Driverless cars could revolutionise transport and lead to the decline of Railways

[Bletchleyite]

That would be a bad idea in transport and environment terms, exactly because it makes car use cheaper on a marginal basis once someone has paid out the lump sum. The rational choice to do so is exacerbated by the emotional "I've paid out all this money for this service, might as well make the most of it" factor.

Therefore, ideally, these schemes should keep any membership fee to a minimal level to pay for the admin of having a particular person in the scheme, and load all the costs onto useage. I recognise that a commercial provider may not see it that way.

Then people won't switch.

There's a good chance they will replace taxis, though, and people will use them like they presently do taxis, or possibly for slightly longer journeys if they are a bit cheaper (so back to only threatening branch lines and local bus services).

 

[SargeNpton]

An intermediate stage would be to have a driver who works remotely. The technology works for military drones. It can default to an autonomous mode if it loses network access, and perhaps avoid that location if its a permanent blackspot for internet access.

For a taxi service, you can then avoid the cost of paying for a driver to hang around waiting for passengers to turn up. If the taxi ends up in the suburbs, it can park there, and the driver can switch to a different journey. If the taxi needs to park in a city centre, they can park automatically in a car park, which could be done at much higher density if you don't need to open the doors to get inside, and if they are parked closely in line.

Taxi driving would then become something like working in a call centre, and might get off-shored to save more.

"You are held in a queue of passengers. You are No.20. Please hold, Your journey is important to us".

 

[edwin_m]

Then people won't switch.

There's a good chance they will replace taxis, though, and people will use them like they presently do taxis, or possibly for slightly longer journeys if they are a bit cheaper (so back to only threatening branch lines and local bus services).

A lot of people own a car for the status of having a particular make and model, for the reassurance of having it always available, or for the dislike of sharing a vehicle with others. These people might switch to owning an EV or an autonomous vehicle (look how many Teslas are now appearing) but I don't think they'll be interested in shared mobility whether on the basis of a high fixed fee and low per-mile charge or the other way round. The various contract purchase schemes take a lot of the sting out of the up-front fee anyway, and I assume would continue for EVs and AVs (do any of these include a mileage charge?).

I agree about taxis - in industry that has a lot to worry about if this comes to pass, which is why Uber has been shovelling money into AVs. There are a lot of people for whom using a reliable taxi service would be economically better than owning a car, or perhaps a second car, and doing so shifts the cost to per-journey as well as imposing a certain amount of hassle which may shift some of their journeys from car/taxi to active modes or public transport. But it remains to be seen whether shared mobility is the tool that pushes more people down that path, and whether the reduction in vehicle use from that source outweighs the increase from the lower cost at the point of use compared with taxis. It remains to be seen whether the marginal costs of a journey in an autonomous taxi are less than those for the same journey in an IC vehicle.