Lyft, the privately owned transportation network company, has predicted that majority of its rides will be in self-driving cars within five years, announcing that by 2025, personal car ownership will be minimal.
John Zimmer, Lyft’s President and co-founder recently released a 14-page document with predictions that by 2025, private car ownership will end in major US cities.
Lyft’s President said that ridesharing has already begun to empower many people to live without owning a car.
He added that the age of young people with driver’s licenses has been steadily decreasing over a long period of time.
“In 1983, 92 percent of 20 to 24 year olds had driver’s licenses; in 2014 it was just 77 percent. In 1983, 46 percent of 16 year olds had licenses. Today it’s just 24 percent. All told, a millennial today is 30 percent less likely to buy a car than someone from the previous generation.”
Zimmer included his manifesto titled ‘The Third Transportation Revolution’, in which he discussed the basics of ridesharing.
He said: “Technology has redefined entire industries around a simple reality: you no longer need to own a product to enjoy its benefits.
A full shift to ‘Transportation as a service’ is finally possible, because for the first time in human history, we have tools to create a perfectly efficient transportation network.”
Lyft has said it will operate a hybrid network, which John Zimmer explains as a process whereby both drivers and driverless cars will on the road, believed to happen over the next five to 10 years.
Admitting there are still many details to work out, such as who would own this fleet of driverless vehicles and so on. Zimmer’s predictions came a few days after rival Uber began publicly testing its self-driving cars.
Zimmer added:
“Ridesharing is just the first phase of the movement to end car ownership and reclaim our cities. The shift to autonomous cars will expand dramatically over the next ten years, transforming transportation into the ultimate subscription service.”
