In a McKinsey & Co. report released yesterday, and covered in Automotive News, an interesting break even analysis was done based upon the miles driven by a person per year. When does it pay to buy, ride share, or take public transport? Take a look at the chart.

That's not the end of the story, and I recommend reading through the article. As summarized in Automotive News:

"You may look at this chart and conclude that car-sharing is likely to remain a niche market, at least in the United States. Unless the living and working patterns change, and Americans start logging fewer miles, the economics won’t change.

That’s where autonomous driving has the potential to change everything. Much of the cost of car-sharing program comes from hiring humans. That’s especially true of Uber and Lyft, but it’s true to a lesser extent for services like Car2Go and Zipcar, which often must dispatch drivers to move their cars or bring them in for maintenance.

A second chart in McKinsey’s report shows that driverless cars would significantly shift the tipping point. Even at 10,000 miles per year, use of car-sharing services would become significantly less expensive than driving a personal car in San Francisco."