These folks make up a significant part of the population, and they are mostly new consumers for TaaS.
I have no feel for how large that audience is, but it doesn't seem "big" to me - I am probably missing something?.
Clearly all that audience could, currently, take a taxi (I don't see an autonomous vehicle being more appropriate as a means of travel, although no doubt it will easier to get a nonstandard TaaS than a specialist Taxi at present - better density of such edge-condition vehicles - I, for one, won't be owning a People Carrier for the couple of journeys a month I use it on ... so those get shared within the local community).
I can see that some of them will not be able to afford the current Taxi price and if/when price drops they are then a buyer, But solely based on people that are impacted by that price-point doesn't feel to me to be a huge increase in (overall) journeys. For people who currently own a car they will still travel to work, and back, each day - they haven't got an opportunity to "travel more", and (to me) seems like they are the majority.
I can send my kid in a TaaS, instead of driving them there (and coming back again empty, and then going to fetch the little critter again later!), and whilst that's a gain of time for me, its actually a pair of (empty) drives less. Currently I would use a Taxi for that (if I didn't want to take them), or they would catch the bus, so doesn't seem like a change in journey-numbers.
I can see that more people may travel, more cheaply, if they ride-share, which TaaS is very likely to encourage, with a price saving, but that too doesn't equate to "more vehicles/journeys" of course.
self-driving has the potential to completely change the relationship of car storage vs. other elements of real estate
I'm interested in opinions about how this might change, in particular inner city car parks.
Let's say I use TaaS for my commute, and I'm the last person that vehicle has to carry during peak time. Where does that vehicle go to park? If it is "out of town" its going to clog up the roads on its journey (and use fuel, although maybe electricity will be abundant and that will be a non-issue). The alternative is that it just parks in one of the existing car parks. I definitely cannot get my head around "how many" vehicles might need that facility.
Perhaps everyone that "goes to the shops" for a few hours during the day will use TaaS such that it will be in equilibrium and not need to park at all, so I imagine this to be a commuter problem only - i.e; what to do with all the vehicles that are only needed for the commuting "load".
There being NO cars in residential neighbourhoods will be wonderful. We have lots of urban areas which were built long before cars were owned at the rate of "several per house". A large proportion of town areas have no off-road parking, so those streets will no longer be clogged with parked cars. We also have a problem that people convert their front garden to hard-standing, and then park there. That has caused problems with storm drains being under-sized for heavy rain due to the extra/changed rain run-off (i.e. no longer absorbed into soil). Maybe people will take up gardening again and the price of X-Box will collapse?
In UK I'm not sure what percentage of people actively use their garages (for cars), I think the majority are used to store "stuff". We don't have issues with extremes of temperature, or animals that want to eat their way into a car, here ... but for sure a building-opportunity for the conversion of garages no longer needed for cars.
