Anand Shah on the shift toward autonomous vehicles

Vehicle Ownership May Become Passé

More and more people are moving to cities, and new technology and lifestyle changes may make owning a vehicle unnecessary for many.

By: Bud Ward

The most highly-engineered but underutilized machine on the planet is likely sitting in your garage.

Anand Shah of the Albright-Stonebridge group in Washington, D.C., says most passenger cars are only used for about an hour each day.

SHAH: “For the past hundred years, the idea of owning a vehicle has been a car that has one person that owns it, drives it to work, parks it, and if you need another person in the family to move, they have to have another vehicle or use an alternative form of transport.”

But that’s changing as more people use on-demand car services such as Uber and Lyft.

SHAH: “We’re in a generation now of people that are moving into cities and staying in cities and they care less about owning a vehicle.”

New technology is also pushing us towards car-sharing since self-driving vehicles could drop you off, and then – instead of parking – pick up someone else.

So Shah expects that the future of transportation will involve fleets of on-demand, self-driving cars. And if he’s right, the cost of a ride may come down so much that it would not make sense to own your own car.

He says in the most optimistic scenario …

The most highly-engineered but underused machine on the planet is likely sitting in your garage.CLICK TO TWEET

SHAH: “… every autonomous car on the road will take 10 non-autonomous cars off the road.”