Thanks to technology, alternatives to car ownership are more prevalent and viable than ever. Leading the push are ridesharing companies like Uber and Lyft. Is the convenience and affordability of ridesharing enough to completely forego car ownership? Not yet, but that day isn't far away.

Is it worth it to forego car ownership for ridesharing?

We're approaching a point where owning a car won't be a necessity for convenient transportation. Uber has been transparent in their end goal. They want to make ridesharing so convenient and affordable that you don't need to own a car. In 2015, former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said, "Uber doesn’t grow if car ownership is cheaper than taking Uber." We did the math, and their goal looks achievable.

Cost of using rideshare daily:
Based on our experiment, relying solely on rideshare to get around Seattle costs $13,963 per year. It's slightly cheaper in Denver at $13,755 per year due to a lower per mile fee and per minute fee.

These numbers are based on two cross city trips a day for a year with rideshare. We excluded holidays. From our experiment, the average trip in Denver costs $19.59 and $19.89 in Seattle. Lyft adds a per mile fee of $1.35 and a per minute fee of 24 cents in Seattle. In Denver, Lyft charges $1 per mile and 13 cents per minute.

As it stands, exclusively using Lyft or Uber to get around town isn't cheap.

Cost of car ownership:
We've established the current cost to use ridesharing for an entire year. Now let's put a price tag on car ownership. AAA tracks car costs across the board, and they release annual reports on the cost of owning a car. These are the average yearly costs to own and drive a new sedan:

2015: $8,698
2016: $8,558
2017: $8,469

These numbers account for several factors:
Depreciation
Fuel
Insurance
Maintenance and repair
Taxes, license and registration
Finance charges
Tires

Interestingly, the cost of car ownership is trending downwards. It's dropped by over one percent a year since 2012. Propelling the decrease is primarily cheaper gas, lower finance rates, and alternative fuels.

If these trends hold up, forecasting an annual decrease in the cost of car ownership by about one percent a year isn't unreasonable. If that's correct, the annual cost of owning a car in 2027 will be $7,598.

When will it make sense to trade car ownership for rideshare?
The biggest roadblock for rideshare companies to lowering costs is obvious: human drivers.

To illustrate this, let's break down the $19.89 average Seattle trip. We'll use Lyft, because they are more transparent about their rates:

Average trip distance was five miles. Lyft's charges a per mile fee of $1.35 in Seattle. That total comes out to $6.75
Average trips length was about twenty minutes. Lyft charges a per minute fee of 24 cents in Seattle. That total comes out to $4.80

Lyft charges a $2.00 service fee and a 24 cent Seattle city fee.
Lyft charges a base fare of $1.35

When you add that up, it totals $15.14. That leaves an unaccounted $4.75. For simplicity's sake, let's round that amount up to $5 and assume that amount goes entirely to the driver. In reality, part of the per mile and per minute fees goes to the driver as well. Though Uber advertises their commission is 25 percent, its often closer to 50 percent. For this experiment, earmarking $5 (25 percent commission) for the driver is conservative.

If the experts are right, we're very close to a fundamental transformation in transportation as autonomous vehicles become common. In fact, driverless cars are already traveling on roads across America. Google, Uber, and Tesla are just some of the companies committing major resources to autonomous driving.

Over CEO Dara Khosrowshahi recently told Bloomberg that he expects the company to have self-driving cars picking up passengers by mid 2019. He also stated that he expects most cities to have self-driving Uber service in the next 10 to 15 years. Experts estimate that driverless cars will cost 35 cents per mile for customers. Compare that to Seattle's current Lyft rate of $1.35 per mile.

If Khosrowshahi is right, most cities will have autonomous Ubers on the road as early as 2027. And if the predicted 35 cents per mile fee for autonomous ridesharing is true, it'll allow ridesharing companies to dominate transportation. When 2027 comes around, owning a car might be an unnecessary luxury.

With forecasted car ownership and autonomous rideshare costs, let's do the math to see what the future looks like.

Seattle:
From our experiment, we know that an average rideshare trip in Seattle costs $19.89 trip. Let's update it to account for the future of self-driving cars:

Change the per mile driver fee from $1.35 to the estimated driverless per mile fee of 35 cents.
Remove the $5 driver's commission.
With self-driving cars, that $19.89 trip ends up costing $9.89.
With average trips costing $9.89, the cost of using rideshare for an entire year in Seattle falls to $6,943. That's a substantial discount from the current estimate of $13,963 per year.

Denver:
Following the math in Seattle, here's how things would shake out in Denver:

Change per mile driver fee from the current $1 to the projected driverless fee of 35 cents.
Remove $5 driver's cut.
With self driving cars, that $19.59 trip comes out to $8.09.
That's $5,679 per year compared to the current $13,755.
This graph shows the trajectory of the cost of rideshare versus owning a car:



Of course, there are several factors that could impact this timeline.

Potential roadblocks
Our math experiment is not flawless. There are a few issues to consider.

First, ridesharing is most viable in dense areas where parking is at a premium and rideshares are readily available. Our experiment focuses on two urban areas – Seattle and Denver – for that exact reason. It'll take much more than a decade before it makes sense for someone in Wyoming, for example, to ditch their car.

Another major problem is monopolization. A huge reason that Lyft and Uber rides are so affordable is because both companies are competing. Without competition, Uber would certainly charge higher rates. If one company can monopolize autonomous ridesharing, prices won't stay stable.

Fortunately, there's a ton of competition in the transportation market. Between Google, Lyft, Uber, Car2Go, ReachNow, Tesla, the rideshare race is on. A robust and competitive market should ensure that consumers have plenty of options to choose from.

The advent of electric vehicles will also radically transform the car and ridesharing landscape. Ideally, lowered fuel prices will drop transportation costs. Tesla founder Elon Musk is clear in his goal to revolutionize car sharing. He envisions a future where Tesla owners can allow their car to autonomously rideshare when they aren't using it. That will certainly impact the rideshare economy.

Finally, there will be growing pains for autonomous cars. Car accidents claim the lives of tens of thousands of Americans every year, and about 94 percent of accidents are due to human error. Even so, the rare fatality involving a driverless car is controversial to say the least. Two recent fatal accidents with self-driving cars from Tesla and Uber have set off considerable debates and discussion. Even though autonomous cars are statistically safer, there's an underlying fear. A recent poll shows that about 50 percent of people think self-driving cars are less safe than human drivers.

A lot must happen before our roads are filled with self-driving cars. But the writing is on the wall, and fundamental transportation changes are underway. Experts are boldly claiming that children born today won't learn to drive.

Let's hope it's a positive change.
Further information: https://quotewizard.com