Going against my usual grain here on HN, I feel bullish about shared automobiles. There's too much financial upside to renting one if we can iron out the techin

Going against my usual grain here on HN, I feel bullish about shared automobiles. There's too much financial upside to renting one if we can iron out the techincal and financial wrinkles. And sure, the wealthy, or at least those who enjoy having a personal vehicle enough to pay for maintenance, insurance, etc., will probably still be able to own one. The perfect plan -- in my mind anyway -- has the following aspects: 1) The autonomous cars have sufficient coordination among themselves to eliminate certain aggravating characteristics of human-piloted cars, e.g. the accordion/rubber-necking effect. This is not an essential feature, but might help sell the cars to an understandably skeptic public. 2) Power source is electric batteries which can be easily swapped out. 3) Home bases to keep cars close to their customers -- a good re-use for obsolete retail properties. Cars which have completed their rounds return to their home base for battery swaps, cleaning, maintenance, etc. 4) Plans for different needs -- e.g. 5-day/week commuting plan, plus on-call for weekends. Customers could craft plans to suit their needs. 5) Human-piloted cars might need certain restrictions such as limiting their access during peak traffic times. My personal inclination would be to allow unrestricted road access to nights and weekends. 6) Not all of the cars need to deliver humans -- others could deliver packages. That said, autonomous cars could be made obsolete themselves should society decide to pursue and adopt somethings such as telepresence, but my money says that those who write checks (i.e. bosses) will always be control freaks who enjoy making their serfs miserable, so autonomous cars look more viable in the near term.