Public transit works in some places: New York, London, and Boston, to name three. It doesn't work in others.
And, yes, cars make you free if your definition of "freedom" requires you to take care of a multi-ton hunk of extremely complicated machinery. You can go wherever you want, whenever you want -- so long as there are roads and gas.
You are as much dependent on a vast, mechanical and social machine with a car as you are with public transit. The difference is with public transit it's somebody else's job to take care of the machine.
Still - $9 an hour is pretty impressive! And ZipCars are probably a lot less effecient than robocars will be since a ZipCar needs a human driver to pick it up where it's left off rather than the car just taking itself to the next client. If the car is able to immediately travel to a new customer after delivering each customer, the cost per hour could possibly be substantially less and the company might still make more money per day!
@Tad Zipcar already allows car rental by the hour. It's not quite that cheap -- at least in the New York area where rates start at $125 per day or $9 per hour for those who don't take on a regular monthly commitment.
Rental car rates today are as high as they are because you're renting the car for a full 24 hours. So, if you rent a car for a day for $60 then you're renting it for $2.50 an hour, right?
In the future you'll only "rent" a robocar on a business trip for the amount of time you'll use it. If you only need the car for 2 hours a day, you should pay considerably less than $60. I doubt it'll be $5, but prices for robotaxis should be considerably less than either 20th century cabs or rental cars.
@ Ted
This is unbelievable and impressive. That will be a revolution in the day to day traveling customs. I don't know how people will react to the charge out rates. Today rent a car rates are somewhat expensive and people prefer spending a large amount to buy their own car instead of hiring it daily. May be the comfort will force them to do so.
@DukeW You touch on some of the pitfall of public transportation systems. And that doesn't even take into account the fact that some systems were completely immobilized by Hurricane Sandy. That includes some major subjways lines and the PATH train, which had to resume only limited service.
The way you describe riding on a train sounds pretty similar to what I'm writing about in this blog. In my imagined future, there's no reason why you couldn't stop any time you wanted for any reason. My point is that you'll no longer have to if you don't want to.
Also, I don't anticipate that robocars will need any sort of dedicated roads or new infrastructure whatsoever. Google's self-driven cars have gone 300,000 miles on regular ole 20th century roads.
I think robocars will be affordable for everyone who can now currently afford to drive their own car, and also for many folks who can't. Here's why:
Owning a traditional 20th century car is very inefficient. Most of the time, your car sits unutilized in a parking space somewhere. You pay $300 or more a month to basically park your car 20+ hours a day.
A robocar won't be limited to sitting in a parking lot or driveway all day. A robocar owner will be able to hire out her car for delivery or taxi service or any of a myriad of things people might want to use a car for. Basically the price of a robocar will be subsidized by exactly this sort of behavior. It might be (I have no idea) that this hiring-out subsidy will far exceed the price of the car itself!
I don't think most people will own robocars outright like people do with traditional cars. I think most of us will subscribe to a robocar service and then have a car from the service fleet waiting for us whenever we request it. Think of Netflix for real world cars!
You'll be able to subscribe to a luxury subscription or an economy subscription, etc etc. You'll also be able to subscribe and pay for ONLY the amount of robocar use that you use each month. If you only need a car for 2 hours a day, you'll only pay for that much instead of paying for a full 24 hours use like we do today.
Public transit is truly a cheap option and that is why there are limited facilitates on board. If you are a frequent traveller, then you should definitely go and buy the robocop as return period won't be too much.
I am hundred percent confident that this type of car will be a reality in less than a decade but obviously it will take longer than a decade to it becoming a reality for a common man as apparently the car will be too costly.
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