1. You have to change oil, tires and make all the other repairs.
2. You have to pay for insurance.
3. You have to pay for parking. In SF parking alone can cost you $100/month (I mean if you don't own a house with a garage (which will take you back $1 million); I don't think most rental apartments come with parking spaces so you either have to stress out about finding a parking space for the night close to where you live or pay for parking spot).
4. Parking while driving in the city. If you need to drive somewhere and stay there, you have to find parking, which, in SF, is not easy to do. A rented car just drives you to where you need to go and then goes of to pick up the next customer. When you want to get back, you summon another car.
5. What if you want go skiing for the weekend and need snow tires? Would you rather put snow tires yourself or summon a car that has them?
I'm in SF and I already use my car so rarely that its battery died on me. I do ZipCar but it doesn't cover a lot of scenarios that, while not frequent, do happen and the requirement that you need to return the car to where you took it from makes it non starter for short trips within city.
If there was a service where I could just summon a car anytime, it would be cheap enough to work as a taxi replacement but also for longer trips, I wouldn't buy a car.
Cars are much more than solutions to a transport problem. They are status symbols, personal identities, an extension of ones castle. It will take a very long time, perhaps never, for most people to adopt a taxi/public transport route.
I'd very happily own a driverless car. Even better will be when I take it out of driverless mode in the rural roads. It would be able to take itself to get its oil/ires serviced,to be recharged and to park somewhere cheap and out of the way. Bring it on.
Cars are status symbols in large part because they are advertised as such. If people buy fewer cars you will see a lot less car advertising which will directly reduce the status symbol effect.
1. You have to change oil, tires and make all the other repairs.
2. You have to pay for insurance.
3. You have to pay for parking. In SF parking alone can cost you $100/month (I mean if you don't own a house with a garage (which will take you back $1 million); I don't think most rental apartments come with parking spaces so you either have to stress out about finding a parking space for the night close to where you live or pay for parking spot).
4. Parking while driving in the city. If you need to drive somewhere and stay there, you have to find parking, which, in SF, is not easy to do. A rented car just drives you to where you need to go and then goes of to pick up the next customer. When you want to get back, you summon another car.
5. What if you want go skiing for the weekend and need snow tires? Would you rather put snow tires yourself or summon a car that has them?
I'm in SF and I already use my car so rarely that its battery died on me. I do ZipCar but it doesn't cover a lot of scenarios that, while not frequent, do happen and the requirement that you need to return the car to where you took it from makes it non starter for short trips within city.
If there was a service where I could just summon a car anytime, it would be cheap enough to work as a taxi replacement but also for longer trips, I wouldn't buy a car.