Car Ownership in the Future

I pulled out some interesting insights from Lyft’s essay on the “The Third Transportation Revolution.”

Car Ownership in the FutureI pulled out some interesting insights from Lyft’s essay on the “The Third Transportation Revolution.”


I pulled out some interesting insights from Lyft’s essay on the “The Third Transportation Revolution.”

Essentially, we are headed towards a world free of human drivers.

The numbers back it up, fewer and fewer people are looking to get their licenses:

The age of young people with driver’s licenses has been steadily decreasing ever since right around when I was born. In 1983, 92% of 20 to 24-year-olds had driver’s licenses. In 2014 it was just 77%. In 1983, 46% of 16-year-olds had licenses. Today it’s just 24%. All told, a millennial today is 30% less likely to buy a car than someone from the previous generation. — John Zimmer

My prediction is that it will not only become rare for humans to drive, but also illegal.

The positive benefits of removing human error from driving are quite obvious — ideally less accidents on the road. But the more you dive into the positive externalities, the more benefits you find:

The average vehicle is used only 4% of the time and parked the other 96%. — John Zimmer

Imagine the possibilities of activating the max potential of our vehicles and making the most out of them.

Most of us have grown up in cities built around the automobile, but imagine for a minute, what our world could look like if we found a way to take most of these cars off the road. It would be a world with less traffic and less pollution. A world where we need less parking — where streets can be narrowed and sidewalks widened. It’s a world where we can construct new housing and small businesses on parking lots across the country — or turn them into green spaces and parks. That’s a world built around people, not cars. — John Zimmer

Think of the possibilities !

The end of private car ownership means we’ll have far fewer cars sitting parked and empty. And that means we’ll have the chance to redesign our entire urban fabric. Cities of the future must be built around people, not vehicles. They should be defined by communities and connections, not pavement and parking spots. They need common spaces where culture can thrive — and where new ideas can be shared in the very places where cars previously stood parked and empty. — John Zimmer


We read this future and it is tough to even imagine. A world without vehicles manned by humans?

The reality is that this world is coming. It is the future. People are building it. If we agree that the future is different, then the question becomes: what can we do to accelerate this inevitable change in our ecosystem?

By jordangonen on September 21, 2016.

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Exported from Medium on February 17, 2018.