[milesf]

  Of course, many such benefits may not be realized until high 
  [numbers of self-driving vehicles] are present

Insurance will drive the adoption of self-driving vehicles. If you can buy a vehicle that statistically won't get into an accident, it will be cheaper to insure.

[malandrew]

Even better, Google and the automaker's could get into the market of managing fleets and their own insurance directly or via wholly owned subsidiaries. That's what I would do if I were in their position. Basically, this is going to completely disrupt the auto insurance industry as well and no one has more and better data to price the insurance than Google that now has hundreds of thousands of miles logged and will always be in possession of the sum total of all data on all miles ever driven. They are no longer performing statistics on a sample size, but are instead doing so based on an entire population. Basically Google can do the same for auto insurance that Amazon has done for online retail. i.e. they can operate on razor thin margins that no one else will ever be able to match because they'll be operating on sample-based statistics and it will take them a while before they have a significantly large sample to properly price their product.

FWIW I posted the above comment in the other story submitted on this topic today on insurance. [0]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6615346

[ams6110]

It will have some effect, but insurance is a fairly small piece of the total cost of ownership of a car. It will be interesting to see if the cost of all the extra mechanisms and electronics to make a self-driving car are offset by lower premiums over the expected period of ownership.

[milesf]

Small? I pay over $1000 a year for insurance up here in Canada, and keep my vehicles for more than 10 years. That's a good chunk of the cost of a vehicle.

[001sky]

http://www.edmunds.com/tco.html

[ams6110]

Interesting, I picked what I thought would be a "typical" car (Ford Focus sedan) and it shows the insurance getting more expensive as the car gets older. That's exactly the opposite of my experience with any car I've ever owned.

I'm also reminded why I drive old cars that are cheap to insure. My insurance costs are a fraction of what that page shows.

[stormbrew]

This assumes the insurance cost of a non-self-driving car doesn't go up as the pool of people using them shrinks and the liability shifts to them. Insurance companies like people who probably won't have to take their money more than people who will eventually have to.

[elchief]

Is it?

Let's say I buy a new 2014 Corolla for $16,800 and keep it for 20 years.

My insurance (in BC) would be about $100/month or $24,000

Even according to the Edmunds' calculator, insurance is the largest single cost.

[gizmo686]

We may also see initial adoption by people who buy 0 cars. With self-driving cars it becomes much more convenient to use a car rental service that has a car pick you up when you need to leave.