Comment by Sayrus
13 hours ago
Focusing only on price, renting a beafy shared "cloud" computer is cheaper than buying one and changing every 5 years. It's not always an issue for idle hardware.
Cars are mostly idle and could be cheaper if shared. But why make them significantly cheaper when you can match the price and extract more profits?
Cars and personal computers have advantages over shared resources that often make them worth the cost. If you want your transport/compute in busy times you may find limitations. (ever got on the train and had to stand because there are no seats? Every had to wait for your compute job to start because they are all busy? Both of these have happened to me).
I ran the numbers, and for most non-braindead cities something like a fleet of 6-seater minivans will easily replace all of local transit.
And with just 6 people the overhead if an imperfect route and additional stops will be measured in minutes.
And of course, it's pretty easy to imagine an option to pay a bit more for a fully personal route.
This exists in a way -- I'd wager every city has a commercial service that will shuttle you to, say, the airport. They're not cheap, however.
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you made too many false assumptions if you came up with those routes. Experts have run real numbers including looking at what happens in the real world. https://humantransit.org/category/microtransit - (as I write this you need to scroll to the second article to find the useful rebuttal of your idea)
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> But why make them significantly cheaper when you can match the price and extract more profits?
Even better — charge 10% less and corner the market! As long as nobody charges 10% less than you…
> Cars are mostly idle and could be cheaper if shared. But why make them significantly cheaper when you can match the price and extract more profits?
Yeah, this would rely on robust competition.
Nah, I don't want to share my car with anyone. It's my own personal space where I can keep some of my stuff and set it up exactly the way I want.
That's how some people feel about airplanes. Presumably you're not one of them. For some people, the inconvenience of being responsible for a car would outweigh the benefit of setting up their stuff inside of one.
It's not even an inconvenience. I like my cars. Dealing with ride hailing services (autonomous or not) is certainly far more inconvenient than owning a car (unless maybe you're stuck living somewhere without convenient parking).