MARC Rider
Conductor
The other thing about fully autonomous vehicles is that, for safety and environmental reasons, they will probably ride like Grandpa driving to church on Sunday. Most consumers of automobiles want much more get-up-and go than that. I see it every day on the road, the aggressive way a lot of people drive. I've been to enough engineering/environment conferences where representatives of the automakers flat-out say they could make ICE cars with a way better fuel economy than they do, but that the consumer wants "performance," (which actually means 0 -60 acceleration, or maybe the ability to drive hairpin curves at 50 mph over the speed limit), so such fuel-efficient low emissions cars won't sell. What makes everyone thinks that an autonomous vehicle, even if it's 100% safe, will sell the way the automakers want?We can quibble about the percentage, but there really isn’t a point in doing so. The pertinent point is that fully autonomous vehicles are still a ways off.
I think that the real role for fully autonomous vehicles is for closed-loop offroad applications like airport rental car shuttles. Those are conceptually not too much different from the currently deployed fixed-guideway people movers that seem to be working OK. And, of course, being that it's a limited range route, always returning to base frequently, it would be ideal for full electrification of the vehicles. I've even seen inductive battery chargers, where the electric bus can just sit parked at the terminal without getting plugged in, and still get the battery recharged.