[gcb0]

They can still live for 20+yrs very profitably on other markets.

Even US and high tech markets like japan and korea will take several years to transition to self-drive cars. Specially because this will start either with trucks or very high cost cars so they can offset support and iron out bugs.

And that's my guess assuming self-driving cars are ready tomorrow.

[MichaelApproved]

Self driving cars would be such a dramatic improvement to the public, it would be adopted much sooner than 20 years after being implemented. Cars that require a human driver would depreciate so quickly and the safety benefit would be so clear, people would upgrade incredibly fast.

[simias]

We don't really know that though, do we? I mean, I can see this being true eventually but I'm still very perplex that we'll see cars able to drive autonomously in all conditions any time soon.

It's one thing to drive on the wide streets of american cities literally built around cars. It's an other to navigate the narrow, crowded streets of many european cities, with scooters and bikes zooming left and right, people parking anywhere they can, passing where they shouldn't be etc... Let's not even talk about some places in Africa and Asia where it seems that driving is more art than science.

I'm expecting self driving cars to start on friendlier turf (large avenues, highways connecting cities etc...) and then expand iteratively to "wilder" areas. I'm sure it'll take a while to completely take over though.