patrick.net

floki says

But, it'll be a long long time if at all possible outside of these zones for folks living in rural and secluded places.

I am saying cars will get prohibitively expensive, not that automated travel will be so convenient that people will give up cars. The country folk will just have to limit the times they come to town since they will pay per mile for each shared ride trip. Just like the pre Ford Model T days.

HeadSet says

floki says

But, it'll be a long long time if at all possible outside of these zones for folks living in rural and secluded places.

I am saying cars will get prohibitively expensive, not that automated travel will be so convenient that people will give up cars. The country folk will just have to limit the times they come to town since they will pay per mile for each shared ride trip. Just like the pre Ford Model T days.

Well, your assertion of cars becoming "prohibitively expensive" part needs more details. Does that include what will surely be added fees for various local govermental policies to pay for the autonomous infrastructures, or just the costs of cars? No way it will be (MUST NOT) applied across the board for everyone. If you meant for cities folks, I'd agree that would be more likely, and should, like anything else in the cities but for rural folks, the costs will likely be not much different from the prevailing market prices (just the cars) without those added costs. Things being more expensive in cities compared to rural places has always been the case for almost everything, in some cases prohibvitively. And rural folks MUST not be forced to subsidize those added costs.

For example, it is prohibitively expensive to OWN a car (whether ICEV, hybrid, or EV) in small and or dense cities like Singapore and HongKong. A mid-range camary in Singapore costs around SG$ 200-250K (around $150-180K) as one example. That total cost includes various added fees, the most expensive being a 10-year permit of around SG$120-150K depending on models and prevailing demands which is ironically always high!!!! because those permits are capped at around 1mil and there are always people with lots of money to spare.

So yeah, I can imagine cars becoming too expensive like you put it but only in various locals where their local goverments doing what they always do: increase policies, costs, and restrictions while limiting supply in the name of some novel idea such as this.