IPFS News Link • Transportation
You Don't Like Sharing Your Car. But Can Elon Musk Change Your Mind?
• https://www.wired.comLast week, tech wonderboy Elon Musk released his much-awaited Master Plan, Part Deux, a wildly ambitious blueprint to change American mobility as we know it: autonomous buses that might appear on-demand, and new electric big-rigs, pick-ups and SUVs.
Oh, and sharing. Lots of sharing. Anyone will be able to use the Tesla app to add their self-driving Tesla to the wider Tesla fleet, Musk says. It will allow cash-poor wannabe Tesla owners the chance to take one for a spin while its real owner is, say, disrupting the Silicon Valley biotech venture capital ecosystem or whatever. Opening up a car to generate income might make Teslas more accessible to all, Musk argues.
But does anyone really want to share their own, personal car? Much less their Tesla? It's a question more than a few automakers and car-adjacent firms are scrambling to answer.
Here now are two main of schools thought. The Tesla model: I own my car, you borrow it. The Uber and Lyft model: They own the car, you borrow it. Today, the latter feels more likely. This is how Musk himself put it just two years ago: "I think there will be some amount of car sharing for sure, but I think there's like a limit to the whole sharing thing. There is an important role for sharing but it's not—most things don't get shared."