More people would use Uber here at those prices. But I don’t think they would find many drivers. ;) Our economy is quite different — just look up house prices in Toronto or Vancouver. It’s ridiculous. And 0% financing — I would jump at that too. I recall 6% was the best I could find on the VW and I wouldn’t have got $5k off the price. I’ve heard the Mexican VWs suck. Ours are made in Canada. 500k is conservative for our diesels. I see many being resold at 700k. My neighbor was offered 50k and a new car by VW for his 1987 Jetta. It has 1.8 million clicks and still runs well. They wanted it for their museum. He said you can give me 100k when I reach 2 million. :)

I re-read what I wrote when you said I underestimated the market. It didn’t phrase that well. I do believe it will be a massive business and highly profitable. What I meant to say was that market will be driven by cost savings — not luxury or value added. I say that based on my market study for SkyMeter, and their car sharing plans. (trend tracking and brand development is my job).

I found to things that influenced my opinion on the future. First, that the young generation who say they don’t want cars, actually do want cars when probed further, but see them as way too expensive for their income and they don’t want a beat up old Civic.They also have no desire to get their hands dirty. They want a new Tesla fully loaded and bumper to bumper coverage. But their hopes of that happening are beyond reality at this point. They have the same attitude towards home ownership.

The second thing was cost of ownership which I delved into more deeply and is the primary indicator as to where I believe the trends will take us. The most significant number was not what the average person was paying to own and drive their vehicle, it was how much more they were paying than they needed to. The percentage of people paying more than double what was required to own was about 68% and almost 30% were paying triple! What I mean by that is a 20K car can get you from A to B as well as any car, but an extraordinary number of people were choosing to pay 50 or 60K for their cars. And the reason was clear - they like cars that much and love to drive them.

Another big factor in that study was the number of people who are self employed is rising fast. As a business expense we are allowed a .36¢ per km right off on income tax, which offsets a huge amount of the expense.

If the auto industry was about transportation and saving money there would be way more old cars on the road and not so many Jags, Porches, BMWs or in your case an Audi. But that’s not saying the autonomous car fleets won’t be huge — I know they will.