Yes, but the technology they are researching (full autonomous) is still further down the road than something like highway autonomy only. Which would still give you most of the benefits of an autonomous car in boredom, accident and unproductive time reduction. While not requiring as expensive parts and as much research.<p>If you do a self-driving pod then it&#x27;s another story because then you  share the cost between passengers and you can engineer it to only go city speeds for instance.<p>What I&#x27;m essentially saying is that at the point Googles research becomes &quot;a reality&quot; the car becomes the weak part of the equation. When we have full autonomy, I might almost just take a train (that will probably always be much faster than cars because of physics) and catch another autonomous pod at the other station. This is of course what could&#x2F;should happen in theory, not what will happen.