To own or not to own – That is the question: The value of owning a (fully automated) vehicle

One of the largest uncertainties in modelling the impacts of autonomous vehicles in future is whether they will be owned or used as automated ride (hailing) services. This paper addresses this issue by modelling the inherent attractiveness or convenience value of ownership of an automated vehicle, beyond the regular convenience parameters such as journey time, waiting or access time and reliability. Using mixed logit model on a choice experimentation data, we find that ownership is inherently valued more compared to the ride services by women. However, we also report significant heterogeneity in this valuation depending on gender and other car-ownership related characteristics, which can diminish this inherent attractiveness to the point that a majority of men may find ownership no more attractive than exclusive use ride services. We also find substantial inconvenience value associated with shared/pooled automated ride services compared to exclusive-use ride services. Implications of the results are illustrated using an example of the share of automated vehicle ownership, and exclusive-use and pooled use ride services.