unimaginative? I see plenty of ideas, and wouldn't call all of them obvious.
I also think there is at the very least a core of truth in it. For example, that 30% time gain in not looking for a parking spot. If people now want to spend an hour on travelling and gain 10 minutes that way, it isn't strange to assume that they will be willing to move 10 minutes driving farther into the suburbs (cheaper house, larger garden, etc).
So, I expect traffic to increase. An extra reason for that to happen is that time currently spent operating your car could be spent in other ways. For example, you could watch a full-length movie/do some yoga on your way to work every day. For a movie/yoga enthusiast, that could make the 1.5 hour trip preferable over the 1 hour one, especially since it will come with the cheaper/better housing.
"the downstream effects are hard to predict but undoubtedly will follow the same path all automation has: more efficient, less polluting"
You mean as in "living in a suburb and driving a SUV to work is less polluting than living in the center of town and driving a bicycle or walking to work?"
The original smart was 2.5m long. That is surprisingly spacious if you replace the petrol engine with electrical ones in the wheels, the petrol tank by 10 cm of batteries in the floor and give up the back trunk (you wouldn't really need one for commuting)
I also don't see why all people would start using smaller cars. If these driverless ones make economic sense, they can't be more expensive than current ones, and currently there are plenty of people driving cars larger than smarts.
I also think there is at the very least a core of truth in it. For example, that 30% time gain in not looking for a parking spot. If people now want to spend an hour on travelling and gain 10 minutes that way, it isn't strange to assume that they will be willing to move 10 minutes driving farther into the suburbs (cheaper house, larger garden, etc).
So, I expect traffic to increase. An extra reason for that to happen is that time currently spent operating your car could be spent in other ways. For example, you could watch a full-length movie/do some yoga on your way to work every day. For a movie/yoga enthusiast, that could make the 1.5 hour trip preferable over the 1 hour one, especially since it will come with the cheaper/better housing.
"the downstream effects are hard to predict but undoubtedly will follow the same path all automation has: more efficient, less polluting"
You mean as in "living in a suburb and driving a SUV to work is less polluting than living in the center of town and driving a bicycle or walking to work?"