In March, a team of Delphi engineers accompanied a self-driving Audi SQ5 on a 3,400 mile test-drive from San Francisco to New York. The Delphi folks said the vehicle is one of four test vehicles and that it is equipped with a sophisticated arsenal of computers and cameras that enable it to make complex decisions, such as calculating the speed at which to enter a highway and merge into traffic, or how to properly avoid a pedestrian or bicyclist. Obviously, they’re not alone. Google and many traditional automakers are competing to secure ownership of the prestigious claim of being the first to market with a self-driving vehicle. And that time is fast approaching, so it makes sense to consider some of the ways the emergence of autonomous vehicles might impact the economy. Earlier this month, Greg Gardner of the Detroit Free Press reported on self-driving vehicles and cited data from Honda Research & Development’s Toshio Yokoyama, who said that self-driving vehicles may reduce lost productivity incurred from traffic deaths and injuries. Overall, that translates into $78 billion annually in the U.S. and $75 billion in Japan, based on 2013 data.

But what happens when autonomous vehicles make mistakes? When crashes occur we might need an army of lawyers to tell us who’s culpable. New laws often need old lawyers and old lobbyists to push them through. And of course, autonomous vehicles need autonomous insurance policies to match.

Gardner speculated in a separate piece that autonomous vehicles could gain market share in the "car-sharing" industry that’s growing daily from heavy investment by companies such as Zipcar, Uber and Lyft. If that trend gains critical mass, then self-driving vehicles might free many of us from the necessity of vehicle ownership. But if many of us sell our cars and decide to call Uber instead, those shared vehicles rack up miles fast and need repairs and replacing. If 10 years from now, I can have access to a self-driving vehicle with just a phone call or an email, and that vehicle will get me where I need to go and then return on its own from whence it came, I’d be hard-pressed not to weigh the benefit of that service against the cost of vehicle acquisition, depreciation, insurance, maintenance and fuel.

What do you suppose that might mean for home builders? How much space do you think might be added to your home if you did not need a garage? What might the impact be on commercial property developers building office space, entertainment venues or shopping malls? Will cities with too little parking space today have too much tomorrow?



