Auto Industry Looks Beyond Ownership - Bloomberg View
" The shift toward renting rather than owning expensive assets, combined with the advent of self-driving cars, will transform the auto industry, Jonas says. The top right shows where Jonas reckons the industry is eventually headed: You'll order a self-driving vehicle that will pick you up and drop you off while charging you only for the distance you traversed (and without your ever having to worry... That reality probably still seems somewhat far off, as might the future depicted in the upper left quadrant, in which people own their own self-driving vehicles. Industry behemoth Ford Motor said today it's inviting 2,000 Londoners to sign up for its GoDrive car-sharing service, which will offer pay-per-minute one-way car rental in the capital, with guaranteed parking at the chosen destination. Ford reckons car-borrowing will grow by as much as 23 percent in London by 2025, while the global auto-sharing industry will be worth more than $6 billion by the end of this decade. Bill Ford, heir to the family business and executive chairman of the automaker, told a TED conference in June 2011 that mobility, freedom and progress were the objectives of his great grandfather, not selling cars per se. The prospect of the... Source: www.bloombergview.com
