To paraphrase an old saying (often applied in a completely different context), why own a cow when you can drink milk by the glass?
Eric Jaffe in the Atlantic Cities (Imagine: A World Where Nobody Owns Their Own Car) puts two and two together:
car sharing + autonomous vehicles = shared autonomous vehicles (SAV)
Safety is only the beginning in a world with self-driving vehicles. Why bother owning a car when one can drive to your door, take you where you want to go and then move on to the next person? On average, less than 17 percent of U.S. household vehicles are in use at any given time. That is a tremendously inefficient use of mobility resources.
SAVs could be a form of quasi-public transportation. They could also complement public transit – for example, by shuttling people between their homes and light rail stations. This could generate enough demand to offer more frequent and reliable public transit service.
Will SAVs just create more sprawl, giving people incentives to move even further from the center of cities? David Levinson from the University of Minnesota does not think so. “If you’re paying for the car by the minute, then you’re not going to want to move farther out,” says Levinson. “You’re going to want to move closer in.”
I said it before and I’ll say it again – I, for one, welcome our autonomous vehicular overlords.