1. Right now cars are cheaper than Uber/Goget.
I took myself as a typical motorist and looked at transport for my last few jobs and used the RACV model with a medium car. This clearly shows that new cars (even with massive depreciation) are cheaper than Uber and Goget. Furthermore, you can buy good 3 year old car much cheaper further saving costs and with a car you have far more flexibility.
Interesting to note, from personal experience 60%+ of Uber cost is driver cost, hence once energy efficient autonomous cars are available the cost can reduce by same margin.
2. Most driving for majority of people is during peak hours, this can be frustrating and stressful.
Not only are we working on average more hours each week, we are also spending more of our time getting to work due to congestion of traffic. Here is average commute (in each direction) for major capital cities and average speed:
This is clearly not a pleasant drive. Romanticising driving sounds great but for vast majority of time driving is simply a horrible experience, even rich people can not escape the stress and unproductive time driving on slow News South Head Road (east), Military Rd (North-East), Pacific Hwy (North)....if they are truly rich they have a chauffeur, yet with autonomous cars everyone will be more productive, less stress and will be far safer.
Imagine commuting for one hour every day and being able to do real work, this will be the number one feature above all else for people that travel in peak hours traffic. If high powered big city lawyer can charge additional $500+ each day he will take the safe autonomous pod rather than his Mercedes, more productive work hours means he can spend more free time on the golf course! Even rich people are practical.
3. Ride sharing with autonomous vehicles will be very popular:
- Much lower cost, no driver
- Door to door transport, many people currently commute to public transport then have to wait for transport
- Ride sharing algorithm automatically picks up 2-3 people at a time going to similiar destination. For example 3 neighbors from our Coogee neighborhood travel together to CBD between 8:00am to 8:30am. Hence total cost is only 30% of ordinary Uber cost (as no expensive driver) = 30% of $24.75 =$7.43 / 3 (passengers) = $2.47....lets say Uber run at much higher profit margin and charge $5...still far better than other forms of transport. Furthermore I would suggest most people would rather share a ride with two neighbors than having to walk to local bus/train stop (even in bad weather) then wait for the bus then travel with 50+ people.
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