Collective usage of large pools

We’re getting pretty abstract here. Let me pick a particular example: this column by Casey B. Mulligan in the New York Times this week, which concludes that “driverless cars … will increase the number of vehicles on the road.”

It’s a fairly smart piece that suffers from what I call “unidimensional extrapolation,” and so misses effects like the trend I refer to above. Widespread use of driverless cars will inevitably lead to a sharp rise in ownerless cars. A major reason for owning a car is that you don’t need to go get one when you need one. Which sounds like a tautology today, but won’t when shared driverless cars will be able to zoom to your house on five minute’s notice when you need to go to the mall for an hour.

Ultimately, I’m confident that driverless cars will lead to much lower car ownership in urban areas; instead, large numbers of people will have fractional ownership of sizable pools of driverless vehicles, à la Berkshire Hathaway’s NetJets, and just summon them when they need them. This will codify and formalize the running cost of using a car…and since you won’t pay for them when you’re not using them, it in turn will lead to fewer cars on the road.

An idea which is worth thinking about when creating next viable business

source: techcrunch.com