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G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

nytimes.com

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Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#351

Post by prawn »

JimmyAustin wrote: post #328
ThrustVectoring wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars often get used as park-able, lock-able storage devices (for instance, people will often keep their gym clothes in their car, so that they can do work->gym->home instead of having gym clothes at work or doing work->home->gym->home). That's a big design feature that makes driving strangers around much less practical than it looks.

As convenient as a personal locker that follows you is, I don't think the average person is willing to spend 20k for one.

Exactly. We take all our things with us when we leave a plane, taxi, bus or train. We will learn to do the same with cars as cost squeezes from one side and convenience from another.

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#352

Post by prawn »

chinathrow wrote: post #305
richardlblair wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, get ready for some major changes. The people who see this coming will be well ahead of the curve.

How? I also see this change coming - but I don't feel well ahead of the curve.

Do you drive a truck for a living?

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#353

Post by prawn »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #346
hueving wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already have taxis, Uber and rental cars. People still seem to be buying cars even at their high price. Why do you think that is?

Because there is no self-driving option. If there is, and the price of rides plummets (no driver = cheap, all electric = even cheaper), it no longer behooves you to tie up so much capital in a vehicle you own. Think how much consumer excess would occur from 300 million people not having to buy a vehicle outright.

And anyone driving their own car needs to pay for parking, plus for full insurance, registration and so on. Free street parking will gradually disappear and off-street parking is not going to get any cheaper.

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#354

Post by prawn »

jonathankoren wrote: post #329
bduerst wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For rural and light suburban areas I wonder if we'll probably see more of a hybrid shuttle service with at-door pickups, not unlike school buses. Even without the wage-cost of drivers, individual taxi service may still be too expensive to match the lower demand.

Never lived in the rural area did you? No one likes buses, because buses are slow. They're slow because they make lots of stops that are irrelevant to your trip. As someone that regularly rode the school bus on a route that took an hour, compared to a 10 minute direct route. Fuck buses. Yes taxis, exist, but not many. The only people I knew that ever took them were people that lost their licenses. What you've actuall…

Those are generally larger buses that are completely fixed in their route and stops, right?

Smaller buses able to optimise routes to make fewer stops will help. Split the current big bus into 3-4 smaller ones and the people going close to the full distance might not stop for the first 80% of stops. That would cut out a lot of time.

Obviously rural areas will be the last to see these changes for non-commercial traffic.

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#355

Post by prawn »

wadenick wrote: post #235
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should have said Manhattan. 23% is "scarce" in that, on the island, there are relatively few gas stations, parking is expensive, and getting your car serviced reasonably encumbering. It's also a four-fold reduction from the U.S. average. How much cheaper would a driverless Lyft or taxi be? 50%? How many more people would forego driving, in Manhattan, if ridesharing were half as expensive as it is today? If half do…

Yes, I agree with your premise here. Personal anecdote, I lived in San Francisco in the city 8 years. It was by far more economical for me to have both Zipcar and taxis (later UberX and Lyft) combined per month than to have a vehicle lease + parking costs + insurance/maintenance/gas. By far. In both $ and time. I'm not certain that other elements of your vision work in non-metro areas.

What percentage of people live in metro areas though?

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#356

Post by prawn »

trillup wrote: post #246
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #140

It is predicted that autonomous cars will reduce America's fleet of vehicles by something like 10-fold [1]. I think it will unfold something like this: FIRST, instead three cars for mom, dad and kid, the average family has one car that drops mom off to work, then dad, and then the teen off to school. SECOND, aforementioned car makes use of its down time to drive strangers around via Uber, Lyft, et cetera. The car's o…

The only thing I'd like to add is that if the car is used this often the utilization rate of the car would significantly increase thus causing the car to go in for maintenance more often. Average mileage on a car is 13,000 per year and if a car is being used to drop the whole family off and then do rides on its own you are looking at 70,000-100,000 on a car per year. You are encouraged to get an oil change every 6,00…

Those services will be able to take place at low-peak times (overnight). Currently getting my car serviced is a chore. When using a car in the future, that process will be invisible to me. And the costs will be absorbed into whatever per-use or subscription fee I choose to pay.

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#357

Post by yggydrasily »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #315
hueving wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A smartphone doesn't cost more than the average American annual salary.

You don't buy a 747 to fly across the country do you? No, you buy a ticket from Southwest or another carrier. Kids will one day laugh at how we used to buy vehicles instead of rent them by the miles. "Auto loans?!?" The horror!

If I had a self-driving car and some time on my hands, I'd get rid of my home and be in that thing practically 24/7, seeing the land and enjoying having it drive me around. No way I would rent in that situation. I'd definitely buy. There will be a whole class of similar nomads who will spring up once it becomes truly viable.

The future is not one-size-fits-all. Just because Uber execs and investors are blathering about how personal car ownership will go away (meaning they will own everything, how convenient) doesn't mean it actually will happen that way.

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#358

Post by astrange »

MajorLOL wrote: post #258
IanCal wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People don't want to spend their commute with random people who just happen to be going the same direction Many, many people already do this on public transport. What we're talking about is general door-to-door public transport. Car-pooling is awkward to arrange, particularly for short joined parts of the journey (e.g. picking someone up part way and dropping them off a little later), and it's extremely hard to arr…

>Many, many people already do this on public transport Total fantasy. Virtually nobody uses public transport. 5% of commuters use public transport. Relative to the car-pooling, who sees double the volume of users as public transport, 10%. http://traveltrends.transportation.org/Documents/CA10-4.pdf

How many people use public transit in Europe, or Japan and Korea?

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#359

Post by chockablock »

MajorLOL wrote: post #258
IanCal wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People don't want to spend their commute with random people who just happen to be going the same direction Many, many people already do this on public transport. What we're talking about is general door-to-door public transport. Car-pooling is awkward to arrange, particularly for short joined parts of the journey (e.g. picking someone up part way and dropping them off a little later), and it's extremely hard to arr…

>Many, many people already do this on public transport Total fantasy. Virtually nobody uses public transport. 5% of commuters use public transport. Relative to the car-pooling, who sees double the volume of users as public transport, 10%. http://traveltrends.transportation.org/Documents/CA10-4.pdf

So what? The reason so few people use public transit across the US is very likely because it sucks at getting them door-to-door in a reasonable amount of time.

The question is: if that changes, what might people choose to do? The example of large cities like NYC at least teaches us that the American preference for solo car travel is not fixed.

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#360

Post by lambdasquirrel »

yggydrasily wrote: post #304
Merad wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I think this is just totally disconnected from the reality of the average American who lives outside of a major urban center. 1. Mom, dad, and kid all need to go to work/school at roughly the same time. If they all have a 15-20 minute commute (well below average for many areas) and the destinations for all three aren't in the same immediate vicinity, we're right back to the family needing 2-3 cars. 2. Eh, no.…

> Mom, dad, and kid all need to go to work/school at roughly the same time. That's okay, once automation really gets going, Mom & Dad will be out of work, solving that problem.

That sounds funny, but when you put this together with the known increasing costs of supporting suburban infrastructure, it's possible that that whole style of life will be outcompeted and put out of business in most places.

Or it will become a poverty trap.

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