Tesla’s Robotaxi Launch: The Beginning Of The End For Personal Car Ownership

While we talk a lot about electric vehicles, one of the technologies that is arriving on top of them is autonomous driving. Tesla is about to announce its " game-changing” autonomous tech, and it could mean the beginning of the end for personal car ownership.

Let’s explore that a bit.

Car Ownership Doesn’t Make Financial Sense

While we all love our cars, car ownership doesn’t make much sense for most of us. We are basically putting a lot of money into something that isn’t just expensive to buy but also expensive to maintain. It is the second most expensive thing we own next to our homes, yet it just sits for most of the time baking in parking lots or taking up space in our garage depreciating.

When I was a kid, everyone but one guy wanted to learn how to drive. That one guy didn’t learn, and he ended up having more money because he rode on our nickel and didn’t have to spend as much money on a car. While we thought he was an idiot, he may have been the smartest one of us. Kids today are resisting the need to drive, finding it far easier to use electric bikes, scooters, skateboards, and services like Uber.

The big issue for me was independence. I just like being able to get in my car and go, but increasingly, I can have stuff delivered, so I don’t need to go to the store. I, too, have electric bikes and an electric scooter that often is just more fun (given traffic) to get around on (we don’t have a ton of traffic, but there are times when it is fun to stay off the roads and travel on the trails that surround our city). 

But what if you could have independence and not own a car? In a way, the very rich now have this in that many use car services or hire a driver with their car to ferry them around. That is kind of like Uber or Lift, but often you end up with surge pricing, which can be extremely expensive, or the inability to get a ride timely because there are no drivers near you.

Autonomous Cars To The Rescue

Now, people who live in skyscrapers or other tall buildings have elevators, and, with a few exceptions, those elevators are a shared service. You don’t own one. You hit a button, and your ride arrives. Then, you hit another button that takes you to your destination. You may have to share the elevator, but generally, it is convenient enough, so you aren’t motivated to have some alternative conveyance unless you want to go up a lot of stairs.

Autonomous Cars, or in this case, Robo Taxis, are similar to elevators. They have more choices for your destination. You’ll call them with an app on your phone, and with that app, you’ll set a destination, and you’ll either (based on preference) ride alone or with others. There is no driver, so you can still get a ride when drivers aren’t available, and the services can dovetail with autonomous buses when the need for a ride exceeds the number of vehicles available. You can still get home in a reasonable period.

The ride should be safer than any ride done by a person because Robo Taxis don’t get distracted, don’t have substance abuse problems, and don’t have a temper or other behavioral issues that often exist with current drive services. While you might still get some surge pricing to motivate you to wait or use a different form of public transport, you won’t have the game-playing that currently goes on with ride-sharing services where the drivers game surge pricing to make the most money. (That Happens here a lot, and the difference can be hundreds of dollars for what would otherwise be a short trip).

In short, once they reach critical mass, these Robo Taxis should make car ownership a thing of the past.

Wrapping Up: 

While I don’t think this will happen overnight, the emergence of Robo Taxis at scale will mean the end of car ownership for most of us. That is the current trend as more and more kids put off or avoid getting a driver’s license. Like my old high school friend, they don’t see the value.

Once we have the equivalent of horizontal elevators, the need to own cars should drop off a cliff. Ford saw this coming some years back, and they, too, seem to see the writing on the wall.

In short, the next car you buy may be your last.

Rob Enderle is a technology analyst at Torque News who covers automotive technology and battery development. You can learn more about Rob on Wikipedia and follow his articles on Forbes, X, and LinkedIn.