Who will own these self-driving, electric cars? If you own one personally, it could drive you to work and back. A great experience, but parking it during the night and day is inefficient. The car could drive around other people during the 95% of the time you don’t use it.
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The trouble is: What if you decide to go home unexpectedly and the car is on the other side of town? Either your car is never allowed to go far away (inefficient) or you will end up taking another self-driving car. So why would you own one yourself in the first place then?
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Once you don’t drive in your own car anymore, you need access to a generic one anytime anywhere. That is the service car sharing platforms, like Uber, provide. They figure out how many people need a car when and where, and ensure there are enough cars to match it affordably.pic.twitter.com/RvfQVATj9A
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That still doesn’t answer the question who owns the car. One option is that private people invest in a self-driving car and make it available on these sharing platforms. Who maintains and cleans those cars though?
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Another option is that manufacturers or sharing platforms will own the cars, but it gets expensive fast. There are 260 million registered cars in the United States. If self-driving and sharing increases utilization from 5% to 75%, you need 18 million cars for the same usage.
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Replying to @thijsniks
But car usage is not evenly distributed throughout the day. Cars tend to be in use at about the same time, due to shared work and sleep schedules etc
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Replying to @dvdbllrd
Thijs Niks Retweeted Thijs Niks
We will see a higher carpooling rate, which should help us handle rush hourhttps://twitter.com/thijsniks/status/947114176656396288 …
Thijs Niks added,
Thijs Niks @thijsniksCar sharing platforms can cover off-peak hours with regular capacity, and peak hours through carpooling and supply positioning. Demand super peaks, like natural disaster evacuations, are a challenge though. Will that be solved through capacity redistribution between areas?Show this thread1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @thijsniks
A much less extreme statement of the effect than your original statement!
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Replying to @dvdbllrd
How is it less extreme? I expect sharing will allow us to have fewer cars overall, not fewer passenger miles
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Replying to @thijsniks
5% to 75% utilization is the extreme case, c'mon
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It might be. Doesn’t really matter, does it? We already go 10x if we go from 5% to 50%
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