Yes, my car spends 22 hours parked. But the times I drive are the times everyone drives: morning rush hour, maybe lunch, then 4pm to 10pm (midnight on weekends) - those 5-8 hours are probably 90% of car use.
I don't think it's 90% but it's certainly a big chuck. I rarely use my cars during "rush hours" so I'd likely send my remaining automated car out to earn some income during most "rush hours".
I'm sure that pool arrangements, like Uber Pool, will be available. Also, all cars will be out during rush hour with scheduled maintenance, cleaning, etc. in between rush hours. The cars don't have to be active 100% of the time to be efficient for their owners/operators.
Will I get groceries auto-delivered and not visit the store? Amazon-type delivery takes over for everything? How does this continue to change commerce?
I don't know? Do you want groceries delivered? Uber already has a delivery service. Several companies (Amazon?) have experimented with grocery delivery. I'm sure there would be some automated delivery services as well a lot of conventional shopping. I went shopping once using Uber. Works fine.
How does this affect an increasing lack of personal interaction in our society?
Not sure how that is related. Not much personal interaction going on in the majority of cars which have a single occupant. At least with an automated-Uber service you'll be free to call and text others without affecting safety.
Where will all the cars go when unused?
Out of the congested areas.
How will this change architecture and urban design?
A lot of space will be freed up for more productive uses in congested areas.
When will cars be repaired?
Whenever they need to be repaired.
Who will own the commodity cars?
Businesses and entrepreneurs.
As asked earlier, what happens with vintage and historic cars? Collector cars, or just the person who won't sell the human-driven car. The average car on the road is 11.7 years old.
The same thing that happened to cars with manual transmissions or cars without air conditioning or cars without airbags, etc. Absolutely nothing. The average number of cars per adult will decrease. Those in the cities will reduce their car ownership the fastest. Those in rural areas will be more likely to retain at least one personal car. If it's automated, it might even be able to offset some of its own costs by being available for charter (?) when the owner isn't using it.
The market works out all of these questions on its own. There's no reason for it to be master planned. If you try, you're bound to get it wrong, anyway.
My question remains, how prepared is current and imminent technology to deal with the extreme road conditions that I mentioned above? I have no idea but that will be needed before truly autonomous cars can become viable.[/quote]
