Marc Lee writes on his Policy Note blog:
The choice of owning a car works out to about $5,000 per year for us …
As an economist, I love the full marginal cost pricing. That is, with car sharing you pay for using the car in real time … It makes you ask each time, do I really need this? For how long? Can I bundle the trip with something else?
With a regular car, the amortization is a sunk cost 
once you buy your car; insurance is a similar lump-sum annual cost; maintenance is always a toss up; even with gas, once you have a full tank, it lasts a while. So getting into a car is essentially zero marginal cost, since you have already spent the money.
In terms of convenience, there is no car outside my door to jump into on a whim. But between the two options, I can access the services of a car most of the time I need one, at about a quarter of the cost of owning one (plus some extra transit fares, so perhaps a third of the cost all in). On a weekend evening, I might have to venture further away from home to get a car but I have never not been able to access one. And even if we rent a car for a week or two each year for vacations, we still come out ahead. …
The key is having a wide range of mobility choices for whatever trip you have in mind.
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More here – including a description of some car-share options.
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And then there’s the impact of auto-autos, or self-driving cars. Persquaremile speculates:
… we’ll start thinking about cars differently. If cars can drive themselves around, passengers or not, what’s the point in owning your own car? Why not lease one from a pool? Welcome to stage four. Schedule it for your daily commute—perhaps with a price break for carpooling—and request one on-demand for more unpredictable needs. If wait times are short enough, it’ll be an attractive proposition. …
When people stop owning cars, the line between public and private will blur further. Who will pay for the upkeep of roads, consumers or companies? What about parking spaces? Will private companies be able to take advantage of free parking, as individuals do today? Or will free parking be a thing of the past?
Way more here.
Economics don’t always drive people’s decisions.
If that were the case, no one would eat out at restaurants, because it is far, far cheaper to cook at home.
Guest has a very narrow understanding of economics. By eating out at restaurants people clearly put a value on their own time.
Regarding carshare and robotaxis: yes! yes! yes! So many urbanists see robotaxis as hastening sprawl and corbu’s victory. Instead I see all Marc’s points about ownership undermined: why wait a couple of minutes for the car to come, when you could already be out on two feet enjoying the walk to your destination.
Robotaxis will help undermine the car-dependents’ Stockholm-syndrome-like defence of their car-dependent environment.
neil21 has, in his defence of walking, provided one of the main reasons why people buy a car: why wait for the taxi/bus to arrive when you could already be in your car heading to your destination.
Even if the actual time saved is small, the ability to leave when you’re ready rather than when the company operating the transportation system thinks you should be is huge.
Traditional car sharing is worse than the bus. Not only do you need to plan ahead and book a car, you have to get to the car before you can use it. You have to make a trip before you can make a trip.
I’m guessing that Gordon uses Car2Go. I admit to not knowing the details of how they work but it appears to be an unsustainable business. In order for there to always be a car nearby that, should it be taken while you’re shopping, can be easily replaced by another nearby, supply must greatly exceed demand. It’s rare that any business can turn a profit in that environment.
What I do know about Car2Go comes from an animated map I saw of vehicle movement throughout the day and from seeing a few of them in my neighbourhood. Out near the edges of the service area the cars are currently de facto private vehicles. You’re virtually guaranteed to find it where you left it. That’s fantastic for the users, but terrible for Car2Go who don’t get enough from a single user to ever pay for the initial acquisition of the car.
Without major changes to BC Laws and business practices robo-taxis will be just like the ones we have today except with the immigrant driver replaced by a computer chip. There won’t be enough of them, they’ll cost way too much and they’ll be virtually non-existent outside YVR and a few town centres.
Not sure about this pessimism. In order for Car2Go to be cheaper than owning a car, usage of the communal cars has to exceed that of private cars, probably by a considerable margin to pay for administrative expenses. But most private cars spend most of their time just sitting there. Parked. It is quite reasonable for their to be a Car2Go car parked on every block at any time, and still have those cars get way more usage than a private car. Obviously this is more realistic and more profitable the larger the Car2Go user pool is.
I agree that laws and business practices will have to change before we are all riding around in robo-taxis, but there is no reason to assume that they won’t change. And automatic taxis and cars in general have the power to be transformative because they don’t require paying a driver. They won’t have to generate the same number of rides to pay their way, so they should be able to handle lower demand areas. If a car costs $10,000 per year in operating costs and amortized fixed costs – http://www.caa.ca/docs/eng/CAA_Driving_Costs_English.pdf – that is less than $28 per day. (Less that $15 per day using the $5,000 figure above, but that seems suspect to me.) Five fares a day at $7 per fare pays the freight plus a good profit. Admittedly, the technology isn’t anywhere close to this yet, but it will be. Not that I think that this will lead to less driving, actually be making driving less expensive, it could lead to more, but it sure would lead to less car ownership.
More miles on the road but ideally much more efficiency in overall road usage by robo drivers instead of their primitive meatbag counterparts.
No doubt about it, car2go provides incredible flexibility – one trips are something you can’t do in your own car! And Daimler is banking that it will be a money-maker sooner rather than later.
But it’s important to keep in mind the distinction between the types of trips best served by traditional round-trip carsharing, like Modo in Vancouver or Zipcar, and those served by one-way/on-demand services, like car2go. Traditional carsharing can serve as a substitute for car ownership for people who don’t drive every day. Chances are car2go can only serve a small percentage of those trips, partially because of the 2-seater Smart car, but also because of the pricing.
Keep in mind, at the present time it’s unknown just what the enviro/transport benefit of one-way/on-demand carsharing like car2go actually is. It’s only now being studied in 2 cities, with preliminary results due this fall. But it seems likely to be less than traditional round-trip carsharing, like Modo in Vancouver or Zipcar, etc.
Moda and ZipCar will eventually go out of business. Their use is too low and their business model is poor. I let my Zipcar membership expire as I rarely used it.
One way rental is the way to go. I use Car2Go a lot.
The benefits are obvious, to me and the environment.
Thomas – Not sure whether Modo and Zipcar will go out of business but their business model will probably evolve to provide more flexible trips.
Share a car?
Higher costs for extra trips;
High savings for fewer trips.
No brainer!