I’ve probably already blogged this, but it deserves to be reprised because it is so important. Tony Seba and RethinkX made this prediction in this report, dated 2017, available at the link below. It’s been seven years since this report was released and recently there has been large incremental improvements in the autonomous self-driving systems. The improvements were assisted by artificial intelligence, such that used by Tesla’s Project Dojo, which uses a massive array of AI processors. There will be more incremental improvements in the future which will further contribute to the abilities of the software to appropriately handle more and more of the edge cases encountered while driving.
Most of the real time technical issues while driving will be dealt with by the AI software. But there are hurdles that must be overcome concerning legal and financial issues that will be encountered. What I believe is a huge concern is that there will be so much fear, uncertainty and doubt about the changes that it will bring severe challenges both legally and financially in order to keep the status quo and prevent change. I think that the technical issues for implementing Seba’s predictions will be solved as he predicted, but there may be legal and financial issues that delay the changeover for years.
https://www.rethinkx.com/press-release/2017/5/3/new-report-due-to-major-transportation-disruption-95-of-us-car-miles-will-be-traveled-in-self-driving-electric-shared-vehicles-by-2030