If you’re a city dweller, you may concur with the words from Lyft President John Zimmer. Car and Driver reports the Lyft co-founder imagines car ownership to end in 10 years for city slickers.
“Every year, more and more people are concluding that it is simpler and more affordable to live without a car,” he wrote. “And when networked autonomous vehicles come onto the scene, below the cost of car ownership, most city dwellers will stop using a personal car.”
Zimmer continued to state the autonomous vehicle revolution will change the way cities plan. With less need for roads, cities can turn attention to sidewalks, pedestrians and new parks.
Of course, there’s a reason why General Motors sunk $500 million into Lyft, as it too sees a changing tide in automobile ownership. GM and Lyft continue to co-develop a fleet of autonomous vehicles for the ride-sharing service.
Maybe it’s best if us enthusiasts run for the hills and stay, far, far away from the city. Maybe not.
Comments
Good. More room for me to drive my, what will then be, 61 year old Chevrolet Impala through a city.
It must be great to live in San Fran, take a corporate bus to Silicon Valley, Have breakfast after corporate yoga, work for a hour, take a nap in the corporate nap center followed by leisure walking meeting, Then buckle down to work for two hours before catching the bus back to san fran, stop by the local Weed Commissary to pick the prescription for the high stress from daily work load, and sit down to make statements that all city’s will be car free and only Autonomous vehicles run by Lyft and Uber. Also love this ride sharing idea, anyone here share company cars knows some people are slobs. Maybe the DEA needs to work harder in San Fran and maybe these guys would see more reality.
Someone who sees reality through all the smoke and propaganda.
Too bad many people arent that intelligent.
It never ceases to a me how forward looking yet bubble minded these innovative techies are. I get it, YOU AND YOUR FRIENDS see no need for car ownership in NY, or some other city where public transport is effective. But in 90% of US cities that’s a pipe dream. Due to urban sprawl, and a culture of nearly absolute individualism, most US city dwellers will be hard pressed to just dump car ownership unless a major revision of city centers and American lifestyle is undertaken.
And no matter how optimistic you are, it will take a whole lot longer than 10 years.
This issue here is “lifestyle”. You can change it to shorten travel distances, and either reduce or eliminate driving. I moved closer to my workplace in 1977 (to only six miles away) and reduced my traveling time from over an hour to just ten minutes during heavy traffic, and less on weekends and night (I was on-call 24 hours). I save tens of thousands of dollars in gasoline, maintenance, and car purchases, and have better health, too. In 39 years I only had three cars. I can walk to my shopping center every day. Now I wish my car can drive itself around.
You moved in 77. Im pretty sure -if you were in the states – nobody was going outta thier way to move downtown then. Rent and property in the city was cheap back then. Now the move is back to urban centers. And the price has gone up with demand. Additionally , as suburban sprawl has grown (possibly peaked?) In the last 40 years, the number of employess commuting into city centers is far greater than it was back in the day. And we all know, housing within the city is no where near capable of absorbing that increase currently.
Additiomally, look at the way American cities are built. They are automobile centric, almost all of the wasted space in American cities is to accommodate vehicles. This car-centric city design is also why everything is spaced so far apart as well. A ten minute drive by car is 30-45 minutes by foot.
“And we all know, housing within the city is no where near capable of absorbing that increase currently.”
Density is what cities want. There’s a strong likelihood that where urban capacity for housing is already satisfied with single family detached homes, apartment and condo buildings will be at the forefront for immediate approval of many cities long-term strategic plans. With that comes all kinds of changes for the people and the city, of which some include the absence of car ownership.
If you have a high population density in an urban centre (a condo or apartment), that means a greater tax base, which means that infrastructure costs are better leveraged. With sprawl, the city has displaced populations with differing tax rates trying to pay for services and utilities that needs to send out to people far away from the city’s core.
I don’t know how much it costs to lay pipe for water or how much it costs per mile of highway going out into the suburb, but it’s costly and difficult to pay for when the bedroom community at the end of the commuter highway pays less than those in the city. City officials don’t want any more sprawl, and don’t want to spend more of the tax money servicing remote locations when the money could be better spent on areas with higher population density which are easier to maintain.
The is largely a multi-year problem for architects and city planners to tackle over many years, but its end goal would mean that cities would be built for people and not cars. This would mean a fundamental shift in how America sees and uses cars, of which many people in my generation already see as an expensive tool for mobility, and less as a status symbol of independence.
It’s not laziness on their part, or even the city being indifferent to car-owners. Costs for both the individual and for cities need to be balanced over time, and whatever seems like it could bear examination for improvements will be considered; even if that means having to forgo car-ownership.
isn’t this the same dribble they said about the segway? i know … this time it is different.
Right on schedule, just like the levitating car that came out before the year 2000.
Can’t wait!