In the near future, car owners will be in the minority, predicts Lyft co-founder John Zimmer. "By 2025, owning a car will go the way of the DVD," says Zimmer, who is also president of the San Francisco-based ride-hailing service, in an article he wrote on Medium. In major U.S. cities, private car ownership "will all but end," he writes. That's because it's both cheaper and easier to not deal with owning a car, says Zimmer. "As a country, we've long celebrated cars as symbols of freedom and identity. But for many people — especially millennials — this doesn't ring true."

Between car payments, insurance, gas and repairs, car ownership costs the average American family nearly $9,000 each year, Zimmer says, citing AAA. "The car has actually become more like a $9,000 ball and chain that gets dragged through our daily life," he writes. As part of that evolution, more cars will be self-driving. In the next five years, the "majority" of Lyft rides will be in autonomous cars, Zimmer says. Thanks to a partnership with General Motors announced in January, there are autonomous Lyft vehicles on the road in San Francisco and Phoenix as part of pilot programs. But by 2021, autonomous vehicles will be handling the lion's share of Lyft rides, he forecasts. Just last week, Lyft competitor Uber rolled out self-driving vehicles on the streets of Pittsburgh.