> And while 40% of the cars in 2030 will still be of the old, internal combustion variety, they'll represent just 5% of the consumer miles driven. > compared

> And while 40% of the cars in 2030 will still be of the old, internal combustion variety, they'll represent just 5% of the consumer miles driven. > compared to the internal-combustion standard, self-driving EVs will represent, “a 90% decrease in finance costs, an 80% decrease in maintenance costs, a 90% decrease in insurance costs and a 70% decrease in fuel costs.” > Car subscription services will increase utilization of a vehicle from 16,000-32,000 kilometers per year to 160,000 kilometers or more. And that reduces the number of years the car is in service (and thus interest paid on any financing plan) as well as increases the amount of use wrung out of it per year. These seem like wildly optimistic projections based on an assumption that a single self-driving car can take the place of 5-10 conventional vehicles. This could possibly work if commuters don't all need to use those cars at the same time (maybe a wider prevalence of non 9-5 work schedules) or that a substantial portion of autonomous vehicles will be high-occupancy minivans and the vast majority of commuters are willing to carpool with random strangers. I don't expect either of those things to happen. I do think self-driving cars will be successful and widely used, but it's hard to imagine them having a 95% share of passenger miles when there's plenty of manually-driven cars still on the road. > The savings represent some $5600 per consumer per year or $1 trillion in additional disposable income in the U.S. alone by 2030. According to the first thing I found on Google[1], average consumer spending on transportation was about $9503 per year in 2015 (which is a lot higher than I would have guessed. Apparently I'm an outlier). I think it's unrealistic to assume that lower vehicle maintenance and insurance costs are going to be passed on directly to consumers rather than shareholders. I know that's how efficient markets are supposed to work in general when you have multiple competitors, but I'll believe it when I see it. [1] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm