It probably depends on what you mean by a centralized system. Right now, autonomous vehicles are being developed with a focus on independent operation. Which ma

It probably depends on what you mean by a centralized system. Right now, autonomous vehicles are being developed with a focus on independent operation. Which makes sense, since early examples will find themselves having to integrate into roads lacking car-to-x (or similar) infrastructure[0] shared with vehicles that lack the ability to share anything. There'll be a transition, but older cars will pretty much always be around. Though I wonder if we'll see retrofit kits making use of OBD-II ports for older cars to give them at least some communications abilities at some point, or even some sort of GPS "box" for even older cars lacking OBD ports altogether. Even when car-to-x and vehicle-to-vehicle communications are standardized with widespread use (and they'll both be usable even with non-autonomous vehicles), I doubt we'll see the sort of centralization with hyper-optimized traffic patterning in the animation linked by philrw. Cars will still be able to share information, and make use of it to change their behavior for minimal disruption of traffic flows. They'll talk to infrastructure, and probably even make use of relays well ahead of key infrastructure elements (ramps, bridges, construction zones, etc.). But I wouldn't consider it "centralized" in that situation. For example, a car is entering an on-ramp. Local infrastructure could communicate that fact, as well as other information about the car to traffic approaching the on-ramp. Is it a heavily-loaded truck, with slower acceleration? Or is the vehicle 'dumb' (maybe it's an older car with no communication abilities)? Approaching cars would leave a greater gap ahead of them, switch lanes, etc. Even without giving control over to a central traffic system, we'd see significant improvements in traffic flow. The other challenge for highly-centralized control is the sheer amount of data that's collected by autonomous cars. They apparently generate upwards of 25Gb/data an hour[1] from their various sensors. Figuring out what part of that data needs to be kept, normalized, and then sent to a centralized system is going to be tough. And it'll be hell on the wireless spectrum. Of course, that's assuming V2V spectrum isn't carved up and used for internet access.[2] In which case, things will get...trickier. 0. https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/mercedes-benz/innovation/car-to-x-communication/ https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/mercedes-benz/innovation/ca... 1. https://hackernoon.com/automated-cars-and-data-786dfb1e3eb4 https://hackernoon.com/automated-cars-and-data-786dfb1e3eb4 2. http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-talking-cars-20160825-snap-story.html http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-talking-cars-...