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

To save pubs.

Might well have said "to find leprechauns, get their gold and balance the budget".. The impact of SDCs on the rural landscape is quite unclear. While the motorcar helped fuel suburbanization the SDC will quite likely fuel expansive urbanization.

The assumptions needed, I think, to support SDCs as suporting rural pubs are (among others):

• that rural pubs are interesting enough to get people wanting to visit them-- and they can retain their "charm", independance and real ale (many unique rural pubs were liquidated already decades ago).
  
• that small British pubs can be profitable. Taxes (Ireland has the 2nd highest alcohol tax in EU, higher even than the UK which is placed 4th) have done much to undermine things and while leading to a stready decline of beer consumption in pubs has absolutely not "solved" bringe-drinking-- which remains particularly fashionable.
  
• that people continue to have a taste for beer. On the whole, excluding binge drinking, beer consumption has been in consistent decline throughout Europe. Germany, for example, has seen average consumption constantly decline since the 1970s.
  
• that SDCs are personally owned and have, if electric, sufficient range.
  
  
  

In many urban areas special "bar" shuttles have been put in operation. They have not contributed much to increasing business but towards safety-- keeping drunks from driving.