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60 Minutes covered self-driving cars last Sunday and CBS News took a look at of the car of the future. General Motors, which cut its R&D when it went bankrupt in 2008, now plans to get into self-driving cars in a .

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Tight-lipped Apple is to be developing a self-driving car; at least, it is about getting a license for one. Toyota, which has been less enthusiastic about self-driving cars than many other companies, now promises to have them .

Wired complains that Google’s totally self-driven (no human override) car “” and “doesn’t even have a futuristic name.” What do they expect for a one-off concept car from a non-auto manufacturer that isn’t ever intended to go into traffic? I am sure that Google, which has in cash in the bank, can make something a lot nicer if it wants to put something up for sale. (Apple, of course, has three times that much, which is one reason why many hope it is getting into the self-driving car business.)

One industry that will be changed, though not necessarily hurt, by self-driving cars will be insurance. As speakers detailed in this , cars will still need insurance, though it may be more product liability insurance than accident insurance. If accidents are 50 to 90 percent less frequent, payouts will be smaller, so premiums will be smaller, but profits should stay the same or even rise as there will be more cars on the road.

Nor will the auto industry be hurt. If car sharing increases, it means that the average car on the road will put on more miles each year. There may be fewer total cars, but cars will wear out faster so the industry will be able to make as many.

Despite claims that Millennials don’t want to drive, auto travel is , even before self-driving cars are available. It appears that 2015 will set an in the amount of driving.

If self-driving cars are a “disruptive technology,” then the main industry that will be disrupted is transit. The Antiplanner’s faithful ally, Alan Pisarski, observes that the annual growth in vehicle miles of driving is nearly twice as great as the total passenger miles of transit usage. Since the average car has 1.6 people, passenger miles of auto travel are growing three times as much as total transit travel. Once self-driving shared cars become available, no one outside of New York City and, possibly, Chicago will ever need to ride transit again.


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