Unless they're actually using it for its intended purpose it is almost certainly cheaper to own a small efficient vehicle and simply rent something else if you need it.
At the same time you'll have a dramatic drop in car ownership (since it'll be far cheaper to be taxied), meaning less waste overall as each car is fully utilized for potentially dozens of people a day, rather than sitting on a concrete pad 20+ hours a day doing nothing but aging.
You can price the car based on the time of the ride, to spread out rush hour and reuse vehicles for multiple trips. It will always be more efficient than privately owned vehicles due to the ability to choose the appropriate vehicle for the ride, instead of having to buy a vehicle for the most intensive purpose and underutilizing it a majority of the time.
If you're solo yes, once you're two people it tends to be on par, 3 or more car is cheaper. Every family I know owns a car. The highways are full of cars and trucks.
Agreed looks really cool. Would love to see this become the future of mobility.
The one thing I hate about car culture is that people (logically) tend to buy the car that fits all their use-cases, even if some of those use-cases occur less than 5% of the time.
For example, when I buy a car I want at it to be able to seat at least 5 people, ideally 6-8. And I want it to be able to carry my furniture if I want to buy some, and stuff I need for a camping trip.
But if I look at the distribution of use cases:
People: I seat 1 person 90% of my trips (e.g. daily commutes to work, groceries). I seat a single partner or friend 8% of my trips. And I seat a whole car 2% of my trips.
Stuff: I buy on average 1 big piece of furniture a year, but typically can have it delivered. I buy 3 items 2nd hand online that I like to use a car for picking up. I move homes every few years and my car isn't really big enough.
Camping: I spend 10 days a year hiking in nature, of which 2 travel days.
So all in all I'd be completely fine with an Aptera type of vehicle for all but about 20 out of 365 days, or about 5% of the time. On those days I need something bigger, a car, or even a van/truck.
I honestly can't wait till we get to a place of seamless renting of vehicles you happen to need that day. Economically it should fundamentally be the cheaper option: sharing production & maintenance costs across multiple users, and increasing average time-in-use vs idle-time, should decrease average cost-of-usage for users. Plus it means you can rent a smaller & cheaper vehicle for 95% of the time, and rent a bigger & costlier vehicle 5% of the time.
This should certainly be cheaper than everyone having a fleet of large vehicles 100% of the time, which sit mostly idle 90% of the day, and are mostly empty during the hours you are using it at partial capacity.
Of course renting vehicles isn't seamless. They're not always available, near you, expensive etc. But every 5 years it's getting better. And once self-driving really arrives (supposing it does, for 90% of trips), I think it'll accelerate the move away from the PC or 'Personal Car', to a 'Mobility Pod on Demand' type of model. Perhaps Aptera like vehicles will remain as the minimum personal car for those 95% of trips that you do with 1 or 2 passengers.
Furthermore, there's an assumption that sharing vehicles lowers costs.
Parking is one reason given. Maybe. But if you don't live and/or work in a dense part of a city, parking isn't a big issue. Feel free to argue that people might be better off if there were less parking but today's reality is that a lot of people don't have any parking issues on a day to day basis.
The bigger argument is around improved utilization. But the cost of owning a car is usually more about mileage than time and shared vehicles will actually have to travel more miles because they won't always be transporting a passenger. There are some age-related costs, especially in states where it snows. Yes, some people want the latest and greatest but then they have the option of leasing today.
One solution I adopt when I want to do a family trip with more luggage or people than our daily commuter can manage is to rent a bigger car.
A week back I needed to help a cousin move while my wife needed our car. The solution was simple - I rented a slightly bigger one that managed the move with ease. The total cost is still much lower than if we had two cars.
If you can use a small car. I have a family, so I need a larger car (minivan, but typically they give me a large SUV). $100/day. A used minivan amortized over years is pretty cheap.
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