<story><title>Ford and VW Agree to Share Costs of Self-Driving and Electric Cars</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/12/business/ford-vw-self-driving-electric-cars.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>distant_hat</author><text>Car sales are rapidly declining across the world and we may have hit peak car. Consolidation will likely arise in a market like this by itself. Combine this with the threat from companies like Tesla and you can see the old behemoths wanting to combine forces.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bryanlarsen</author><text>I doubt it.   Contrary to the rose-colored projections of analysts, self driving cars are going to massively increase car usage.   Self-driving significantly reduces many of the &amp;quot;costs&amp;quot; of driving: time (because you can do other things while driving), frustration, attention, danger, need for a license, et cetera.   When costs go down, usage inevitably goes up.  Not to mention the spectre of unattended cars circling for parking spaces or rehoming.   And since the human driver is by far the biggest cost of deliveries, that is going to spike massively.&lt;p&gt;Now it&amp;#x27;s certainly possibly that sharing will reduce the number of cars sold, and electric cars may increase their lifespan.  But with massive increases in usage, I don&amp;#x27;t think it&amp;#x27;ll make much of a dent.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ford and VW Agree to Share Costs of Self-Driving and Electric Cars</title><url>https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/12/business/ford-vw-self-driving-electric-cars.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>distant_hat</author><text>Car sales are rapidly declining across the world and we may have hit peak car. Consolidation will likely arise in a market like this by itself. Combine this with the threat from companies like Tesla and you can see the old behemoths wanting to combine forces.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sputknick</author><text>I agree with this, plus another factor that I rarely hear discussed is the lifecycle of electric cars. If Elon is to be believed, electric cars should have a useable lifespan about 5 times longer than ICE. Are the traditional automakers prepared for Americans to come in for new cars once every few decades instead of once every few years?</text></comment>