Report Predicts the End of Individual Car Ownership

The first report from independent think tank RethinkXL predicts that by 2031, 95 percent of U.S. passenger miles traveled will be served by on-demand, autonomous electric vehicles owned by companies providing transport as a service.

1 minute read

July 14, 2017, 1:00 PM PDT

By rbregoff

Tony Seba and James Arbib introduce some of the ideas that will be required thinking as planners and engineers begin to consider the next generation of transportation technology:

A historic photo taken on Easter Sunday, 1900, shows a street filled with horse-drawn carriages. If you look very carefully, you can pick out a solitary automobile. A photo of Easter 1913 shows the same New York Fifth Avenue scene packed with cars. If you look very carefully, you can pick out a solitary horse.

That’s disruption: New technologies create a new market and transform existing industries in the blink of an eye.

We face a rapid disruption of transportation today that could end more than a century of individual ownership of the gas-powered vehicle that disrupted the horse. This disruption will reshape the urban landscape and the world’s energy economy and bring huge benefits — economically, socially and environmentally — if policy decisions are well-informed.

Seba and Arbib are writing as co-founders of RethinkX, which recently released a report that comes down on one side of an ongoing debate in the transportation planning world: will self-driving cars render car ownership by individuals obsolete?

FULL STORY: Are we ready for the end of individual car ownership?

Monday, July 10, 2017 in San Francisco Chronicle

Infrastructure Land Use Social / Demographics Technology Transportation Urban Development World United States California Autonomous Vehicles Self-Driving Cars Electric Cars Carsharing Public Transportation Sprawl VMT Highway Capacity View More

I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching. Mary G., Urban Planner

I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching.

Mary G., Urban Planner

Get top-rated, practical training

Start Learning

Advertise with us

Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools

This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.