From horse drawn carriage to horseless carriage to automated horseless carriage. Things change yet stay the same. If there's significant shift towards hire over ownership then presumably as a population we'll need fewer cars and demand from the manufacturers will decrease. That's one outlook. Then again if automation is effective and leads to highly efficient road use, then train and bus travel could become obsolete. Standing on an overcrowded subway platform during rush hour and stepping into an even more overcrowded train seems so primitive. The door-to-door autonomous model is surely the future. There will always be those who love their cars and the hire model doesn't work so well when you have specific requirements such as child seats or/and a dog cage, tow hitch, etc. So ownership will never go away and the manufacturers will probably still be selling us the dream of car ownership in many decades to come.
I don't want a driverless car. I want a car that prevents me (and especially others) from doing stupid shit that gets people killed, i.e. speeding, tailgating, running lights, stop signs reckless driving. Try to take some of that out of the equation first.
So tell me why I would want to ride in a car that 10,000 other people were just in. I'd have to disinfect it before I could sit in it. Who knows what is in there.
Could I still have sex in these with ladies in these self driving cars, maybe while there driving there selves, hmmmm, me likey this idea, it's just too distracting for a real human driver for my likings.
Radio was supposed to end print, TV was supposed to end Radio, the Net was supposed to end TV, ....................... The more things change, the more things stay {slightly} the same.
All this because someone in the distant past dreamed up the wheel. Where is the end point?Ain't progress grand? Some day none of us will have anything to do. Progress?