Autonomous vehicles are inevitable. It won’t be long until we are able to cruise down the freeway at 70 mph with a coffee in one hand and a tablet rested comfortably on what used to be the steering wheel. This picture is one that seems foreign to us; however, soon it will be a part of our daily routine. The implications of this change should not be understated. Personal car ownership will become a thing of the past. That’s right, you won’t own a car.

Personal cars will be replaced by a group of autonomous vehicles owned by a small number of people who provide on-demand transportation for the rest of the group. Services like Lyft, Uber, Zipcar, and GetAround show that early adopters already see their cars as a much less private space than they once were. When self-driving cars become mainstream, car sharing services will be in a perfect position to disrupt transportation for the benefit of everyone.

“Personal car ownership will become a thing of the past.”

As a user of car sharing services with autonomous vehicles customers will have the option of being picked up in a “public” or “private” car similar to how you can take a taxi or public transportation today. Route optimization algorithms for large numbers of vehicles will be developed to respond in real time to new constraints (ride requests) while simultaneously understanding complex ride-time/passenger satisfaction dynamics. Public cars will roam the streets picking up and dropping off passengers along a route that is continuously changing based on demand. When users need to get somewhere quickly or have a multiple people in their party they can choose to pay for a private car. This option will work similar to a modern day taxi. The only difference is it will have no driver and will be a fraction of the cost.

When this becomes reality, transportation as we know it will be a thing of the past. The large up front and maintenance costs of having private transportation will be a thing of the past and no longer will public transportation be constrained to time schedules, pick-up points and route transfers. People will be able to move around more easily with reduced cost and time spent.