[jzwinck]

Large parts of cities will be turned into roads for driverless cars to ferry themselves to and from the office 2x as many times to save the owner $10 on parking. Traffic will go slowly because driverless cars don't care about speed when no one is inside. And then all the plebs still driving their own cars will be stuffed.

[pmyjavec]

This is kind of true, as much as this tech is fascinating, I can't help but feel trains and better planned cities are the real solution to the car problem.

Even in parts of Europe I noticed they put big trucks on trains to automate a large part of the journey and a driver finishes the last leg of the trip.

Trains are also much easier to automate, I also imagine a train track costs less to maintain than a road.

[kayoone]

Trains are complementary but there will always be need for personal transportation.

[pmyjavec]

I never said there wasn't, however; What is obvious is that if taxis and trucks (privately owned or not) are now so cheap to run because there are no labor cost involved in having them on the road, then the next problems we will face are increased congestion, increased pollution (electric cars still consume a lot of power), increased road degradation. The only way to control this might be through increased taxes or car registration fees.

This still means the car problem needs solving.