work? why would anyone go to work?
Depending on your job it might be just
to watch the robots?
You get up, open the front door and there is a nice clean, warm car waiting for you outside. You get in, select your favourite film show, eat your
breakfast, get dressed?! While it smoothly, quietly takes you to work dropping you right outside the office door. No need to park the car it has other
customers jobs to do and anyway you fancy a blue one on the way home…
Home time. With your app the car is automatically called so you walk out the office door and step straight into your nice warm blue car, after you
have had a snooze you are stirred by the car telling you to “wake up!” at the front door before it vanishes off into the night.
The car (one of just a few hundred) you don’t own, don’t service, don’t park, don’t pay insurance, petrol or road tax for. Never have to charge,
polish or hoover the seats. You never get parking or speeding fines either. None of that to bother with. Your also 99% less likely to die in a car
crash!
You just pay a subscription for the miles you do, that’s it…no fuss. You want a big car to take the kids to the park, just order that, you want a van
no issue, any car any feature, colour or style just use the app…
How many people does this appeal to? Probably 95% of current car owners or more. After all, already most lease or rent their cars. We may not like
them much just now, but the electric autonomous car makes huge business sense. Cars are much more expensive than in the past and hugely complex
rolling computers, but the car company has them running all day, they make a fortune.
Yes cars are now far too expensive for most people to own and who would want to anyway? Pay for a car that isn’t moving, that’s crazy.
I can see your line of thinking and I agree that paying for a stationary car outside your home or place of work seems pointless.
I would counter though that
1. Vehicle manufacturers need to shift vast numbers of cars to fund themselves.
2. Governments need the income from fuel tax to fund themselves.
I'd also suggest that if public transport was improved over what's currently on offer then it would be a more viable option for many.
Certainly for the work commute. As someone who's been unable to drive for 5 years now due to epilepsy I feel pretty well qualified to pass
opinion on public transport.
When I built my MK Indy and had the option to drive I was guilty of going for a drive just for the sake of it. I enjoy it!
The personal freedom driving brings to many people will be a difficult thing to persuade people away from.
What you propose seems to me like autonomous taxis (i.e. driverless taxis). Again for regular commute type journies not a bad idea and we may well
find ourselves in that kind of scenarion in years to come.
" quietly takes you to work "
work? why would anyone go to work?
Depending on your job it might be just
to watch the robots?
quote:
Pay for a car that isn’t moving, that’s crazy.
If we have self driving cars that spend their time between carrying passengers moving about empty to get to the next pickup I would have thought that
at the peak times there would need to be *even more* vehicles moving about on the road than there are currently. I mean - ideally the car would drop
off, then find it's next passenger fairly close by. Realistically commuting into a lot of towns/cities is made up of a big inflow of people in
the morning, and outflow in the evening. So the autonomous cars would have to do lots of 'heading back into town' empty in the
afternoon/evening and vice versa in the mornings - more vehicle miles per person journey than todays world, plus not sure the road network could
handle that?
I think we'll end up forced into a mixed solution like Nick suggests:
Within urban areas
Increased use of public transport - which more people are forced to use because regular car commuting into towns/cities is made more expensive and
becomes less common
Regular autonomous vehicle use for some people - but probably a luxury because of the costs. Or primarily used for buses and taxis / delivery vans /
tradespeople
In rural areas
More efficient and 'assisted' cars - but more akin to vehicles we have now, and the ownership models we have now.
Edit - oh, and of course the hobby petrol car scene will continue to rumble on healthily until we have at least a couple of generations who have never
seen one on the roads...
[Edited on 27/3/19 by jps]
Not having a car that you actually own causes a number of problems.
What happens when you have somewhere to go, but none are available as its a busy time or there's been a failure on the rail network?
Where do you keep stuff that you normally keep in the car, such as a coat and umbrella, in case the weather turns while you are out? What about
visiting a number of locations, doing some shopping at each and keeping what you have already bought in the car?
What happens when you call one and it arrives dirty inside or conversely where you need to transport stuff that you know will leave it messy and
you'll have to spend time cleaning (possibly not 'til the weekend though)?
What happens when 15 minutes before the shops close, you realise that you need something to finish making the meal that you have planned or that your
child needs for school the next morning and you haven't got a car sitting ready to go, but have to call one and wait for it to arrive?
Our car needs to be available pretty well instantly, usually has a fair bit of stuff that we want with us and is often used as storage space for
things that we temporarily need to rehouse for a day or two.
[Edited on 27/3/19 by SteveWalker]
I think jps has it right re the urban/rural split - I live in the middle of nowhere and most out our way have 2 cars, so could probably have 1 as
'current ownership' and one as 'dial up'. Of course the dial up would have to be able to get through a snowdrift without someone
to shovel the snow away, something most current cars can't manage.
