Far fewer cars possibly, but a big increase in vehicle miles.
At present cars largely follow us round. If they're not doing this but are instead moving on to the next occupant, the odds are that that person won't be in the exact same location, and the next journey, and....
(Also bear in mind a huge amount of the demand clusters around start and finish times for offices and schools. The possible utilisation is significantly lower than one might think.)
If self-driving cars working on a taxi model rather than a personal chauffeur model become a thing, we're going to get used to seeing traffic jams consisting significantly of empty autonomous cars. That won't be especially popular.
> If self-driving cars working on a taxi model rather than a personal chauffeur model become a thing, we're going to get used to seeing traffic jams consisting significantly of empty autonomous cars. That won't be especially popular.
Autonomous cars that are "deadheading" (traveling empty to their next point) could be ushered into segregated high speed lanes/corridors (100+ mph), as no passenger means no safety issue.
I'm pretty sure it would be easy to predict the spikes in usage. In the mornings people mostly want cars near their homes to take them to work. In the afternoon/evening they want cars near work to take them home.
Even without knowing this it's pretty obvious that if you have a large portion of users heading to one area (increasing the density of users in that area) they'll probably want to leave that area or move around it so you should have a higher density of cars in that area even if they aren't all being used.
At present cars largely follow us round. If they're not doing this but are instead moving on to the next occupant, the odds are that that person won't be in the exact same location, and the next journey, and....
(Also bear in mind a huge amount of the demand clusters around start and finish times for offices and schools. The possible utilisation is significantly lower than one might think.)
If self-driving cars working on a taxi model rather than a personal chauffeur model become a thing, we're going to get used to seeing traffic jams consisting significantly of empty autonomous cars. That won't be especially popular.