Reddit mentions of Autonomy: The Quest to Build the Driverless Car―And How It Will Reshape Our World

You have already received a lot of good suggestions on this topic, so you don't really need any more ... but here are some anyway. I recently read a book by one of the key figures in Google's autonomous-car team which forecast dramatic cost savings from the combination of CaaS, autonomous cars, and electric propulsion. I don't remember the numbers, but the author had done some rigorous number crunching to forecast total costs related to cars dropping to a small fraction of current costs. You could find some of the specific, quantitative data you are seeking in this book.

In particular, I'll toss out a few other ideas and/or opinions.

Parking, as you mentioned, is a big issue. Many downtown areas are very congested largely due to parking space. I vaguely remember reading (in some other book) that downtown LA had 1/3 of its surface area devoted to parking and another 1/3 devoted to streets. And a large percentage of the traffic on downtown city streets are cars wandering around in search of a parking spot. With CaaS, not only do we free up huge tracts of land that can be used to, say, build housing in the many areas with housing shortages, but we as drivers-turned-passengers save loads of time when the parking effort is handled by the vehicle instead of us.

Also note that those downtown multi-story parking structures are hugely expensive to build, so we save a lot of money (and environmental impact from construction) if we can instead get the cars to go off and park in an open field.

> I'm speaking from an american-centric point of view, so maybe this idea works better in a different culture.

Almost certainly the idea will work better in some areas, less so in others. Places with denser population, like Tokyo, already have enough mass transit so that CaaS will have some incremental benefit but maybe not very much. Other places are already practicing CaaS in the form of jitneys, rickshaws, and regular taxis.

Lawrence Burns's book:

https://www.amazon.com/Autonomy-Quest-Driverless-Car-2014And-Reshape/dp/0062661124/

Even the gasoline engine is only 60% efficient at converting the amount of energy in the fuel. Heat and noise are all wasted energy sent directly into the ambient area rather than propelling you forward. By the time the engine moves the person and his/her cargo, it's less than 1% of the energy of the gasoline consumed. (EDIT: apologies, approx 1.5% depending on weight of the fatass(es))

downvotes 4 science.

>Less than 30 percent of the energy from the gasoline you put in your car is used to move it down the road. The rest of the energy is wasted as heat and sound, or used to power accessories, like headlights, radios, and air conditioners. Because typical vehicles weigh around 3000lbs and typical people weigh around 150lbs, only about 5% of the energy gasoline translated into motion is used to move the driver, which amounts to just 1.5% of the total energy in gasoline.

sauce former GM VP of Research: https://www.amazon.com/Autonomy-Quest-Driverless-Car-Reshape/dp/0062661124