It&#x27;s not really that much of a contrarian argument.<p>Basically, here&#x27;s the deal:<p>Right now, the cost to own a car is CO and the value received from owning a car is VO.<p>The cost to rent cars from a taxi-like service is CR and the value received from renting cars in a taxi-like service is VR.<p>For most people, CO &lt; CR.  That is, it&#x27;s usually much cheaper to own than to rent.  With perhaps some exceptions if storing your car is super difficult in your locality.<p>The VO and VR relationship is much more complex.  There are advantages of each model (you can take an Uber when you&#x27;re drunk, you don&#x27;t have to look for parking, but on the other hand you can&#x27;t leave your crap in it and you have to wait for it to arrive and you can&#x27;t take your kid in it).<p>Based on the CO &lt; CR and VO &lt;?&gt; VR distribution across people, we have a certain balance where taxi-like services are pretty big, but ownership is the dominant model.<p>In the autonomous world, VO &gt; VR almost all the time.  That is, you get all the advantages of current ownership and pretty much all the advantages of current rental.  But the cost of ownership presumably increases (you have to pay for a sensor package now) and the cost of renting presumably decreases (since you no longer have to pay for a driver).  So the question is how much do those costs end up changing?  Is the sensor package expensive or cheap?  How many human costs can the Ubers of the autonomous world actually cut out, and how much utilization can they get out of each car?  If the CO increase is small enough or the VO decrease is small enough, you expect to see more car ownership.  If not, more car rental.