You are right. However, I think I agree with the vision, too bad its Musk+Tesla. I do think in the end we won't each own a car.
It's so incredibly inefficient to have individually owned cars just rotting away on the side of the road and in car parks waiting for their owner.
It would be so much better for everyone if no one, except enthusiasts, would own a car. And you could just grab an "auto taxi" wherever you are within a few minutes instead. Perhaps someday...
I think Musk should be more bold in his vision here. What if instead of a cybercab that seats just two people, we could come up with an even bigger one that seats many people at once? And then maybe we could have it drive on a predictable, efficient route that covers multiple popular destinations, instead of just going from point A to point B. Has anyone considered building something like this?
Driving labor is a significant cost for running a taxi fleet, so automating it allows taxis to become much cheaper to operate. Taxis can charge higher fares than buses because people overwhelmingly prefer “going from point A to point B” over walking to, waiting for, and riding on buses.
Buses are already cheap and removing the cost of the driver would offer only a marginal reduction in cost.
They literally did this in the announcement for the cybercab. Look up the “Tesla Robovan”. It was clearly a proof of concept, but in theory it’s a good idea. Claimed to be able to seat 20 people.
part of the problem is wasted space and money in cities for parking (and, to a certain extent, gridlock). i do own an old, bottom of the line car which i drive rarely - mostly on weekends out of the city as i usually cylce or take public transport. so it often occupies a parking spot 24/7 for a week or longer. on-street parking takes away a lot of spaces that's urgently needed for bike lanes, bus/tram exclusive lanes, walking and green spaces.
there's a good option for car sharing in vienna (car2go), but that's mostly inner-city iirc, so not my use case.
i guess, car sharing wouldn't reduce grid lock but ride sharing would. i suspect, ride sharing would be more acceptable if it wasn't your own car.
It's so incredibly inefficient to have individually owned cars just rotting away on the side of the road and in car parks waiting for their owner.
It would be so much better for everyone if no one, except enthusiasts, would own a car. And you could just grab an "auto taxi" wherever you are within a few minutes instead. Perhaps someday...