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What I was driving at was that people will expect their car to drive away after rush hour (meaning 4 trips, not 2, per day). And they will expect it to come ear

What I was driving at was that people will expect their car to drive away after rush hour (meaning 4 trips, not 2, per day). And they will expect it to come early and loiter near their workplace, which usually won't mean parking or stopping. So to recap: the car is used twice as much and yes, does laps of the block while waiting to pick you up.

yellowapple 7y ago
Right, but the longer it's loitering, the more fuel and/or battery it's wasting. Likewise, the further "away" it drives, the more fuel and/or battery it's wasting. The ideal will always be for it to park (or better yet: charge) as soon and as close as possible, and to delay "unparking" and departing for pickup until as late as possible. It's possible that some people will want to subvert that somewhat (i.e. "please park at this specific parking garage instead of the closest" or "please loiter for a couple minutes and wait for me"), but - again - I ain't convinced those will actually amount to a significant traffic impact. EDIT: as another bonus, self-driving cars don't have to worry about whether or not the driver can get in/out during these "wait for my owner to need me again" periods, so they can park in much tighter parking spaces while they wait.