The economics of new technologies can be hard to see/predict. Automating personal vehicles has the potential for a lot of efficiency gain too, if people stop o

The economics of new technologies can be hard to see/predict. Automating personal vehicles has the potential for a lot of efficiency gain too, if people stop owning cars privately. Taxi drivers tend to buy "efficient" models, vehicles that will do a lot of miles/€, so there's a gain here. There would be a shift in consumption habits, as a response to pay as you go pricing. Possibly more ""efficient" consumption, maybe even some new forms of public transport. In terms of infrastructure, you'd need less parking which frees up valuable and scarce space. It could eliminate the parking industry, rental industry, taxi industry and such. All (potentially scary) consequences of efficancy gains. Back to commercial vehicles... One way to think of potential efficiency gains is (driver cost)/(total cost) of a journey. Trucks are expensive. A long distance truck journey uses a lot of fuel & maintanence. So, the driver's wages are a smaller overall part of the journey, a smaller potential efficiency gain per journey. That doesn't tell us much about economy-wide gains, but it does tell us something about disruption. Self driving taxis could reduce the price of taxis by 50% or more. This has major implications for how and how much people consume. For long haul trucks, it probably changes the industry less.