That is a true point for the first years that self-driving cars exist, but it is not true on the timescale of a couple decades. The first Tesla Roadster was del

That is a true point for the first years that self-driving cars exist, but it is not true on the timescale of a couple decades. The first Tesla Roadster was delivered in July of 2009, and they are going to ship 20,000 cars this year (compare with 5 million light vehicle sales in the last 12 months, for the sake of honesty in statistics), in an environment where their car is at a significant disadvantage due to lack of infrastructure. The first self-driving car will be expensive, but eventually it won't be, and eventually it will have a huge impact on people's driving habits. Unless everyone stars telecommuting, which is a social change that will probably happen slower than technological changes, I don't see how miles driven per year would reasonably go down.