An End to Parking?
The problem I see with shared cars is that people like to forget stuff in their cars. Cellphones, ID bages, food, wallets, bags...<p>When I park my car at my workplace and I notice my badge fell out of my pants (or I forgot it), no problem, I can head back to the car and get my badge. If I take a cab I can always phone the cab central and have them ask the driver to look for the item (of course, this requires honest cab drivers and it will cost me a huge amount of money if the cab driver is already on the other end of the city by the time I notice). No way at all to do so with an autonomous car.<p>Also, a shift to autonomous cars would prevent another very common use case: after work I might want to do something else before driving home, like going to sports training. So now I&#x27;d have to carry my gun and ammo (or my sport gear, or ...) all the time around with me instead of leaving the stuff in my car.<p>Also, my own car still is freedom: public transport, even in Germany, shuts down after 2200 and restarts only at 0500, and if you&#x27;re outside the city you rarely have time intervals for buses and trains lower than 20min - often it&#x27;s more like 40min, 60min or even 120min. With a shared car system, I&#x27;d have to wait totally unpredictable amounts of time until a shared car is free, and there&#x27;s nothing I hate more than waiting.<p>Getting people off individual cars would require absolutely massive investment in public transport. Might work out in cities, but in rural areas there&#x27;s no way you can get people to abandon their cars.