I'd be surprised if private autonomous cars will be allowed into cities, whereas public ride share autonomous mini-buses with dynamic routing AI will be the way forward.

I think people like their privacy too much for that, as efficient as it may be. It seems more likely to me that private (or public single-occupant) autonomous cars will become smaller. Something like a Smart car size autonomous EV -- small enough to minimize costs, large enough to be useful for the single rider.

A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transport — paraphrased from Enrique Penalosa, former Mayor of Bogotá, Colombia

http://newyork.thecityatlas.org/lifestyle/developed-area-ric...

I think privacy is something that is a function of cost benefit. When road pricing becomes ubiquitous (as it will given the march towards EV), people will begin shift to public transport.

Perhaps the solution for Americans will need to be different to that of the rest of the world.

Prepare to be surprised

There are already congestion charging schemes. I doubt it will ever get to a ban (and you can wouldn't want that) but I think it will be expensive. You could actually just charge a flat fee for road space, so a bus carrying 70 people is 3 times as long as a car, so only pays 3 times more. And maybe a separate charge of minimum standard to discourage nitrogen or particulate air pollution.

I suspect that the move to EV will eventually create a revenue hole from reduced fuel taxes necessitating the move to road pricing. Politically unpalatable but I think a necessary step.

I'd be a bit scared to sit inside a public autonomous vehicle. I mean, how hard could it be to tamper with the thing before I get in? I'd be surprised if it didn't run WiFi, Bluetooth AND cellular at the same time.

It'd be best if the software on it was open source, came with a nice tasty bug bounty and had an occasional audit from a third party secu- oh god it's never happening is it

I can understand worries about some kind of remote mass hacking, but in-person tampering with one vehicle? Just slit the brake line. In other words, not a new issue.

People could also tamper with non-autonomous transit like disabling the breaks.

> So we'll just sit in the same traffic in our electric car for an hour, each way to work?

On the bright side, electric cars don't pollute emissions or noise when idling. It's an incremental improvement, but one I happily embrace.

Modern ICE vehicles with stop-start which is available even on mid-range vehicles don't pollute while idling, so then the problem with heavy traffic is limited to moving slowly, which electric vehicles still seem better at.

CO2 causes climate change. Buying oil empowers authoritarian, barbaric regimes.

EVs full speed ahead.