I don't know what your over-under on self-driving cars being prevalent is, so I don't know if this supports your point or not.
I don't know what your over-under on self-driving cars being prevalent is, so I don't know if this supports your point or not.
In cities sure. Rural areas not happening. Add the fact people like to drive to Mexico Canada and Alaska I’d call it a non starter.
Example. I have a place where the road on google maps and the place people drive vary because rural Arizona uses washes as roads. Cars driven by humans get stuck.
I wouldn't want to own a car without a steering wheel, sometimes you have to do weird stuff like park on a specific patch of grass at a rural wedding and it's going to be easier to do that myself than try and convince a robot.
But a car that can a) handle 'most' driving for some value of 'most' and can b) safely hand over or come to a stop under basically all circumstances including a sleeping driver? That's actually a much simpler task and it's a very useful vehicle. I would want one of those even if I lived somewhere where road conditions were such that I had to steer it myself on a daily basis.
Like in Arizona, once you got to paved road you could enter an address in Phoenix and kick back in actual safety, without having to worry about taking over at a moment's notice. I think that's achievable in 10-20 years, and it could be less.