Robocars - Autonomous Drive, Self-driving, Driver-less cars

Cars are ownd for a multitude of reasons. See Top Gear for some examples . They won't change that

I suspect they are equally likely to disrupt local public transport systems. I am not sure that's a good thing.

Even a lot of business scenarios could be handled with self-driving vehicles. Given most delivery vehicles can already take a standard pallet, how about making medium sized deliveries using an automated system overnight, and only doing the last few miles on a timed schedule to minimise traffic impact and inconvenience to the business owner?

Commutes are easily handled.

Replacing taxis and minicabs is handled.

Shopping runs is handled.

The only failure for these vehicles will be the motorway runs, and the failure is battery capacity, etc. If you imagine this tech in a Tesla then you can soak up the business exec class and city to city journeys too.

This is going to rock the world, because even if you take out minicabs alone, you hit Ford sales to the tune of millions of vehicles globally. Start doing that in a few different scenarios and the costs of a car is going to rise significantly as the volume that makes them cheap is reduced.

Software, automation, efficiency... this is all going to eat the world.

The question isn't whether it's going to happen, the question is whether we as a society are prepared for it. There's going to be a time that most jobs are made irrelevant by technology, we've got to get past the idea that everyone must be employed, that we all should own a car, that we all should want to own things we don't need.

It's weird, but it's comparable to music. Who would believe, only 20 years ago, that people wouldn't want to own their music on CDs and LPs. Now people are surprised if you're not paying as you go for all the music in the world, at a tenner a month.

We're just going to see that happen to physical stuff.