Who Owns Tomorrow's Autonomous City Cars?
Jump forward a bunch of years. Cities continue to get bigger and even more people need to get around. Uber/Lyft-like services have evolved and are more efficient and better than ever. Full autonomy has also been realized - there are no human drivers in the city. Autonomous vehicles of all sizes are dashing around and providing awesome, cost-effective, on-demand transportation throughout the city.
Question: who owns all of these autonomous vehicles?
Possibilities:
- Random people. They “rent” them out to on-demand services when they’re not in use. Seems super unlikely - why bear the cost and hassle of owning a car in the city when such great service exists?
- The Uber/Lyft companies of the day. Maybe? A very different business model than Uber and Lyft today, and, again, kind of a hassle to own those distributed assets.
- Car manufacturing companies. Also maybe. Again, pretty radical business model shift from today.
- Cities. The new model beats mass transit, so they outlaw private vehicles and run the fleet themselves. My bet is some city will do this.
- Specialized fleet management companies. Similar business models exist today, such as car rental companies, but do they transition?
I’m actually not sure - any thoughts?