Since a lot of the discussions here are about the benefits of autonomous cars compared to other solutions, I'd like to point out an excellent Quora question on

Since a lot of the discussions here are about the benefits of autonomous cars compared to other solutions, I'd like to point out an excellent Quora question on the matter: http://www.quora.com/Transportation/Why-do-we-want-self-driving-cars-rather-than-better-mass-transit http://www.quora.com/Transportation/Why-do-we-want-self-driv... I am a roboticist who works on autonomous vehicles for mining applications, and I've always thought the two least obvious advantages are that a) autonomous vehicles will increase the utility of a single vehicle to the point that owning multiple vehicles becomes less necessary, and b) autonomous vehicles will increase the utility of road networks such that their existing capacity will be sufficient for far longer than expected under manned vehicle assumptions.