interesting. All those computations don't come for free. The more self-driving the more energy used. Where with a human driver the energy came from food!
It is definitely interesting, but it is not like food comes free either.
In the calculations (spherical cows in a vacuum) it should be considered the difference in the amount of calories needed by drivers driving vs. drivers sleeping.
In real word, some corrections should be made for the difference in actual calories consumed by drivers eating vs. drivers driving.
The amount of calories used by thinking about a task is almost insignificant compared to baseline thinking about "nothing". IIRC it's in the tens of kcal per day.
The difference vs sleeping is much larger, but still pretty much inconsequential. On the order of 100kcal I'd think.
The vast majority of the calories you eat in a day are used just keeping your biological machine ticking over. Most of what you do is lost in the noise of your BMR. Of course this excludes physical exertion, but that's not really part of this scenario.
