(Interview with Pres Obama here explaining the American govt's approach to self-driving cars.)

2. Regulators also love self-drive cars because they will reduce costs for policing and for cleaning up after accidents Read more here

MONEY is a huge motivator for legislators and regulators - every dollar saved can go to someone's pet project

3. Insurers love self-drive cars because they will be able to reduce their costs faster than they have to reduce premiums - that's the lesson of past few years as cars have got measurably safer. And they will be able to segment their market and charge variable premiums - very high for those who insist on driving their own cars, for instance, because they know they are a captive market. Read more here

4. Car manufacturers would prefer self-drive cars never happened but recognize them as as inevitable and nobody wants to be the dinosaurs left behind as demand plummets for traditional cars. So companies such as Ford, GM, Audi, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz and BMW are adding self-drive features to current cars. Read more here

Trucking companies want self-drive because they can be replace (expensive and in demand) truckers, saving on wages and insurance costs. Trucks can be operated 24/7, tripling the use of capital with only a small increase in costs. Read more here

5. Software Companies are the New Disruptors

Google has led the way with self-drive cars, proving their potential in the face of widespread scepticism. They can see it as a business, as well as something worth doing for its benefit to society Read more here

Apple doesn't want to be left behind, and is building its own version (will they call it iCarus?) Read more here

Baidu, the Chinese search engine company, is building completely autonomous cars, initially for Chinese cities.

IBM has built a self-driving 12 person shuttle which is now on public roads in Washington DC.

Uber is making a big investment because drivers are their biggest cost. Uber board member Steve Jurvetson recently commented that if Tesla developed an autonomous vehicle, Uber would buy half a million of them in 2020.

And passengers in autonomous cars will want something to occupy their time, so expect TV to be the largest beneficiary on a total dollar basis and Home Video to benefit the most on a % basis. As likely relative time share losers, roughly 10-15% of radio and recorded music revenues could be at risk, according to Morgan Stanley.

6. Motorists who can see the advantages and want self-drive cars

95% of drivers want self-drive cars because they like idea of doing something else on commute (the typical urban commuter spends 42 hours a year stuck in traffic jams according to this report from the Texas Transportation Institute) , or shopping run or kid delivery to school - being able to do something productive, or just relax instead of wasting time controlling car is a huge plus in almost every driving situation. Read more here And they will see the benefits of smooth running roads - nobody going to sleep at traffic lights or making a mistake and causing an accident.

Cost: The combination of autonomy and ride-hailing, together with a switch to electric vehicles, seems likely to undermine the logic of car ownership for many people. Ride-hailing services in the rich world currently cost around $2.50 per mile, compared with about $1.20 per mile to own and operate a private car (see chart). But the driver accounts for about 60% of the cost of ride-hailing. UBS, an investment bank, reckons that automation, competition and electrification (which makes cars more expensive to buy but much cheaper to run) will cut the cost of ride-hailing by 70%, to about $0.70 per mile. So a typical Western household driving 10,000 miles a year could ditch its car, use robotaxis and save $5,000 a year. And there are other advantages, explains Mr Thrun: “You can be drunk, you don’t have to look for parking, and your kids can take the car.”(Economist 10 March 2018)

(This costing assumes passengers will pay full cost. Can foresee all sorts of subsidies: "Watch this 30 sec ad and answer 3 questions and we will pay the cost of your next 15 minutes of travel" sort of deals.)

Giving mobility to the disabled who otherwise needed a chauffeur: a blind man drives round Austin by himself in a Google car (Dec 2016).

Fuel economy: autonomous cars with vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2X) communication ability will have a far greater understanding of road and traffic conditions and should be able to predict even anticipated loads on the engine allowing them to operate in “cruise” mode all the time. This could result in a similar level of fuel economy savings as using cruise control all the time. Combined with a push for more fuel-efficient internal combustion engines and light electrification, corporate average fuel economy could run up to 75 mpg and above. In a utopian world where all cars are selfdriving, cars can theoretically be made significantly lighter (why reinforce a car that is not going to crash?), potentially driving fuel economy north of 100 mpg.

Safety:



And in the cities, people are deciding they don't need a car. Uber and car-sharing apps give them alternatives, and they don't want to spend the capital. Teenagers are already deciding they don't need to learn to drive

FAQs - Feedback from forums and letters to the editor on why most drivers like the idea

FAQs - Feedback from forums and letters to the editor on what you might choose

A few traditionalists hate the idea of self-drive cars

There will still be a tiny group of traditionalists who really want to do their own thing. But they will be outvoted - people won't want to share the roads with unsafe manual cars - and they will have to organize alternative places to drive, just as equine enthusiasts have.

The traditionalists offer similar arguments that the horse riders offered 110 years ago.

"People won't like being driven by a computer." Except we already are, when we get into an elevator, or fly in a plane. Look at trains for an example. A subway train used to have an engineer and a conductor. Then newer systems like BART automated the entire process and made it so that the engineer can do both jobs. Newer, fully enclosed stations can have trains that can be fully automated without the need for anyone on board. People will get used to it fast.

"They will be abused - people will leave all sorts of crap in them. Well, no. The system knows exactly who last used the car, and will charge for both cleanup and inconvenience-to-next-user fee. And a warning sent to the users phone that their riding rights could be withdrawn for a month if it happens again. So, no abuse - people will look after them better than they do their own car.

"Just wait until someone dies in a self-drive car." Learn the lesson from 110 years ago. Automobiles were frighteningly unsafe to start with, (no seat belts, steering column that impaled the driver in a collision, nearly non-existent brakes etc), but they were still far more convenient, cheaper and safer than horse drawn transport.

-- June 2016 first death in a Tesla autopilot car -- and forum reactions
-- (tl:dr The Tesla involved in the crash in Florida was not a self-driving car, it was a vehicle with semi-autonomous features that is intended to operate in very limited circumstances)
-- Jan 2017 The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) ruled that Tesla didn’t cause Brown’s death, and in fact, the numbers show Tesla cars on the road, those carrying its Autosteer technology, which can keep the car within clear lane markings, crashed 40 percent less frequently than those without. “We want to promote these technologies,” says Bryan Thomas, communications director at the agency. “They will save lives and cut crashes dramatically, but innovation is a bumpy road.”

Are these systems perfect? No. Are they better than humans. YES! by orders of magnitude. A lot of people think that anything less than perfect is unacceptable. I'd agree with that if it wasn't for the fact that ~30,000~ people die every year in the US in auto accidents. That's deaths, not accidents. That giant number doesn't even count lost work, totaled vehicles, broken bones, pain, or even lifetime disability. I find it really interesting that if somebody said "Autonomous driving will never be flawless and at best, will still result in 1,000 deaths per year if it completely replaced human drivers" - it sounds scary. Rephrase that as "if autonomous vehicles reduced traffic deaths by 98%, would you still feel safe with human drivers?" and it doesn't even sound like a question.

"Kids will prank them." - No, because it will be trivial to identify the pranksters. Today, you can already be located by your cellphone address, and ubiquitous surveillance cameras can identify you from your gait, or from just a small bit of your face or ears. And sure you could make it harder to ID you, but how much effort would you have to make? And the stakes will be high - ban from using the network for a period, so you have to walk everywhere. (Sorry, we've got rid of most of the footpaths.)

"Pedestrians will just jump out in front or them, knowing they'll have to stop." No they won't, because there are laws against it - see above as to how they will be enforced. Also, there will be no need for on-street parking, so cities are likely to prevent jay-walking by building fences along the streets to completely separate cars and pedestrians. Cross at the lights, citizen.