Here’s the thing about the camera argument: if the new-fangled camera doesn’t work out, you’re out a few hundred bucks. How risk averse are you going to be when $30K is on the line?
The $30k will have already been spent though, right? When the ride-calling service is extremely economical, it will be a sub-$10 decision. You'll be thinking "I can take this Uber for $4, or I have to drive my car and pay for parking/valet, get gas on the way."
Where I live, registration and insurance for each car is $1,500+/year.
First, people won't need their second or third car. We use ours 2-3 days a week at most. It's barely worth the registration and insurance now.
People growing up purely with on-call cars may never buy their own - that's an entire generation coming through thinking like that. Once we're out of the commuting workforce, we might ditch our primary cars and instead get everything delivered and use on-call cars for social engagements.
I think those first stages of dropping the second car will start to happen in the next few years.
I don’t know that Uber will take down the to grocery store for $4, let alone get me anywhere useful like work. Probably someday, but not today, not in the eight years the author predicts, and probably not within my lifetime (middle-aged oldster here). I think the author’s mistake was applying iPhone timelines to cars. What the article says will happen, of that I am confident. But I think the author is off by an order of magnitude in many cases (like oil companies going out of business).
