CARS OF THE FUTURE 

Here's my little joke. In the future, the
people of Los Angeles will ban the private
ownership of cars. Sounds ridiculous, right?
But the way I see it, it's practically
inevitable.

You'll still be able to drive as much as you
like, but you'll be renting the car, not
owning it.

One advantage is that you can rent the kind of
car that's right for the trip. For going
cross-country, a big car; for a run to the
local market, a little one. A very little one.
And how about a nice big convertible for your
trip to the beach?

You never have to wait in line or have a
reservation. You have an electronic card that
goes in the slot on the dashboard, and your
account is charged accordingly.

Cars for rent will be parked all over the
place, you just pick one out and drive away.
And when you're done with it, you don't have
to return it to some particular place at any
particular time. You park it where you like,
remove your electronic card, and simply walk
away.

There are little lights that illuminate on the
car, so you can simply look down any street
and see what's for rent. The cars have
wireless communications and report their GPS
position to a central database. So people can
refer to a map on the Internet and see where
rentals cars are parked.

But there is a catch or two. For example, if
you park it way off in the desert someplace,
your account would be charged extra, a "drop
charge".  But there is no drop charge if the
car you had rented is rented again by someone
else within a reasonable about of time. So
people have an incentive to leave their rental
cars clean, and in a convenient location for
the next person.

At airports, train stations, bus stations, and
taxi stands, there will usually be plenty of
cars for rent and plenty of people to rent
them. (This plan of mine does not pertain to
taxis, buses and the like.) 

And unlike today,
nobody will care much about little bumps and
scrapes. It will be normal for cars to look
like that. If you get in a serious accident, a
little light comes on the dashboard asking you
to wait for the authorities.

When the car needs maintenance, another little
light goes on, and this means that you can
actually get paid to deliver the car to a
maintenance facility. The car knows when it
needs maintenance.

In private, commercial parking lots, store
owners would probably like to have a few cars
for rent parked and available. So they could
offer an incentive to return your car to one
of the designated places with electronic
parking meters that reward the person who
leaves a car there.

And if a car were parked way off in the
desert, there would be a bigger incentive for
someone to pick it up and bring it back to
town. (Perhaps the same amount charged to the
person who left it in the desert.)

Some people will rent their car each morning
and turn it in each night. Other people will
pick out a car they really like and keep it
for a year or ten years, the same as now. It
depends on what kind of deal the rental
company is willing to make with you. Maybe you
want a car for a week. Just leave your card in
the slot, and park it in your garage.

The prices for all this are determined by
competition; there would be many private
rental car companies, large and little,
competing for the customer. And the car
manufacturers also compete, as they do now,
for the customer's approval. And there would
still be dealerships, but mostly selling to
corporate customers.

What I describe would not be socialism because
the government would not set the prices. What
the government would do is lay down the rules
-- the technological standards that make the
system possible. 

Hopefully, we will all be adopting electric
cars before too many years have passed, so now
would be a good time for the authorities to
set the standards about how cars of the future
will be built and maintained. It's no good
having different brands of cars using
different parts.

Some people will rent their car each morning
and turn it in each night. Other people will
pick out a car they really like and keep it
for a year or ten years, the same as now. It
depends on what kind of deal the rental
company is willing to make with you.

It wouldn't hurt anything if a few people
wanted to continue in the old way. That is:
buying, registering, insuring, maintaining and
disposing of, their personal automobile. But
in order for society to make a break with the
past, we would probably want to have an
outright ban. Exceptions could be made. 

And what does all this accomplish? For one
thing, we would be using motor vehicles more
efficiently: matching the right machine to the
job. But the greatest value to my plan is that
cars would become efficient connectors for
mass transit. Rail, mainly. Passenger rail
really only works when it's easy for people to
drive to the station and have another car
waiting at the other end of the line.

--TPS 4/08