My initial thoughts about self-driving cars was that they would be less bad for the environment, thanks to more people being able to share one car - but the more likely scenario will be opposite: convoys of cars with one sleeping person in each.
Prompting a human that is also driving to make a 3 block detour is pretty hard to do safely. Prompting a passenger to see if they will take a 3 block detour to save cost is not so hard to do safely.
The self driving vehicles would also be reporting available ride shares to people looking to make trips.
You'd pay a subscription for a certain level of car service (time responsiveness, cargo capacity, comfort level). Maybe you'd get a discount for scheduling your commute a week in advance.
The # of cars on the road might be the same, but the amount of resources we would consume as a society would be lower. Or maybe it would be the same, but the flexible model would allow scenarios that weren't previously possible (e.g., your child could "drive" to school without you).
Also if your car is able to drop you off, it can be a shared resource when you don't need it.
> Once cars are autonomous, it makes it drastically simpler to carpool/rideshare or even pick up and drop off riders that may share the same or partial route as you.
I don't see how it is drastically simpler. Yes the logistics would be easier. There still needs to be an infrastructure for identification of passengers and dispatch of vehicles that is completely independent of what is driving the vehicles themselves.
> Also if your car is able to drop you off, it can be a shared resource when you don't need it.
Assuming I want my car shuttling other people around, particularly when I'm not in it.
> Prompting a human that is also driving to make a 3 block detour is pretty hard to do safely. Prompting a passenger to see if they will take a 3 block detour to save cost is not so hard to do safely.
True, but the bigger issue is, will the current occupant of the vehicle ever say yes?
> The self driving vehicles would also be reporting available ride shares to people looking to make trips.
Somebody could already do this with human-driven cars.
> To me, it seems like the incentives to own a car may not be so great once self-driving taxis are available, especially in the city. No need to worry about parking, insurance, maintainence, or gas.
How is this different than human-driven cars? Do you really think cabbie salary is enough of a driver in the pricing of taxis now that shared car services will suddenly become attractive once they are eliminated?
I pretty much agree with y'all on the technical barriers being overcome, but I think y'all and others seriously underestimate the sociological barriers that would need to be overcome to make this a reality on a large scale. Maybe I don't want to pick up random strangers on my way to work. Maybe I don't want to add five minutes to my commute to pick someone else up. Maybe I don't want other people in my car.
The reason these shared car services don't really exist today has little to do with who or what is actually driving the vehicles and quite a bit to do with the nature of our society. You can't change that by just building a fleet of autonomous, on-demand cars.
The slower your drive, the higher a percentage the taxi driver will account for.
Another site mentions that 2/3 of the taxi fare is going towards gas + driver pay: http://work.chron.com/much-fare-taxi-drivers-keep-22871.html
It sounds like self-driving cars could lower costs by 30% - 60% just from labor savings.
Which is almost certainly not enough to drive the radical changes in car ownership behavior that many people seem to assume will happen. To be sure with a human driver you probably need to also account for utilization rates and returning to their starting point.
I've never been quite able to square the rates of things like Zipcar with taxi/Uber. Given cabbie salaries, it seems they should be closer--at least in places that don't have medallion systems that really skew things.
I don't think anyone expects it to be drastically simpler overnight, but when you look at the value proposition there is every reason to expect that someone will figure it out, package it, and sell it as a service.
Several major automakers are working on this, as well as Uber, Lyft, and a number of startups.
I do think it will be an iterative process where the first few attempts may backfire, and I do think that there will still be a large number of people who want a non-shared car; On the other hand there may also be a very large number of people who would love to have a "free" car that other people get to use when they are not using it.
I agree there are also lots of people that won't set the car to prompt them with questions about picking someone else up.
Maybe you're right and currently self-driving cars doesn't offer much more than the current human-driven cars; however, I don't think sociological barriers come into play as much in this scenario (beside the general concept of a self-driving car).
People are already doing this with their houses (Airbnb). Why not their cars?
Although, I'm not arguing whether self-driving cars will be a net good or bad from an environmental standpoint, I'm not sure.