Having personal transportation, rather a horse, a bike, or a car, is pretty vital for a lot, if not most of us, here in the US.

Self driving shuttle services will be a great new way to transport us, especially in metro areas, but this won't work very far from the center of those so if the valuation of that market is too optimistic in regards to Tesla the holders of their stock will pay for it.

If you look at the number of US car companies that have started from scratch in the past 70 years you don't see many still standing (pretty close to none). Tesla has a very different model though so we can't lump them in with most all of the others.

In my own humble opinion, I think Tesla's fate will be decided by how fast they can produce a low end, very affordable and dependable car for the masses. If they can deliver that within the next 3-4 years they've got a very good shot at moving up to competing with Ford and GM.

If they instead try to compete with higher end cars they'll find that's a hard road to travel. At some point soon the big players will produce a car that's a competitive option and dilute their market and they'll die.

It's worth remembering that both Honda and Toyota captured market here with affordable dependable cars, not luxury cars. Those came quite a few years later.

I fully expect Tesla will produce an affordable car though, and it would make perfect sense if they called it a "Model T".

"Some people just like owning cars."

Yes I did point out that most Americans and many people are conditioned from birth to value car ownership, even when it's a poor financial decision.

"Perfect example where Uber fails - I can't take my dog anywhere

As I told the other guy: Stop predicting failure based on problems, put on your creator and builder hat, and solve the problem.

Why not have pet friendly vehicles available at a small charge, guaranteed clean?

It bothers me that these problems are so easy to solve and yet people are so willing to write off a future possible technology without so much as thinking through any of the solutions.

You seem very defensive. I was just pointing out that I don't own a car and live in the epicenter of the ride-sharing revolution, and I'd much rather go back to owning a car.

Regarding the dog, I'm just pointing out something that currently doesn't work for me. Until they fix it I don't care - right now their solution does not help me and nobody has done anything to address it.

My point is simple. Right now owning a car is better than not owning a car for me. Until that changes I will want to own a car. If you don't want to own a car then good for you - different people have different desires.

It's not "car ownership" that we value. It's autonomy and independence.

A teenager doesn't just "want a car." He wants that freedom that car gives him... to go somewhere without bugging his parents or friends for a ride. If you're in a big city or someplace where this is not the norm, I could see you believing otherwise.

(And I laughed at "guaranteed clean." Right. All that means is you get a refund when you find the dog turd in the back seat.)

"A teenager doesn't just "want a car." He wants that freedom that car gives him."

Precisely, and this is why owning the car isn't that important. This teenager presumably still has to pay for the car and fuel, or bug his parents for it. Paying for the (cheaper) self driving ride is no different.

So why not call a cab? or take a bus?

It is different. If you're relying on someone (or something) else, waiting around, you're not "independent."

Cabs are expensive, relatively slow, and busses are just slow and don't take you to your destination.

Really, this doesn't seem like much of a stretch.

I think that most people are hardwired from start to value ownership of things.

You might have noticed that people are hoarding a lot of stuff, that are of little value to them. It's probably an intrinsic value to most people to own things. It might vary a little between cultures, but it seems to be a common trait.

If you don't - great for you.

However. It might happen that you one day walk by a car on display in a mall, and notices the nice paint, a practical laptop holder, the particularly nice storage boxes for diapers and what not, and thinks to yourself - "I want that car."

>"You seem very defensive. I was just pointing out that I don't own a car and live in the epicenter of the ride-sharing revolution, and I'd much rather go back to owning a car."

And I was just pointing out that your personal experiences with today's ride sharing aren't relevant to a hypothetical discussion of an unrelated future transport technology.

I'm defensive because you're continually derailing a thread about futuretech to list your personal experiences with todaytech. I don't get why you derail this conversation to make it emotional and personal, so I get defensive about the track of the conversation of solving tomorrow's problems. Stop taking it personally, think bigger! Solve a problem!

If it's so easy to solve why don't you share the solution?

I did.

I literally did share a solution in this post, and the one before.

- Commoditize storage and transport it to you on demand

- Offer pet friendly cars

Boom. Solved.

As I also wrote: "I'm sure you could come up with a better solution if you tried."

Is this hackernews, where builders come to talk about exciting ways they're solving tomorrow's problems?

Am I on the wrong site?

Do you have any evidence that either of those will make money? I have evidence that pet friendly cars lose money - Uber used to have a program that catered towards dogs and they cancelled it because it lost money.

You haven't solved anything until you've demonstrated a working solution. If it were so easy to fix problems in the real world, politicians would have our economy constantly booming, there would be more jobs than people, and the Middle East would be the most peaceful place on Earth.

Anyway, I don't think we're going to agree on anything. I'm exiting this thread.

> Uber used to have a program that catered towards dogs and they cancelled it because it lost money.

By the same standard uber as a whole is not a working solution.

In fact it may not be.

I thought I was here to discuss programming and related news rather than engaging in mindless boosterism.