[gambiting]

>>In the long term, most people won’t have private vehicles

You see, I don't believe this point at all, and I'm yet to see a convincing argument why it would be true. It would already be cheaper for me to take an Uber to work rather than own my car yet the convenience of having your own personal space that is mine far outweighs the savings. Also anyone who has children and knows the insane amount of stuff that babies require would laugh at the mere idea. Autonomous vehicles can be fanciest robo taxies(and they won't be, if normal taxies are anything to go by) but the hassle of moving stuff from and out of each for a baby each time one arrives(car, not a baby) would drive you mad.

[88]

I don’t imagine private vehicle ownership will disappear entirely. It will just become even more of a luxury than it already is.

When autonomous vehicles halve the cost of an Uber/Lyft journey, many more people will weigh up the costs/benefits of private vehicle ownership and decide it’s not for them.

Different services will compete based in part on the luxuriousness of the interiors and the frequency at which they are cleaned.

As private vehicle ownership becomes rarer, so to will parking, particularly on-street parking. People will look back and think it odd that we dedicated vast public spaces to the storage of private property.

Finally, as private vehicle owners become a minority group, they will become an easy target for even more punitive taxation and regulations which will see the group shrink even further still.

[gambiting]

>>When autonomous vehicles halve the cost of an Uber/Lyft journey, many more people will weigh up the costs/benefits of private vehicle ownership and decide it’s not for them.

That's kind of my point - this won't happen, because Uber is already at rock bottom prices. For me to take it to work is about £10. That can't cover anything about the journey and is clearly heavily subsidised by Uber. That cost isn't going down to £5, it's just not going to happen. Just like when people predict that since flash memory prices keep falling down, you will be able to buy a 1TB pendrive for 5 cents. That's not going to happen because you do have the minimum costs of production and transport that aren't going anywhere even if the chips themselves are free.

And if people aren't taking Uber instead of their own cars for these frankly ridiculous prices then I don't see why they would simply because the cars drive themselves.

>>Different services will compete based in part on the luxuriousness of the interiors and the frequency at which they are cleaned.

The same principle should apply to taxis and it just doesn't. I live in a medium size UK city and every company, every brand, has crappy cars. Only price matters, nothing else and Uber Lux is not an option because you're waiting 40-50 minutes for one, that's just not acceptable.

[ogre_codes]

> That's kind of my point - this won't happen, because Uber is already at rock bottom prices.

Not really. There are a lot of places to optimize the cost of an Uber competitor. If you have electric self driving cars that pick people up, maintenance and fuel are much less expensive and you aren't paying for a driver. Most of these would only need a 50-100 mile range and could fuel up between passengers.

Full self driving cars is a few years out, but having a service that has defined roads it can travel on is likely possible in the fairly near term. Waymo is already doing this to some extent.

[gambiting]

>>Full self driving cars is a few years out

More like 50+ years for something that is actually allowed on most roads commercially, but sure. I just don't think the margins are there. Uber already subsidizes the human cost.

[ogre_codes]

It's not 50+ years out on defined routes as I suggested above. More like 5-10. Waymo is already doing this in one location legally.