Originally Posted by
Mobile 155
More than the simple plan investors can often see the motives for the plan. If the motive of the plan is to make car travel as cheep as possible it is still promoting car travel. So they will compare the plan to others built on the same business model. Dockless bikes and dockless scoters come to mind.
There is a bias among business people against cheapness, because they want money. That is contrary to what business is supposed to be, i.e. people willing to pursue any business model that will make money, regardless of whether it takes money away from other businesses or the economy as a whole.
The reality is that sharing creates spending opportunities that wouldn't exist if vehicles must be owned, maintained, insured, etc. by individuals individually. Sharing machines is economically efficient. That's why everyone doesn't own their own bulldozer, crane, or other large industrial machinery. It just so happens that some clever-but-shortsighted people in the last century developed the idea that if everyone bought a car, that would create a lot of economic growth and jobs. It did, but it pushed the economy to a point where there is only room for recession because money and resources are pushed to the limit. We can reset the economy to make room for growth again, but doing so means using new technologies like smartphones and other IT to use resources more efficiently. Sharing vehicles probably holds the most potential in this regard, because so much land is wasted on mutli-lane roads/highways and parking.
The question will be asked if there is an example of a business plan where people call up a ride in a car and each take a turn driving to a destination of their choice leaving the vehicle somewhere after the last use?
Plenty of examples. What do you think people do with rental cars at night? Buses? Service vans? Taxis?
If if there is no example of such a business plan then words like, people could or, people should are reasons to reject such plans. The reason for this is because of what people do. Go to a local rental yard and look at rental equipment and see how people treat such equipment. People do not take the same care of rental equipment or even rental cars or bicycles or motorcycles as they do something they are invested in.
Your theory should be tested in practice. If some ride-share drivers just continue to only drive their own vehicles and not share them with other rider-drivers, there will be the possibility of comparison. You could also compare how taxi drivers treat their vehicles compared with owner-operators who participate in ride-sharing.
It isn’t vandalism or a conspiracy that makes something fail as much as a bad plan. Planning on a rental system that doesn’t pay back the investment before the tax exemption runs out is not a good plan.
Vandalism is what scares away investors from scooter/bike shares. With ride-sharing it's news of horror stories, which coincidentally never get published about taxis, maybe because nothing bad ever happens on a taxi ride
And promoting car in a car free forum isn’t more car free.
It just makes it easier to live without owning a car if you can easily and affordably get a ride when you need it. The reason so many people own cars and drive everywhere is because they are conditioned to think it's the only possibility. Ride-sharing is about overcoming that conditioning.