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Not to mention, if self-driving taxis were ubiquitous and cheap, people would be far less likely to take their own car downtown--or own a car at all. In retrospect, the idea that there's a car sitting idle in a parking spot right in the middle of downtown all day for nearly every person in the area will seem downright insane.

Congratulations, you just reinvented public transit.

Not really. A lot of people simply don't want to commute in a space shared with others.

Cars are not going anywhere.

What is a street if not a space shared with others? Worse, everybody else on the street (pedestrians, cyclists, ...) who is sharing the street with your car is suffering from you using the car by taking up disproportionally much space, needing disproportionally much maintenance and causing disproportionally much noise.

Imagine an inner city without cars. Cities in which this is a reality are a bliss to be in. And people get in and out just fine.

Well, first, mrshadowgoose has a point: I know a lot of people who would love to take a self-driving car but wouldn't got near a bus.

But also, while I'd love (love!) to see much better, European-style public transit in US cities, it would take a fantastic level of political will, lobbying, and pitching to even begin to happen. For all sorts of reasons, public transit is wildly unpopular in the US, and construction is wildly expensive.

But a company like Tesla could (if they could figure out the FSD part) just roll out self-driving taxis after a few legal tweaks. It's achievable in a reasonable timeframe (once the tech is in place).

The total cost of driving around people individually in cars is substantially higher than the total cost for public transit with similar convenience and significantly higher throughput. (This is including upfront infrastructure investments and maintenance.)

Seems Americans are just too used to staring at a 2 ton steel can in front of them.

> Congratulations, you just reinvented public transit.

Reinvented, but much better. It's the difference between Circuit-Switched vs. Packet-Switched in networking. Trains are extremely inefficient use of resources. They require a dedicated and very expensive path, cannot re-route around problems (e.g. broken tracks or obstructed tracks), and frequently travel at a fraction of their capacity. Properly sized and routed electric vehicles are much more efficient in terms of cost per mile, travel time, and almost any other metric.

Trains are also much safer, more energy efficient and have lower TCO than a car fleet with similar capacity.

> frequently travel at a fraction of their capacity.

The average occupancy of a car with 5 seats is only marginally above 1. So, 20-25%? The average occupancy of a European streetcar is far above that.

> Properly sized and routed electric vehicles are much more efficient in terms of cost per mile, travel time, and almost any other metric.

Just as much as you can optimize those factors in electric cars can you optimize them in trains/trams/buses/...

> Why do you think this would happen?

It was already starting to happen in NYC with Uber's exponential growth before they capped the number of cars permitted. They were a year away from carmageddon.

> Self-driving cars are poised to dramatically improve parking overall.

And interestingly, all of the parking lots in a city, in theory, will be obsolete, opening a whole bunch of opportunities for new urban design. The idea behind self-driving cars is not to own the car, but to rent it...which is why some people are super bullish in the long term on Uber.

The cutover to autonomous cars will be a huge PITA however, and I think this is really what the OP is getting at.

>self-driving cars could cooperatively pack/unpack themselves into space efficient configurations.

I've had this same thought, but haven't seen it discussed much.

Parking lots essentially switch from random access (which requires expensive unoccupied 'lanes') into a slowly snaking space-filling curve. Cars can crawl slowly from entrance to exit, moving like water through a pipe. The paths can even branch and merge to make efficient use of the entire surface area.

If you also want to charge the cars stored in the parking lot, your solutions fall into two broad categories:

1.) Arrange the parking lot with rows of chargers that automatically plug in. Cars choose the appropriate row based on state-of-charge, twith he algorithm making sure the entire row finishing charging at roughly the same time. This minimizes unnecessary disconnect/move forward/reconnect cycles. Or,

2.) put wireless charging under the parking lot. This would be a lot more feasible than electrifying large swaths of highway.

Personally I still prefer option 1, because the peak charging speeds can be much greater.

> Parking lots essentially switch from random access (which requires expensive unoccupied 'lanes') into a slowly snaking space-filling curve.

Why would they? You still need to get the car to unpark itself when the owner needs it?

Oh, you mean everybody shares cars with everybody? What about letting sections of that "snake" just drive around, stopping at different spots and let people enter and leave? And perhaps let them walk around inside? Congratulations, you've just re-invented public transit.

> self-driving cars could cooperatively pack/unpack themselves

This is unlikely to ever happen. Even in the human-driver world, there would be huge potential to have cars communicate directly with each other. Never materialized.

Where are you going to go that's five minutes away though? if you're in the inner city, like downtown Manhattan, it's all urban so it's not like there's anywhere to go.

just imagine when someone's driverless car get's into an accident 20 miles away from it's owner whilst it was looking for a park.

And? What exactly is the severe implication here? A PMV does not have 100% uptime in any case, self-driving or not.

If the concept of a remote accident is so appalling to you...just don't get a self-driving vehicle. But other car users are capable of processing statistical risk non-emotionally, and they will get to enjoy stress-free parking once these vehicles become available.

Anyway, in all likelihood, self-driving cars will result in a large pivot away from car ownership. The impact of "your car" being involved in a remote accident becomes moot if it's not even your car.

also commercially it is not in the benefit of the car to waste fuel circling around, instead of parking

Where I live the electricity costs of having an EV 'just drive around until I call you' would be an order of magnitude cheaper than paying for parking.

A natural consequence of this is congestion pricing like in London.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestion_pricing

Electricity isn't the only cost of operating an EV. There's wear and tear on the drivetrain, suspension, and tires. And every mile driven slightly increases the chance of a collision. That's why insurance companies charge more for vehicles that are driven more miles per year.

Maybe, but fuel is cheap and so many people will want their car to circle close instead of parking 5 minutes away and thus being 5 minutes away when they are done. Even if it is a longer time inside they will have the car circle starting ten minutes before they think they will be done.

I can't imagine why I wouldn't send it home to be useful for other family members, or just sublet its unproductive time as a way to earn its keep as a ride share driver.

you are 30 minutes from home for a 15 minute appointment and do not like waiting for your car.

do you:

- send the car home

no, it would only get halfway home before the end of your appointment

- send it on a rideshare journey

let's say (conservatively, and according to some minimum regulations from the rideshare service) it gets assigned a job after 5 minutes to drive somebody 10 minutes away. it finishes its job at the same time as your appointment ends. you have to wait 10 minutes for it to return to you. again no.

- send it to a parking lot

assuming the parking lot is 5 minutes away and you can tell it to return 5m before your appointment ends this seems reasonable

- drive circles around your appointment

all the benefits of sending it to the parking lot but requires even less effort as you no longer have to remember to tell it your appointment is finishing.

now apply this logic to the general public. what is the most likely outcome?

Exactly. People are already occupying public resources for their private luxury (in the form of parking on public street in front of their house), nobody would think twice just letting the thing circle. Especially in places where parking costs money, which will then only be a thing for people who can't afford self-driving add-ons or need to charge the thing.