While I'm all for your point that drivelessness will allow an incredible re-imagining of the automobile, considering the gp responded my original post, I just want to bring things back to the question of resource utilization.
The automobile today is half efficient transport and half personal expression/personal entertainment. And the personal expression/personal entertainment part is where the massive resource utilization comes in. So, sure, you could reimagine the automobile for super-efficiency with four-people per car whenever you're driving and the resource utilization goes away - so does the personal entertainment/personal expression stuff. So you could go multiple ways. Towards a super-efficient taxi and towards an office/living room on wheels. The first way would involve less resources consumed, the second would involve less resources consumed. It is hard to be certain what the net outcome will be.
I think the natural progression of driverless cars is away from individual ownership. Why own a car when you can have near instant availability of a much cheaper rental.
To many people, a car becomes part of their identity, or like you said
>expression/personal entertainment
I'm sure that there will still be people for whom this is true, but for most of us it won't matter b/c the efficient always there taxi will be so much cheaper.
For most middle to lower-middle class Americans I think current cars are really out of their comfortable price range, they own them b/c they view them as a requirement.
If you give them an alternative that is just as convient, but cheaper, and without the maintenance hassles, it's no contest.
While I'm all for your point that drivelessness will allow an incredible re-imagining of the automobile, considering the gp responded my original post, I just want to bring things back to the question of resource utilization.
The automobile today is half efficient transport and half personal expression/personal entertainment. And the personal expression/personal entertainment part is where the massive resource utilization comes in. So, sure, you could reimagine the automobile for super-efficiency with four-people per car whenever you're driving and the resource utilization goes away - so does the personal entertainment/personal expression stuff. So you could go multiple ways. Towards a super-efficient taxi and towards an office/living room on wheels. The first way would involve less resources consumed, the second would involve less resources consumed. It is hard to be certain what the net outcome will be.