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Comment by jdhn | Hacker News Reader

The title should really be "Owning a Car For City Dwellers Will Soon Be as Quaint as Owning a Horse". I live in a suburb in the Midwest, and taking an Uber or Lyft to work every day is simply not fiscally wise, even taking into account insurance, maintenance, and gas.

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Hell, I live in a suburb in a pretty major tech hub with a 15 minute commute from work and even then it doesn’t make fiscal sense to get rid of my vehicle. Commuting via rideshare just to work and back (without even taking into account the grocery trips etc that would be required without a car) would cost me about $300 a month. That’s being extremely conservative, assuming no surges and minimal tipping, and assuming I do literally nothing but commute back and forth. My insurance, fuel and routine maintenance on my vehicle doing everything in my life (not just commuting to and from work, but also shopping and whatever recreational activities on weekends) is still less than that.

I agree that a renting car by the hour is not fiscally responsible, but neither is owning a car in the really long run. I do have a beautiful bikepath all the way to work, and being carless saves more than $300 per month, sure I spend it on other things, but I buy time with friends and family using that money.

To a large degree that's because the cost is far higher to pay a human to do the driving.

In a world of self-driving cars, more of them can be stations geographically close to where they may be needed - without having to pay for a human driver.

So they will become both cheaper and easier/quicker to use than existing ride-share services. That will change the calculus for many many people - but not necessarily everyone, of course.

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