Is Individual Car Ownership Going Away?

With the rumor of Apple getting involved in the car business growing by the day, speculation has grown as to what type of vehicle or product they might introduce. We reported previously that it might be a platform rather than an actual vehicle. Speaking about a theory of what Apple might be doing, O’Dell explained, “They are developing a car but they are developing a car to serve as a platform for a whole suite of … basically a user interface.”

With Volvo, Tesla, GM, Google and Nissan, among others working on self-driving technology, it appears that the direction of automotive is towards vehicles that might not need a human driver. A new report by Vox points to how the vehicle of the future may not look anything like it does today, or at the very least may not act like the vehicle of 2015. The article speculates that the vehicles of tomorrow will have more autonomous capabilities and may not even be owned by one specific person. John O’Dell, Senior Editor at Edmunds.com, alluded to this point in an interview last week. Speaking to DrivingSales News, O’Dell said, “There are very smart people in the automotive world today who say that at point X in the future the idea of the privately owned personal vehicle is going to be pretty much a thing of the past.”

What if the direction of automotive is more like Uber, where vehicles are seen as an essential item to use for service, verses an essential item to own? The Vox piece speculates that in the future, vehicles may not transport anyone. Freight or even pizza delivery could be done with fully autonomous cars. It’s possible dealers could shift their focus more on fleet sales. Speaking about this possible shift for dealers, O’Dell said, “An automated vehicle is still going to be a motor vehicle, it’s still going to need service, its still going to need to be sold, somehow. At this point dealers sell to fleets as well as to you and me. Maybe the dealership model becomes more fleet heavy at some point.”

Another question about self-driving cars is how much they will be accepted. In 2012, 33,661 people died in accident involving human driven vehicles. Could the debate one day become not whether or not self-driving cars will be accepted, but if human driven cars should be allowed? Perhaps, but for now the mountain to climb is to get self-driving vehicles accepted legally and as a normal part of everyday driving.