[linkregister]

I suspect that commuting traffic will increase to eliminate this advantage. Already in major metros, long commutes suffer low speeds due to congestion during rush hour periods. Without a commensurately vast increase in infrastructure investment, I do not foresee a significant change in commute experiences from self-driving cars.

I predict that most people would not elect to live 2 hours away from offices despite being able to have access to entertainment and work while commuting.

The evidence is already here: various tech companies run shuttles to far-flung areas (Google has shuttle service from Stockton to Mountain View), yet employees aren’t moving to these lower-cost areas in large numbers.

Workers with families will have upper bounds to how long a commute they’ll endure. Their families are more important to them than being able to have entertainment, and meeting times limit the amount of time that can be used for work done while commuting. At that point, it’s approaching remote work, which is a promising idea, but isn’t a solution for long commutes by itself.

I see self-driving cars changing last-mile and replacing hub-and-spoke commutes as a replacement to taxi services and short-distance shuttles.

[moduspol]

It'll work both ways, though. With ubiquitous driverless cars, offices may see less value in being in expensive urban centers and spread out.

Taken to its logical extreme: If people could teleport from one place to another instantly, there'd be almost no value at all to congested urban spaces. Similarly, if anyone can hail an affordable driverless Uber in seconds and reach their destination faster (due to improved routing / traffic flow and smaller cars) without having to think about parking, a bus schedule, or similar, the value in being physically close to other places decreases.

In that scenario, having your office out in the suburbs at a much lower cost becomes more reasonable. Transportation becoming more frictionless inherently makes longer distances more conceivable for travel (including commutes and office placement).

[erikpukinskis]

> Taken to its logical extreme: If people could teleport from one place to another instantly, there'd be almost no value at all to congested urban spaces.

So, like if we start being able to do our jobs in VR?

[aplummer]

> I suspect that commuting traffic will increase to eliminate this advantage.

I think maybe in the short term, but in the long term I can imagine self driving traffic moving much faster than regular traffic. Cars all accelerating at the same time at lights, Uber pool in vans becoming super cheap. Roads could dynamically add and remove lanes in a direction without needing infrastructure, since all the cars will just "know" which lanes are available. Personal cars (hopefully rarer) can drive themselves home rather than take up parking space in cities.

[rwmj]

The main advantage is the self-driving car could be an extension to your office. For instance if I have an 8 hour day with 4 hours of face-to-face meetings, then it doesn't particularly matter if the other 4 hours are spent commuting because I can work the whole time.

[jacques_chester]

I don't think self-driving cars change the dynamics of traffic. Anything that makes driving faster attracts traffic until the advantage is lost. Often, it actually turns out to be worse due to second-order effects.

[raducu]

3D routes scale much better than 2d roads; also airplane autopilots are much easier to imolement.

I think self-flying electric vehicles will do what self-driving cars cannot.