[redial]

As much as I want it to happen, and as much as I agree with you that in the near future is going to happen, I think you are missing the context. You seem to be forgetting we already have cars. Not only that, we already have planes, bullet trains, spaceships, etc. We even have the bicycle; transport has been "free" for a long time. The only thing equivalent to the steam engine in impact would be teleportation. That is the jump from the horse to a train, or from a train to an airplane. Self driving cars are cool, they are not steam-engine-in-the-1800s cool.

[bertil]

Steam engine made operational cost of transport an order of magnitude cheaper (while capital expenditure was two orders of magnitude higher) by using coal instead of oats (and locomotive instead of a horse-driven cart).

Self-driving cars will lower the operational cost of transport by another order of magnitude, but barely raise capital expenditure, actually probably concentrating it dramatically (as Waymo will probably build cars that cost double and can drive ten to a hundred times further).

Self driving car is essentially tele-transportation in your sleep.