I would imagine there will have to be a slight oversupply of cars built into the costing model to allow for ones which break down/arrive dirty etc. In
the case of over-demand I would imagine automatic car sharing would come into play - so the train breaks down, the scheduling system sees a big spike
in demand, but obviously when you try to book a car you will have to say where you are and where yo want to go so it will then be able to text/email
everyone in nearby cars going in the right direction asking if they mind a (paying) passenger.
I would imagine the cost per mile would be significantly less than a taxi as a lot of that cost is paying for the drivers time and there wont be one.
When you book or register with your 'supplier' I would imagine you would be able to select to share your ride if anyone wants to, and if
someone else wants to go the same way/share you would be prompted with how much that would extend your journey time and reduce your cost, so mileage
may actually end up cheaper than current car ownership, if you are prepared to share.
I could easily imagine that the car manufacturers, who are currently finance companies that happen to make cars, would become transport suppliers that
happen to make cars instead.
I would expect you have a contract with say ford, and a variety of 'packages', so in 'basic' they would send a fiesta, if you have
booked for one person to go to work, but on days when you want to transport dirty/large stuff you would ask for a transit, or for family holidays a
people carrier or mondeo etc. I would expect you could book a luxury package too, so you would sign up tot the service that suits you best. Fancy a
trip to Scotland for the weekend? book a people carrier and sleep during the 10 hr trip each way rather than the current endurance test.
I would imagine that when you book it instead of booking 'start location' to 'destination' you could also ask for 8am to 6pm
exclusive use if you wanted to shop and store stuff in the car, or have it for a weekend break where you might pop out etc.
I would be able to go out for dinner with the missus and we could both have a drink!
The key will be how the scheduling systems work to make efficient use of the cars and the road system (so the Ford system would need to share info
with the Honda/Merc/BMW etc systems) and to make car sharing easier during busy times (like morning getting into towns and evenings getting out). Most
cars going into towns have only one person in, so if you can get that to 2 or 3 the busy roads could disappear - you may have extra journey time to
pick up/drop off, but you haven't got to find a parking space, pay for parking and walk from it to your place of work.....
Another thought occurred to me that many manual jobs will become automated (robots) and many office jobs can already be done from home (an internet
connection and "the cloud"
. The net result could well be that work commute type travel becomes far less required and therefore the actual
need for personal vehicles becomes reduced.
Could be wishful thinking, but things change over time!
Haven't you all missed the point?
Doesn't matter if it never moves. That brand new Range Rover Sport sitting on the drive is a status symbol.
A tatty old Micra just doesn't cut the mustard with the neighbours.
Paul G
quote:
Originally posted by 907
Haven't you all missed the point?
Doesn't matter if it never moves. That brand new Range Rover Sport sitting on the drive is a status symbol.
A tatty old Micra just doesn't cut the mustard with the neighbours.
Paul G
quote:
I can see your line of thinking and I agree that paying for a stationary car outside your home or place of work seems pointless.
Sounds like hell. Let me off this train.
This Guy seems to share the same idea as the OP
Hugo Spowers Vision
Founder of Riversimple Cars who have produced a promising hydrogen fuelcell car.
Rasa Hydrogen Fuel cell car
[Edited on 29/3/19 by COREdevelopments]
quote:
Originally posted by David Jenkins
quote:
Originally posted by 907
Haven't you all missed the point?
Doesn't matter if it never moves. That brand new Range Rover Sport sitting on the drive is a status symbol.
A tatty old Micra just doesn't cut the mustard with the neighbours.
Paul G
As far as my wife and I are concerned, a large 4x4 is just a substitute for a small willy.
quote:
Originally posted by nick205
Have to say I share a pretty similar view on 4x4s really. Most of them seem to be driven on the road and rarely if ever see any actual 4x4 off road action. They're generally too heavy and fuel inefficient as well. Unless you really need to go off road with one I don't really see much point to them. There are usually better tow vehicles available as well that make better non-towing vehicles for the 95% of the time they're not towing.
quote:
Originally posted by SJ
quote:
I can see your line of thinking and I agree that paying for a stationary car outside your home or place of work seems pointless.
This whole forum is pretty much dedicated to people who have cars that sit there doing nothing most of the time!
btw I'm not suggesting all this is the way to go, more this appears the way things are going to go...
Given the right economic pressures things can change very rapidly.
Some of the indications to me that it is inevitably going to happen -
1) Governments now stating bans on combustion engines
2) Manufactures moving to EV only as IC emissions targets are so hard to achieve
3) Fuel & road duty prices rising
4) Autonomous cars now being let on the roads all round the world
5) Cars computers are already controlling the handling & auto braking, driving them is just the next step
6) EV drive trains becoming too complex to service even by dealers
7) More people lease and rent their cars than own, a trend that only seems to be rapidly increasing
8) Most people see their cars as just transport