[apendleton]

> Really? Since when has making using something more convenient reduced ownership of it?

These will be more convenient, but also dramatically more expensive, and _that_ certainly reduces the ownership of things.

> the mean number of cars on the road at any given time would seem like it would only go up

That's orthogonal to the question of level of ownership -- these can both be true simultaneously.

And it may even be the case that the number of cars on the road goes down. The idea would be that if these services are convenient enough for more people to forego owning their own vehicle in favor of using a fleet, the economics on a per-trip basis would change: now, for car owners, owning a car has a high fixed cost and very low marginal cost per trip, so once you've bought the car, registered it, insured it, etc., you're incentivized to use it for as many trips as possible to recoup your investment. Using a fleet service, you would have low/no fixed costs and comparatively higher per-trip costs, meaning that for some trips, it might be cheaper to take transit, bikeshare, etc. A lot would come down to the specifics of pricing, though, so it's hard to predict with any certainty.

[aidenn0]

> These will be more convenient, but also dramatically more expensive, and _that_ certainly reduces the ownership of things.

Yes making them dramatically more expensive would reduce ownership. I suspect they will be expensive at first, but can't think of any reasons they won't get cheaper with time.

>> the mean number of cars on the road at any given time would seem like it would only go up

> That's orthogonal to the question of level of ownership -- these can both be true simultaneously.

It's not orthogonal, but they aren't completely tied together. Per-car utilization would have to go up for them both to be true.

> And it may even be the case that the number of cars on the road goes down. The idea would be that if these services are convenient enough for more people to forego owning their own vehicle in favor of using a fleet, the economics on a per-trip basis would change: ...

Again this seems to presuppose that self-driving cars will require a significantly higher capital outlay (or perhaps that cities not named "New York" will make parking significantly more burdensome, though that could happen without self-driving cars). If a new self-driving car costs a few thousand more than a non-self driving car, and enough people buy new ones that a thriving used market occurs, the outcome would instead be to move people from "Of course I take transit to work; it's only a bit longer and I can read" towards using cars.

[iudqnolq]

Making all cars more expensive would reduce car ownership. Adding extra expensive cars while keeping constant (or even reducing*) the price of cars at the bottom won't.

*if everyone suddenly wants to buy the amazing new self-serving cars then that could effect the used car market

[apendleton]

Again, I feel like there are so many what-ifs that it's hard to say for certain. If it were to turn out that AVs were dramatically less likely to kill people than human-driven cars (seems not to be the case with current technology, but humans suck at driving, so it's not inconceivable), maybe there would be regulatory/legislative disincentives that would make human car ownership harder or more expensive.

[iudqnolq]

Sure, if the government implements regulation to dissuade non-self-driving car ownership then car ownership will decrease. But that's entirely tangential. If the government decides taking cars away from poor people to reduce accidents is worthwhile they could do that tomorrow.

[lelanthran]

> These will be more convenient, but also dramatically more expensive, and _that_ certainly reduces the ownership of things.

Only if you force everyone to use self-driving cars exclusively. No one sane is proposing that.