[walshemj]

Or you get out and set your automatic car to keep driving round and round the block when you need it again you send it a command from your phone.

Back in the 80's at my employer if the traffic wardens where seen one of the messenger boys would be told to drive the partners cars around the block until they had gone

[majewsky]

This is an absurd waste of energy.

[walshemj]

Yes but that is what will happen

[gambiting]

You say it with absolute certainty, just like people 50 years ago used to say with absolute certainty that we will have flying cars. Well, flying cars are also a huge and unnecessary waste of energy and they didn't happen at all. Automatic cars will probably park themselves in huge automatic multi-story parking lots, like in Japan, why the hell would they be driving around, whoever owns them wouldn't want to put extra miles on them unnecessarily. Even if the electricity to run them was free, you are still using up tires and wearing out bearings , shocks and other elements, it makes no sense.

[walshemj]

Human nature tells me that this will happen in crowded cities no one is going to want to pay though the nose for the limited car parking avaible.

Exactly how are dense and expensive Citys like London and SF going to build those "Huge automatic multi-story parking lots".

[gambiting]

Tokyo is much bigger and denser than either one of those yet it has them everywhere. I hope you know that I mean those vertical car lifts which pack many more vehicles than your regular car parks, and which can be relatively easily build underground. But you only need to look at Lisbon - a city which had a monumental problem with parking, and they managed to build dozens of huge underground carparks all over the city, under city squares and such, sometimes 10-15 levels deep.