[maratc]

The futurologists think that most people would just stop buying cars altogether.

Once there is a self-driving (electric) car that you can order from your phone and that will — cheaply! — take you from point A to point B, the need in owning a car will (mostly) disappear.

The people would stop being car buyers. Instead, robo-taxi companies will buy most of the cars. For these, there would be no need in brands or marketing; some of them would just assemble and service their own fleets from readily-available parts, similar to how Amazon/Google/Microsoft self-assemble their own cloud servers (instead of buying them from Dell/HP).

Some people would still want to own their cars, like today some people own horses. They would be a negligible minority. There, it's likely that at least some of the manufacturers would be those who still don't exist today; they would disregard the no-longer-relevant mechanics (internal combustion engine, gearbox, etc.) and focus on overall end-user experience while utilizing readily-available parts.

[ThalesX]

I own a car, but I live my life as if I didn't to be honest, so I think the futurologists' claims might be actually here.

When I need a car, I rent it by the minute, $.17 for one minute, minimum fee of around $2. It's electric, it's usually filled (or if I do the filling for free I get a lot of points that I can use to get the car for a day), they're scattered all around the city and have parking paid with the municipality; they're insured and you just hop on and hop off where you need.

For when I need to make a road trip or something, I just rent out a larger truck from a rental company, and for how often I make them (a couple of times per year), it's really not such a big bang for my buck. I can get a small car for like $5 / day, or a larger one starting at $10.

So... I really don't see the benefit of owning my car at this point, it takes up real estate space, mental space, and it's outdated compared to what I usually drive.

[hctaw]

Speaking only for the US, the elephant in the room is that these services will only cover dense urban environments for a long time. While ~80% of our population are in "urban" areas according to the Census Bureau, there's a big difference between Los Angeles and Greensboro. I don't see private businesses expanding to the exurbs until the Government makes them.

[chefkoch]

I think this is only true for people living in densly populated areas. If you live somewhere where it takes the car more than x minutes to pick you up, people still have to own their own car.

[maratc]

That's where the majority of today's cars could end up :)

[baybal2]

> some of them would just assemble and service their own fleets from readily-available parts, similar to how Amazon/Google/Microsoft self-assemble their own cloud servers (instead of buying them from Dell/HP).

Amazon/Google/Microsoft don't assembly their own servers, rather than they buy servers directly from OEMs who were previously selling to Dell/HP

[JoeAltmaier]

That puts a double burden on infrastructure. Every car trip becomes 2 trips - one to your house, then one to your destination. It's hard to imagine that winning over car ownership, without some other powerful force involved.

[maratc]

That car can be Smart-sized: half as long. But imagine no parking space would be needed anymore.

[JoeAltmaier]

Roads are still roads though. And they get pretty full now. Imagine rush hour with twice the traffic.

[maratc]

A massive robo-taxi company is well prepared to put several people going to a same place in a single taxi. I expect the full robo-traffic to actually be less than the traffic of vehicles occupied by owner alone.

[JoeAltmaier]

It'll sure take lots of tricks like that to mitigate the huge downside. At some point it just becomes a bus route.