It is a rainy Sunday. I am sitting at the breakfast counter of Black Walnut waiting for Yvonne. I am drinking an incredibly delicious Bloody Mary. Is it really that delicious or is it that I have not had a Bloody Mary in months?
All of the questions regarding what the future holds that I wrote about in yesterday’s blog still weigh on my mind. Here is a new one, a sort of ponderable. It is conceivable that Brainy Bird will never purchase a motor vehicle. It is even more conceivable that Little Chirp never will. That is not as improbable as it sounds. Here is my thought process on this:
Brainy Bird has a 2018 Audi, which is fully paid for. The car has a 7 year, unlimited mile, bumper to bumper warranty. He takes extreme care of his car, and he is careful with his finances, so it is quite reasonable to believe that he will have the car in 2030. Autonomous taxis are certainly on the horizon to be widely available by 2030.
Conservatively, car ownership in 2030 would cost him $57,000 for five years, this is based on the follow assumptions:
– $30,000 to purchase the car
– $15,000 ($3,000 x 5 years) to insure the care
– $6,000 ($1,200 x 5 years) for gas
– $6,000 ($1,200 x 5 years) for parking
If he drove 100,000 miles in that five years, then his cost would be 57 cents per mile. In contrast, an autonomous taxi would cost about 20 cents per mile, thus car ownership would no longer make mathematical sense.
Of course there are lots of variables to this equation, such has where he lives, but typically those that spend less on gas because they live closer in the city spend more on parking and car insurance, so things sort of offset one another. Additionally, if he were to spend much less than $30,000 on the car itself that would drive the cost per mile down significantly, but it is hard to get under the 20 cents per mile of the autonomous taxi.
It is will be interesting to look back on this post in 10 years…
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