[trashtester]

Self driving cars, when perfected, will dratically reduce the number of cars.

Once there Uber self driving cars will then be both cheaper, safer and more reliable than your own car. And you don't need to park them. Only those with special requirements (ie professionals that need to store equipement in their car) need to have their own, the rest of us can use a taxi service.

Furthermore, when human driven cars are removed from the roads, road capacity could increase by 50-100% or more, as the distance between cars (in both dimensions) can be safely reduced.

Also, you will not need to pick up your children/parents/others that cannot drive. For instance, if you drive your kids to school, you likely have to drive both ways, doubling traffic (and wasting your time).

For commuters, self driving cars also lend themselves were well for ride sharing, having cars that function like full office spaces or entertainment sources, meditation rooms or whatever you can think of. If all cars are self driving, the speeds will could be regular, and uncomfortable acceleration/deceleration avoided.

Finally, the tech going into this is likely to be generalizable to other kinds of machinery, such as mining machinery, construction machinery, automated chefs, as well as the functions in manufacturing that have not already been automated.

I think the potential of the end state should be quite clear. The total economic potential is huge. Anyone able to attain near monopoly for one of the technologies going into this (software, sensors, traffic control centers, etc) stand to be the next Google.

That said, I think it is unlikely that it will take off in full until between 2025 and 2035. Now, we are in a situation similar to the .com era around 1998. If history repeats itself, 2023 may be a great year to invest in robotics startups, provided we see a bubble bursting.

[tiagoafpereira]

I don't deny that the bright future you've just described will happen (well, might happen) but putting it in a time frame of less than 20 years seems to me just wishful thinking.

If only I could see the same enthusiasm for say, improving public transit range, infrastructure and operational costs... nope, auto-cars will save us.

Take a look at Germany, they've just launched the world's first hydrogen-powered train.

As a side note:

The total economic potential is huge. Anyone able to attain near monopoly for one of the technologies [...]

Economic potential and monopolies don't mix very well, unless you're one of the shareholders of said monopoly.

[trashtester]

Well, about 20 years seems about right, for the full potential. But it is possible that part of the potential can be achieved much sooner, my guess is that the transformation will start in full around 2025.

On monopolies: Look at the big companies coming out of the internet revolution. Google, Facebook, Amazon, eBay, Uber and the rest are all near-monopolies in their core segments. As are older giants, such as Microsoft and Apple.

I'm not saying it is good, I'm just saying that the lesson from the previous wave, is that the winner takes it all. And as investors have learned this, they don't want to be late for the next party, hence the hype.

Of course, the risk that the bubble will burst at least once before the actual party, is pretty high.