as fully autonomous cars become a reality, (tesla hope to demonstrate a fully autonomous journey from the pacific coast of the united states to the atlantic coast by the end of the year), the very way in which we view and utilise cars will change dramatically as a result.

as technological progress continues the internet-of-all-things is also fast becoming a reality. this system will soon connect everything, allowing data to flow as freely and as universally as possible. a network of communal autonomous cars therefore seems an almost inevitability.

most people who use a car do so because they value mobility and the freedom to travel, not because they value owning a private car. most people only use their cars for a small percentage of the time they own it. if you were to use your car for 2 hours a day that would represent only 8.3̅% of the day. in essence, that means what you are paying for a product/ service that you do not use most of the time.

a logical solution to this would be to release the car, during the times in which you are not using it, for use as part of a wide network of communal autonomous cars. available to use by other people when you are in no need of it. perhaps this could even be of economic benefit, allowing you to rent the car out at a cost.

ownership of a private car is not only unnecessary and costly to the individual, but also harmful to the environment. in his book ‘sapiens’, yuval noah harari puts forth a figure of 50 million communal autonomous cars to replace the more than 1 billion private cars currently on the roads world wide.

even if all energy consumption world-wide were to come from green, renewable sources, cars still have a massively detrimental affect on the environment. an excessive amount of the earth’s landmass, especially in cities and other population hubs, is taken up by the infrastructure, (roads, parking lots etc), needed for the 1 billion plus private cars. with 20x fewer cars on the roads the infrastructure needed would also be less, freeing up spaces in cities for people, and spaces in the countryside for nature.

there is a downside however, which would be the surrendering of even more privacy, (the privacy of location), to private companies.

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