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

Another automaker--- this time GM-- turning to "car sharing" and "ridesharing" as part of a strategy to shift motorcars and public transport (of which taxi is just one pillar) to "transport as a service" (and control the wires). Their "special sauce"? Bootstrap it by giving away cars to drivers--- typically millennials stuggling in the job market--- to join Lyft and then eventually phase them out...
http://venturebeat.com/2016/03/14/lyft-and-gm-say-new-rental-program-lays-infrastructure-for-self-driving-car-network/

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/01/self-driving-cars
"Detroit is indeed going the way of Silicon Valley. Ford and GM have been talking recently about re-inventing themselves as “mobility companies,” something they did back in the 1940s as well, when they went around the country—with the help of the Federal Department of Transportation—buying up streetcar and public-transit lines, and then closing them down so people would need to purchase their vehicles instead. And this could create something of an existential dilemma: the auto companies, which helped create the American middle class under the constant pressure of the union movement, are now taking advantage of a new “post-industrial” free market that can be a bit more cruel.

The most effective use case scenario for autonomous cars is a chicken/egg one in which the great majority of vehicles on the road are already autonomous, allowing them the ability to communicate with one another without the intrusion of what our robot overlords so disdainfully call the Human Factor. But it's unlikely that autonomous technology will trickle down, affordably, to the lower ends of the automotive marketplace any time soon. Unless we succeed and elect Bernie Sanders, the rich will be able to spend their commutes getting richer in their mobile boardrooms, while the growing poor may crowd onto self-driving buses that have dispensed with unionized drivers."