The intent is to eventually make this available to own
It seems to make much more sense to have a fleet owned and operated by a corporation. I actually doubt that any company that achieves proper self-driving will sell vehicles. Renting makes much more money, and corporations like money. Do you see Google selling their search engine as software that you can deploy on-premise? Do you see Amazon selling the internet store software? Microsoft was selling Windows and Office, and what do we see? They are trying to move as many customers as they can to the rent model. Logitech mentioned subscription for a mouse.
Nobody will sell self-driving cars, if they can make them.
I think its much more likely that we see premium cars for purchase with L2 and advanced safety features at no additional charge and a yearly subscription model for L3/L4 like we see with hands-free and L3 tech from Ford, GM, and Mercedes right now. Even so Ford now offers a one-time purchase option for Blue Cruise so maybe consumers are going to push back on that model as well.
Ideally the internet could be host to actual marketplaces, versus the up-in-the-cloud data-keepd that dictate to the down-below dwellers.
They did, until pretty recently.
People are going to say that if they own it they should be able to mod it as they please, is that actually practical with a self driving car? What if they mod it in some way that makes it dangerous? Who's liable?
There's a whole host of issues like this and most of them go away completely if you can't buy a self driving car but you can rent it per ride. Plus, if they do run it as a taxi service I think they can iterate everything from hardware, software and even infrastructure that supports it much faster than if they're selling it.
I think google will be content to run a taxi service and let others sell self driving cars if and when they catch up because honestly it's a better business than outright selling cars.
People also use vehicles as cargo carriages, not simply human transport devices. I know I don't always immediately unload my vehicle when I transport things, sometimes it gets stored there. Sometimes the load time and the unload time don't even make sense to do back to back. Sometimes I load something knowing I will unload it next week. Some things I just carry around with me on the off chance I might need them while out and about. Anyway, there's a lot of nuance to this type of change and why owning a car might still make sense for a lot of people.
3-4 are kid activities sports/birthdays/play dates (we only have 1 kid but he’s a busy guy!)
2 weekly dog grooming appointment (doodle!) have to drop her off then pick her up later, so it’s counts as 2
2 we eat out twice on Saturday and once Sunday
Rest are other social, family visits, or hobby activities along with a plethora of random errands; groceries, home center, and a long tail of specialty stores that are individually irregular but always a few every weekend (pool supplies, makeup for my wife, post office/UPS, etc.)
We shop online so mostly avoid malls and department stores unless it’s more of a boutique thing or something we want to see before buying. We don’t do food delivery or groceries unless it’s just curbside thing which is another trip. I hate the online/app shopping experience for things like groceries.
Sometimes I just drive half a mile to get a Big Gulp fountain drink or an ice cream cone with the kid. I could walk or bike, but it’s car centric and 100F outside.
It’s also a huge range and varies a lot by season. We certainly have some weekends we barely leave the house.
> a long tail of specialty stores that are individually irregular but always a few every weekend (pool supplies, makeup for my wife, post office/UPS, etc.)
I always save stuff like that up so I don't need to make an extra trip out
Hobby time has suffered the most. My philosophy is spend as much time as possible with my kid while he actually wants to be around me. So that’s my hobby now. But I’m also a nocturnal person so I do hobbies from 9pm-3am. Helps that I have a low stress low demand job. I work about 30 hours a week and can do that any time I want. Some weeks I’ll do a 2 on / 5 off schedule. Or work a lot for a month then take the summer off. I realized that’s a luxury most people don’t have.
I do the bulk purchase thing too on lots of stuff but still it seems like there’s always a few places we need to go on any given weekend.
Plus lets be honest Americans love their cars, a lot of them are never going to give them up on the principle of the thing, but their kids are likely to reach an age where they would need to learn to drive and just not see the point, self driving robo taxi's will be good enough.
I have a hard time (for myself, not doubting you) imagining that many things to do.
I’m in the suburban core of Dallas Texas. The area that was originally developed in 1950s as suburbs. It’s very much considered “in town” now as the area has sprawled greatly since. But it’s still very neighborhood-like. Most of my trips are 10 minutes or less from my house of total drive time.
Before having a kid I never understood the busy parenting thing, but I’m actually finding myself want to be at all the things and it’s a huge social thing that nothing since college/high school compares too. Meeting new friends as an adult is actually very easy if you have kids and want to be involved in things.