[johnking]

With regards to the parking space article reference. In the long run with self driving cars we can reduce the overall number of parked cars through greater vehicle utilization. Instead of them being parked for long periods of their life, they can join fleets (think the Tesla fleet idea) and service many people in one day.

[jaclaz]

But that is a "next" step, unrelated to cars being driverless, sharing fleets (normally human driven) do exist, and they do actually work for some uses, but still they are either on the road or in a parking.

Let's play it another way, let's assume that no self-driving car exists but that all humans (with the exception of those making a living as a driver) can afford a third party human driven car for all their movements/commuting.

This could be either an enormous fleet of Taxis (or Limousines) or Ubers, or each household having one or more cars and a corresponding number of employed drivers.

Still, if the way the city/economy works there is a need that 100,000 people move from point A to point B in a time range between 7 and 9 in the morning and that the same number of people go back from B to A between 17 and 19, the same amount of roads (and the space occupied by them) will be needed.

[majewsky]

Even when there are the same number of cars, we can still improve space efficiency. Cars can be much more tightly packed in a parking lot if you only need to be able to retrieve any car, instead of this specific car.

[SomeStupidPoint]

Only if you can negate the need for a personal vehicle, which self-driving cars aren't close to doing.

Self-driving cars do nothing about the fact I need somewhere to put my gym bag during the work day or my gym and work bags while I go out in the evening. Or that I might need a carseat for a child. Or that I might like to keep an umbrella and change of clothes in my car. Or....

Any benefit to not having the static car is quickly mitigated by the inefficiency of storage shuffling for even a moderate amount of things.

[cm2187]

There is another objection. People who use a car to go to work need that car at the same time. Playing lottery on whether I will be allocated a car or not to get to work this morning isn't an option. That's why farmers usually own their hardware. They could rent except that they all need it the same days.

It will free up the streets nevertheless. The reason you park your car nearby is so that you can walk to it. But if the car can go park itself and come back 10-15min from where you live in some big car park, you would probably as happy as if you had to walk 5-10min yourself.

Plus ownership isn't fully rational. Otherwise people wouldn't bury themselves into debt to own their house, pushing property prices up. Instead you would have cheap property you can rent.