I heard this argument put forward a few times. I actually doubt this will be the case. I actually fear it will be the opposite--by far. By making driving less costly (more relaxing, less demanding, etc.), you encourage driving. I am not sure so much money would be pouring into developing these technologies if they were to encourage the reduction of the number of cars.
I would love to see collective transports and biking be encouraged a bit more, but that'll have to wait apparently.
Disagree.
By far the major costs of driving are the car itself, the fuel, insurance and maintenance.
The act of driving the car is more of a time cost, but nowhere near comparable to the ones above.
And with self-driving tech, you will have extremely cheap public transportation and/or uber or whatever other private company is leading the "car as a service" business.
I don't think many people will consider convenient to buy a car, when they'll have as much cheap transport as they want without buying one, just because they can stay in it without driving. I mean they could do the same even if they call an uber automaton.
Last edited by iopsi on Fri Dec 13, 2019 12:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.
AFAIU, maintenance is cheaper and "fuel" is cheaper for electric cars. And their prices are coming down. To me it all seems to point towards more driving, though I hope to be wrong.
Jevons paradox at work. I also suspect autonomous cars would increase mileage, that two hour commute might become acceptable if you can do other things on the way.
Ride hailing also has its downsides, the car will be empty as it travels between pickups.
More of the same won’t work and less of the same won’t work, so the answer will have to be something completely different. Like the grandchildren of the Zoomers could be genetically engineered to live in hot climate.