Private Car Ownership Will Be Dead By 2025

Drive-share services like Uber are especially interested in self driving vehicles as a replacement for human drivers, who are a huge source of error. In an interview with PCMag, Lyft co-founder John Zimmer claimed that private car ownership could become obsolete by 2025. He compares Lyft to companies like "Netflix, which made DVD ownership "obsolete," and Spotify, which "made it unnecessary to own CDs and MP3s."

Zimmer sees ridesharing services as "the ultimate subscirption" and that "eventually, we'll look at owning a car in much the same way" that we look at DVD ownership. Zimmer sees a market for autonomous taxis that can be paid for as you need them, or as an unlimited mileage package. This way, you can pay for an autonomous car to come pick you up when you need it, forgoing the need to actually own your own vehicle. This would provide all of the benefit of getting where you need to go, without any of the expensive upkeep that accompanies car ownership. This is similar to Tesla CEO Elon Musk's plan to have his cars make money driving people around when you aren't using it.

Zimmer says that this plan could be hindered while there are still driver and driverless cars on the road in a "hybrid network." This could limit the service to certain cities, and dry stretches of land with low speed limits. Lyft has partnered with GM for $500 million in a plan that includes autonomous cars. As bleak as it is, Zimmer's entitled to his opinion about the future of the car industry. But for now we're perfectly content owning our cars for both transportation and enjoyment.