Not only do you need less parking for fewer cars, but you could have less parking for the same number of cars. For example there is no need for stores to have huge car parks - customer and employee cars can go and wait somewhere else and only return to the front door just as you come out with your goods. This can lead to far denser human centric areas.

Some roads can actually be decommissioned. Vehicles can load balance across existing alternatives and respond far quicker to developing bottlenecks. Occupied vehicles can be given priority over shorter routes than non-occupied ones.

Deliveries can be done without drivers. For example the delivery vehicle can drive to your home, work or anywhere else and you enter a code to get your items vending machine style.

It will give people greater freedom. For example if your vision isn't acceptable, or you have physical issues then it won't matter. In general the maladies that come with age won't affect mobility anywhere near as much as they do today.

Drives can be over longer distances as there is no driver fatigue. Perhaps there could be sleeper cars for when you want to go somewhere overnight.

Heck they can even do things like deal with you in the vehicle while you are driving to an airport or a border. You could show your passport, answer questions, check luggage etc. And then go straight through the border or walk straight to your gate at airport, or even be driven to a closer access point to the gate.

And I suspect we never get flying cars out of this. When the two dimensional earth surface is used so much more efficiently, why expand into 3 dimensions? And since we can increase the speed the more vehicles are automated, what advantage does flight have?

A car right now needs regular maintenance as it is every few months, even if it's just changing the oil. That will go from months to days if they're being used 24/7.

I have a license but don't have a car (actually owning a car was too much of a hassle) and you're only telling half the story. Yes, day to day not having a car is fine, but every once in a while you want to buy something larger that is not delivered, or move some stuff, or go for a short vacation, or even just drive out of the city to pick some mushrooms and you're stuck. You either borrow/rent a car or skip on the activity.

A car does provide a kind of freedom that public transport simply can't. A car that drives itself, or, even better, a car that I can cheaply rent that will drive itself to my doorsteps, then drive me wherever I want to go, and then return itself would be absolutely perfect.

We have those, they're called cabs/taxis ;) Well, I suppose they're not exactly cheap, but personally I use them so rarely that it doesn't really matter, even though I'm on a tight budget.

Imagine instead being able to use an app where, in any urban area, you can have a car sitting in front of your house in 3-5 minutes, with reasonable mileage rates, exact GPS coordinates preprogrammed, and no haggling over tip and payment method at the end of the ride.

Speaking as half a couple paying $1000 a month in car payments, car insurance, maintenance and gas, this is going to fundamentally change the calculus for private car ownership in America.

Yes. cabs are useless where I am, too. They say they will be there in 30 minutes, but that's best case.

But there are plenty of unemployed folks with cars. How much of the cab shortage is due to regulatory capture?

Imagine, for instance, an app where I could give my location, a timeframe and, say, an amount I was willing to pay. "Hey, $50 if you pick me up from the office and drive me home... if you get here within 10 minutes"

Such an app is technically easy, and I imagine there are enough people with cars either going where I'm going or simply idle to make it work. But there are... legal barriers in place.

Want a big car for a family trip? Just order one and it turns up where you are, ready to take you where you want to go.

A sleeper car for two? A flash sports car for the afternoon? A van for the day?

Pay-as-you-go personal transport from anywhere to anywhere where you can still be productive during the journey... Sounds pretty revolutionary to me.

See the following sites for examples of car share schemes.

http://www.modo.coop/

http://www.zipcar.com/

Anecdote does not data make. I'm 32, I have a drivers license and two cars, I live in Europe, and my quality of life would be severely impacted if I didn't have a car. The vast majority of Europeans live in places where the population density is too low for it to be sensible to depend solely on public transport, not to mention that only a part of Europe has any 'reliable' (I use that word loosely, because name me one public transport system outside of the German one that works 'reliably') form of public transport at all.

It only takes one or two times a month that you need a car (for big groceries, visiting a far away friend or relative, or going somewhere where there is no public transport) to make it worth while to get a car, and once you have it, it's better to use it as much as possible to make it pay for itself. Public transport is not a viable long-term option to satisfy our transportation needs - it's too expensive, inconvenient and inefficient. Lean, pay-per-use and easily rentable autonomously driven cars are the way of the future, and the near future, at that.

Or you could turn the theory on its head - use the rail corridors as motorised transport arteries and open up the roads to the bipeds.

(From Sydney where the rail network is extensive - I'd imagine places with less ubiquitous rail wouldn't benefit as much)

You're wrong. Japan is also planning on introducing self-driving cars shortly.

On a related note: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yurikamome

In Tokyo they already have an automated transit system that is basically a truck on rails. See this image to get a better picture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Model_7000-Fourth_of_Yurik...

But if we go to robot cars we no longer have to park.

Also, places like Cairo are bad because of the human drivers. If you only allow robot cars that all goes away. The system can know where everyone is and where they are going and adjust speeds to the point of having your car end up 20cm behind the next car instead of having to use the breaks if you went 1/kmph faster for the last 200km.