Quote:
Originally Posted by cellsafemode
You're not going to buy them at all is the point. You're going to rent your transport and not care about the car at all, like you dont care about the model of plane you take when you travel. The added cost of batteries is absorbed easily by the higher utilization of all the vehicles since they're all no longer sitting idle and depreciating and taking up space but instead, always moving and doing work when they're not charging.
The bar of profitability / practicality is much higher when you aren't limited to the current way cars are purchased and used. Personal ownership requires cars to be cheap to fit most people's budgets because utilization is a factor in cost. If personal ownership is no longer a thing (and it wont be), then the cost of a car can be much higher and it still would be practical and profitable for the owner if the car is being utilized much more.
I think you're under-estimating how quickly this will all come about. You're thinking in terms of personal expenses when you should be considering fleet costs and an ecosystem where you dont need human drivers to operate that fleet....they can move themselves any hour of the day at a moment's notice without any of the negative "stranger with me in the car" feelings that current taxi's give people. They're already cheap enough. The robots just need to prove that they're just as good as human drivers and for companies to be protected from lawsuits for it to explode into common use.
Judging by the way people drive around here every day, the robots wouldn't have to be very good at driving to be better than the vast majority of human drivers. And I can't wait for them to come and replace them. Even if it means I can't drive my own car, ....driving behind mentally disabled idiots who make turns at impossibly slow speeds or dont accelerate to the speed limit within 10 seconds is infuriating to the point where I'd be happier if the robots drove everyone. At least then, they wouldn't wait until the car in front of them was 5 car lengths away before moving at a damn stop light.
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Ah. So we're talking about a future without (much) private ownership of transportation. Well, that would require a huge shift in society, IMO. I won't say it could never happen, but I think it is FAR in the future, well beyond when we're dead and gone. And even then, I have some doubts. But, it is an interesting concept that you have clearly spent time thinking or reading about.
I'll probably just stick to preparing for the zombie apocalypse.
