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Every and each of the proposed benefits of vast public policy initiatives supported by a generous public purse in support of autonomous cars could be as easily derived from a similar public policy initiative to create public transit infrastructure.

I’m not convinced that’s true. The friction involved with public transit (limitations schedules, routes, and sharing of vehicles) are enough to limit much of the usage outlined in the above comment.

Vehicle fleets don't solve the spatial and temporal realities that are reflected in the schedules and routes of public transit. A fleet of vehicles has to be staged to meet fluctuating demands.

Mathematically, on demand vehicles are probably harder to schedule because of random variation in queuing. Consider a population of workers each of which sometimes works from home. Some days an unusually high, but not statistically unlikely, number of riders all stay home: the idling vehicles need to sit somewhere. Other days, a statistically likely but atypical number of riders don't work from home and there are not enough vehicles to go around.

Public transit addresses fluctuation with a low nominal cost of providing surplus capacity to normal operation in the form of standing room. Public transit can be sized more closely to peak demand. On the other hand, from 20:00 to 06:00 the peak demand capacity of an autonomous car fleet needs to be parked somewhere. Between 06:00 and 08:00 and again between 18:00 and 20:00 the fleet needs to be moved to storage.

Sure, in a city. But I really question that in places likes Southern California with its endless, winding suburbs. The place is built for cars.

The A16Z utopia proposes strong public policies based conclusions drawn from Denmark (about the size of Rhode Island) and the Netherlands (smaller than Delaware). Anywhere a car can go, a bus can go.

To put it another way, a premise that autonomous cars will work in places like Southern California is that an autonomous car will be at your doorstep whenever you need to leave. The ideal fleet to achieve this is one car dedicated to only serving your schedule. Anything else has all the drawbacks of party line telephone service.

>> It’s great to explore this topic. You can have a lot of fun in picking a random industry and imagining the effect that self driving will have.

Yes, it will be interesting to see the public's reaction in a few years, when the promised revolution fails to materialise.

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[1] I say this with some insight borrowed from people in the automotive industry. A commenter in another thread has recommended the following Medium post:

We’re still very much in the early days of making self-driving cars a reality. Those who think fully self-driving vehicles will be ubiquitous on city streets months from now or even in a few years are not well connected to the state of the art or committed to the safe deployment of the technology. For those of us who have been working on the technology for a long time, we’re going to tell you the issue is still really hard, as the systems are as complex as ever.

https://medium.com/self-driven/a-decade-after-darpa-our-view...

Ambulances do a lot more than just move people around, they carry doctors who stabilize the patient prior to transportation so that a relatively small problem does not turn into a critical one.

> Why would someone wait minutes for one to arrive when they can just hop in an autocar to go the hospital?

If you can just hop in and go to the hospital by yourself you don't need an ambulance.

You can have a non-life threatening injury that prevents you from operating a car yourself, and without access to something like Uber or having another person to drive you, could necessitate calling an ambulance.

A study was done (I haven't read the whole thing) that seemed to indicate cities with UberX had a reduction in ambulance use: http://www2.ku.edu/~kuwpaper/2017Papers/201708.pdf

(Though the wording of the GP was slightly ambiguous and seemed to compare a time-sensitive emergency to being able to take some other vehicle to the hospital)

Or use Uber or a taxi

Assuming "hard" self-driving...

Education: more kids "driving" themselves to school. There's an age where a kid could be trusted to walk alone, but not ready to "drive" there. Get in car, car takes kid to school & back. The one thing stopping my kids from going to a preferred school is we can't drive 'em there at that time; give me a trustworthy car and I'll let it take them there.

Play: like above, parents will be more likely to let the kid travel a non-trivial, non-walkable distance to play with friends. No longer bound by parental availability, parents can just authorize the kid to get in and be taken somewhere.

Parking: there will be a "Napster"-type stage of anarchy where self-driving cars won't park, they'll just slowly roam around until the owner calls it back. I've spent a whole day in NYC driving in circles (while the family enjoyed scenic stops) in lieu of finding & paying for expensive parking; would be nice to just get out and let the car wander, using roads as "parking in motion". This will lead to legislation & new solutions requiring aimless vehicles to actually get off the roads, albeit into more compact storage.

Tourism: lots of people dislike dealing with taxis. I'd certainly be more comfortable with an automated "pick your destination on a map" UI, evolution of getting rid of elevator operators.

