Originally Posted by
FiftySix
Tandempower, now that you've discussed it thoroughly, maybe it's time for you to try it yourself. Just on a smaller scale.
Contact your friends and neighbors and try this experiment with a electric bicycle. Something worth about $3 to $5K USD. Basically, a bicycle that no one might buy for themselves, but with everyone pitching in together the bike could be obtained and shared by the group.
Come up with a pay to ride system that you envision. Have the bike maintained and repaired by the local bicycle shop with funds from the share payments.
Let us know how it goes. Short term and long term.
The reason why share companies have value is because they have established a network of participants. Before Uber or Lyft existed, you could post ride ads on Craiglist and I'm sure people got rides sometimes, especially if it was planned well in advance or if it was for something common, like a weekend trip between major cities within a region.
But to coordinate riding and driving in an efficient way so that it is possible to more-or-less spontaneously hitch a ride with someone for a few blocks or miles and not have a plan for later, but then spontaneously get another ride then; you need a working network of active users.
Uber came up with the idea of surge-pricing and variable pricing generally to fill in the gaps for users. It is little solutions like these that make a larger system work. Adding 'drive share' to an existing ride-share system is another such idea; i.e. one that allows users to also be drivers and for vehicles to continue to serve the network after the vehicle owner has left the vehicle.
I agree with many of the posts here that people take better care of their appliances when they own them personally; and that it wouldn't be comforting to get out of your personal vehicle and hand it over to some other driver; but of course this is the challenge for ride-sharing to overcome. I think it is doable by some combination of insurance and compensation. If you can be assured that your car will be fixed or replaced if it is damaged, then many people wouldn't mind letting others drive as ride/drive-share users. Obviously part of the ride-share app's functions is to screen drivers and riders, so you would know that whoever was taking over the wheel when you left your vehicle would follow the rules of the ride-share system.