“I only drive maybe once a week, usually to go shopping on weekends,” she said. During the week, her boyfriend uses her car to get to his job. “I had barely ridden the subway before the Expo Line opened, but now I’m using it a lot more and it’s great. Parking in L.A. is a nightmare and you don’t have to deal with that.”

The twist in Ms. Skow’s story: She works for TrueCar, a website that provides automotive pricing and information to help connect consumers with new- and used-car dealers.

Forecasters expect people in metropolitan areas to own fewer cars in the future. But they are not ready to predict a big drop in the total number of vehicles sold, which this year will total more than 17 million cars and light trucks in the United States and about 75 million globally. That is, in part, because so many people have more than a last mile to cover.

Automakers are generally betting that sales of vehicles to fleet services will offset any decline in sales to individual consumers. Boston Consulting Group predicts that 44,000 cars will be sold to ride-sharing fleets in North America in 2021, more than making up for an expected net decline in consumer sales of about 8,000 vehicles.

The bigger impact might be on how the automotive industry — not just carmakers, but also fleet service operators, parts makers and the like — makes its money in years to come.

According to the consulting firm PwC, the global automotive industry generates about $400 billion a year in profits; about 41 percent of that — or about $164 billion — comes from new vehicle sales.

By 2030, PwC forecasts that even as overall automotive profits grow to about $600 billion, only about 29 percent of that will come from new vehicle sales. By then, PwC predicts that “mobility services’’ — including ride-hailing and other types of last-mile transportation services — will represent 20 percent of the automotive industry’s profits.