Travel: huge hit on travel industry. My family rarely flies anywhere, opting instead for painful overnight 1000+ mile drives. Many people will be far more likely to do such trips when they can get on a major long-haul freeway and completely ignore the driving process. No more trying to stay awake on a boring overnight drive, just doze off completely, waking up only for refueling or nearing destination. I'll happily drive the complex parts at start/end, but it's that 700 mile stretch that's agonizing as driver.

Housing: longer commutes will be more tolerable. I will live in an acre+ site, and let the car deal with traffic while reading/working/napping. So long as I can ignore the commute, I'll put up with a much longer one.

Similar to "parking in motion" we might even see "housing in motion"

Good point. Short term parking gets leveraged, car moving to a new spot every few hours while occupants sleep.

I remember seeing a concept video ages ago that touch on many the things that self-driving can change(from Audi I think).

I always think in a fully self-driving world there would be huge shifts in the real estate market, living further from your workplace/school won't be such a problem if the commute is easy and the time is consistent, but also in a way that is more convenient than public transportation, similar to how there's higher demand for living close to good transportation links.

Also, if the car can drive itself then you don't have to park it close to you when you don't need it, it can stay at a remote location while you work then "pick you up" when needed.

I also wonder if that could have any effect on car ownership, one of the biggest hassles of living just with uber is that it might just fail you when you need it, either because of surge pricing or lack of drivers, such as late hours or major events, if Uber eliminates the need for drivers it can deploy its fleet at 24 hours a day besides maintenance and therefore could guarantee it's users a minimum supply in a certain area at all times.

Then again, would Uber own those cars? Does it make sense for them to lease unutilized car time from owners similar to what people do with idle CPUs for crypto mining? Thus allowing owners to have some passive revenue.

As a single, twenty something, I would likely buy a luxury self driving RV. It would pick me up wherever I want and I'd fall asleep as it drives into the boonies somewhere.

When I wake up, brush my teeth, shower, it's already outside my office.

After I'm out it goes to a full service cleaning institution, they dump all the tanks, tidy up the space, clean where needed, so I don't have to.

It might also make the trip to the grocery store, and someone would load my groceries into my fridge for me.

And it comes back to me later if I need something, in a shorter time than my commute home would have been.

> Does it make sense for them to lease unutilized car time from owners similar to what people do with idle CPUs for crypto mining?

I wouldn't want to find a used condom on the floor of my car when it picks me up, or vomit after a night of transporting party goers.

Yeah, I imagine using shared self-driving cars would be as fun as using public toilets.

Lyft cars do not feel like public toilets.

That’s because they’re not Lyft’s cars. They’re personally owned vehicles with the owner in the vehicle monitoring its condition at all times.

That's because you can down-rate the driver.

>Health - beyond the obvious effects on the emergency room, what else? Ambulances willl quite clearly be affected. Why would someone wait minutes for one to arrive when they can just hop in an autocar to go the hospital?

Besides ambulances (which should be used for emergencies where medical/paramedical assistance is needed on the spot),I mean you can take a taxi (or Uber) to go to the hospital if you can move and don't need immediate assistance, consider the amount of "periodic" (daily, weekly or bi-weekly) transporting of (otherwise healthy, but not enough to be self-sufficient) patients that cannot drive or walk for long distances, like - as an example - people under dialysis or chemioterapy.

Right now (at least here in Italy) usually the service is assured by volunteers that drive an ordinary car supplied by the (public or private) assistance, in most (not all) cases the patient can get into the car (and get out of it) without any assistance, and the time the volunteers provide could well be used for a number of other (needed) chores in assistance.

People already take.an Uber rather than wait for an ambulance if they are stable enough. You call an ambulance when moving is dangerous.

At least where I am in the US (SoCal) distance to school is not a primary concern. The barrier to choice is not distance but school district boundaries and assignments.

> Health - beyond the obvious effects on the emergency room, what else? Ambulances willl quite clearly be affected. Why would someone wait minutes for one to arrive when they can just hop in an autocar to go the hospital? Or would the entire emergency room itself be on wheels? (Less likely.)

Well, the car can't go through red lights or overtake in certain locations to get to the hospital more quickly. That could be an easily ignored issue in some cases (if traffic is light or if it's easy to get to the hospital from your current location), but good luck if there's a traffic jam or the car needs to ignore certain laws to save your life.

Ambulances do a lot more than transport patients. It's already the case that you can usually get someone to the hospital faster than waiting for an ambulance. Typically if you're using an ambulance you're going to need someone to provide medical assistance on location and/or help load you onto a stretcher.

That depends on how far out you're projecting. In a hypothetical all-self-driving future, a car with a sick occupant could broadcast its emergency mode to the rest of traffic to let it through.