Zoox, a Robo-Taxi Start-Up Taking on Google and Uber

Unlike a privately owned autonomous vehicle, a taxi has very little need for environment flexibility. The article says they're planning to start in a "sunny city like Las Vegas", where there's unlikely to be much black ice... and even if they operate solely in such sunny cities for a decade, there's still enough market for them to grow huge. Of course, anyone who can make a vehicle that can handle white-outs will have an advantage, but I haven't heard even Google claiming to have a handle on that.

Or people will own one for status and call upon another for various routine tasks...

We are getting off topic but I agree advances today are a massive opportunity to introduce a standard 4 day week. I feel this is much more short term achievable social advance than the often mentioned basic income. I've had this discussion a few times and the majority of people say a 4 day week is impossible/unrealistic. I enjoy pointing out ~80 years ago we had a 6 day work week and people were saying all the same excuses why we couldn't do a 5 day week. And given for most of us corporate types, the work day is typically going far beyond the 9-5 hours of a traditional day. Now our 40 hour week is easily covered in the 4 days.

On a more personal note I'm wondering if your European. I find most Americans are very work obsessed. The idea life is for living and a job is a means to fund that is very foreign. I've found generally withing the first 10 minutes of conversation with someone from the states Ive not met before, they will say this phrase: "I love my job". I'm Australian and while we are heading toward the US view we have a history of life is for living and I'd hate to see that go.

I can't speak for everybody, but I enjoy my work and would do something very similar even if I didn't need the money.

I don't view the opportunity cost of my morning commute in terms of the time I lose at home before work. I view it as lost time I would rather spend at work doing what I love.

>Work is simply a means of supporting yourself while you experience life.

you can have reasonable experience of life only until you're not that far down from the middle (like whether salary is bad or good is defined not by absolute number, instead it is defined by the relation to other salaries in that region, etc...) Everybody running up toward and beyond the middle move the middle up. So, if people can additionally work while cars are driving themselves - they would as anybody who wouldn't would thus be sliding down farther from the middle and thus slipping into less than "average" life experience.

Start a company and only have your employees work 4 days a week. Some companies do 4 ten hour days.

https://thoughtbot.com/jobs

So true. Driving can also be aggravating and frustrating, and at least in the Bay, you have to be at least a little aggressive to get into traffic / turn out / not have other people hate you and honk. If a car could do that for me but still give me control when I wanted it (on the rare occasion I'm driving for pleasure), I'd say "shut up and take my money" in a hurry. It'd also be nice to be able to take a train or bus to work, but the bus doesn't go where I need and it's slower than riding a bicycle for my commute.

>the self-driving cars are trying to reduce congestion.

congestion reduction is such a goal only because people are wasting time in traffic :). If cars are empty or people inside are engaged in a dopaminergic activity (working, texting, having sex, etc...) it will become less of an issue. Especially with electric cars as idling of the engine becomes non-issue. Add to that that currently amount of time my car on the road is limited by my time (and thus i plan/optimize when/where to go, like getting into store on the way from work, etc...), the self-driving car can go to store for pickup or deliver some papers, etc... while i'm doing something else. I.e. the total sum of time of me getting quickly home from work and the car going to store on its own will be larger than one optimized trip - i.e. my time in the car would be lesser while car's time on the road would be higher if everything else was equal. Though it willn't be and thus- i'm looking forward for many productive hours stuck in "smart & autonomous" traffic trying to get home as quickly as possible and sending the car on whatever errands before and after - hope it will enjoy being stuck in traffic among the sames.