With the promise of autonomous cars, cars that drive themselves, comes the hope for increased safety, productivity, and freedom. Yet the effects will be much more far reaching than that, impacting industries beyond automotive.

To start, autonomous cars will create huge economic benefits, with an estimated total savings of $1.3 trillion in the U.S. alone, with global savings reaching over $5.6 trillion.

Self-driving cars will save lives and the cost related to traffic accidents. 1.25 million people die in traffic accidents every year. Self-driving cars are estimated to reduce that number by 90%.

Today, U.S. drivers travel over 3 trillion miles and spend 75 billion hours in a car every year, with the average commute time each day being over 26 minutes. Imagine if that time could be put toward getting work done rather than getting to work. Productivity gains could reach $507 billion annually.

For consumers, a connected vehicle enables a growing number of features and services that make the driving experience safer, more convenient, more compelling, more fun, and less costly.

Car designs will change becoming roving rooms and entertainment centers.

Connected cars communicating with each other will reduce congestion and speed up travel times.

And self-driving cars are also better drivers, so huge fuel savings are expected. This is especially important as sustainability is only going to become an even more important imperative moving forward. In China for example, electric self-driving cars could help alleviate concerns about air pollution.

But everything has a price, and one of the prices to be paid for self-driving vehicles is that everyone who drives for a living could be out of a job. In the U.S. that could impact as many as 4 million drivers, and about $148 billion in annual wages, with truck drivers representing half of that.

The ripple effect continues as you look at how adjacent industries will also be impacted by self-driving vehicles. The automotive industry ecosystem generates $2 trillion of annual revenue in the U.S., or 11.5% of U.S. GDP.

Fewer human truckers on the road means fewer motel stays and rest stop visits, and cheaper trucking could take business away from freight trains or even oil pipelines.

Vehicles programmed to obey traffic laws won’t need nearly as much policing, which also means fewer traffic tickets and less revenue for municipalities.

Parking spaces and lots can be converted to valuable real estate or more greenspace in urban areas. Insurance premiums plummet. And ride-sharing replaces car ownership.

The full scale of these economic shifts will be impossible to understand until they’re upon us, but the one thing we can know for sure is that they’ll touch almost every aspect of society.