Transportation as a Service and the End of the Romance of The Car?

As those who follow such matters are well aware, the conventional wisdom regarding self-driving cars has changed profoundly in a few years' time--from matter-of-fact expectation that they will shortly be a large and swiftly growing part of everyday life, to sneering dismissal of the prospect of their appearing anytime soon, and perhaps ever.

To be fair, I do not know that those who dismiss the technology are wrong. Indeed, I acknowledge that the present lowered hopes reflect our having painfully acquired a better understanding of just how tough a task it actually is to develop a car that can drive itself as safely as a competent human driver given the present state of the art in the relevant areas (perhaps most obviously, the power of the computers that must do the "deep learning" on which we are relying). However, it does seem to me that the dismissal is as exaggerated as the earlier hype, for a lot of reasons--one of which is the distaste many seem to have for one of the more transformative possibilities the self-driving car brings with it, namely a turn away from individual vehicle ownership to "Transportation as a Service" (Taas).

Those who have sneered at the prospect (often, giving the impression of fear of a shrunken auto market's implications for their particular business) have given many reasons besides technical feasibility. These have prominently included the satisfactions cars render besides transport--what one can call "the romance of the automobile." Exemplary of the tendency, ex-BP CEO Lord Browne emphasized in his Washington Post op-ed that cars are not "simply [a way] to get around," but also "signal our values and extend our private space--things a shared service cannot offer."

Fair enough--except that "signaling our values" to the world at large and "extending our personal space" are comparative luxuries which mean more to some than others, and which some can more easily indulge in than others (facts to which the privileged consistently display an extreme obliviousness). People need transport, pure and simple, and buying such cars as are within their limited means is something they do to meet that need, with any question of immaterial pleasure of far less consequence. Indeed, given how the costs of car ownership weigh on household budgets (any household making under six figures, certainly, is very hard-pressed to afford two vehicles), to say nothing of the other hassles involved (from maintenance to legal liability in the event of accident), it is easy to see many people regarding a transport service merely adequate to meet their needs at a fraction of the price they pay to own and operate a car of their own as a relief.

It is easier still to picture people happily abandoning the hassle of car ownership in favor of Taas when we consider the behavior of the younger age cohorts (from early thirtysomethings on down), in whose lives driving has simply not been so big an element, or even their prospects, to the point of so few of them bothering to get licenses. Some see this as a matter of the preference of many young people for urban over suburban living, and the extent to which, wherever they happen to be, they live their lives online (shopping, socializing, recreating through a screen). However, it is also because they see less point to getting a license when their hard-pressed parents are less able or willing to get them a car, and when their buying a car with their own money is a remote prospect (used vehicles are averaging $25,000 these days--all as the minimum wage their college degrees do not save them from still runs $7.25 an hour)--while the same poverty is, after all, a major reason why they spend so much more time doing things online than going out.

Driving later and less even when they have owned cars, something far more of them will have not done and may not even expect to do, they could be expected to let go of the idea of personal auto ownership that much more easily. Indeed, were Taas to come along in any economic circumstances like the present, I suspect that many would embrace it and never look back, while private auto ownership (which would, of course, be self-driving auto ownership) would become something like a private plane--a luxury purchased only by the wealthy few, mostly because they can.