Switzerland has a few car shuttle trains ("Autoverlad") to avoid mountain passes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_shuttle_train#Switzerland - no advance booking required. The Eurotunnel shuttle between France and the UK is another great example (but has inflexible bookings).

High-speed car shuttle trains might be the better solution, if you insist on using cars.

That's an entirely different scenario than we're discussing, right?

Yeah of course. I'm just trying to salvage the idea (door-to-door in a car, high speed). Seems like a train for cars would be the solution. Not that it would be particularly efficient, but not as terrible as 200mph cars.

Definitely better than 200mph cars. The Veyron drinks 2 gallons per minute at top speed. (And only gets 8mpg at city speed.)

It's part of the self driving vision. Veyron's could be as cheap as other high-end cars if mass produced. The point of self driving is not really about replacing drivers but making overall transportation more efficient.

The advantage of lanes over trains is that

a) it would be an order of magnitude cheaper to convert a car lane into a self driving lane than build an entire railway line b) self driving cars can still go on normal roads at lower speeds, so you solve the last mile problem

> Veyron's could be as cheap as other high-end cars if mass produced.

Yeah, right. Lack of scale is definitely why the Veyron was so costly. It definitely isn't the difficult engineering with a W12 engine or the $75k tires to keep it from killing the passengers in the event of a flat.

Also, most people don't drive "high end cars". I hope self driving eventually isn't something restricted to the wealthy.

> The point of self driving is not really about replacing drivers but making overall transportation more efficient.

Long haul between cities is not where cars are inefficient. Cars are inefficient in traffic.

> it would be an order of magnitude cheaper to convert a car lane into a self driving lane than build an entire railway line

Not really. You're stealing lanes from cars that can't self drive or can't drive 200mph, so you're making everything worse for everyone else if you do this. You also need to build on ramps and off ramps everywhere because your 200mph lane cannot safely use the same exits as the 70mph lane next to you.

> self driving cars can still go on normal roads at lower speeds, so you solve the last mile problem

The last mile is the real problem, though. Traveling between cities rapidly is not a real problem except for shipping.