I travel a lot for work, and I'd love to have a car where I'm able to program in a destination that's a few hundred miles away and let my car drive itself there while I work on my laptop, read a book, or go to sleep.
In order for this to occur, self-driving technology needs to get to the point where I actually trust it to not kill me if I'm not paying attention at all times. If it's able to safely handle highway driving but not city driving, that's ok; highway driving is what takes the majority of the trip time, and I can take over once we get into the city.
It also needs to be cheap enough that I can afford it, or someone I know can afford it and doesn't mind letting me borrow it, or I can rent one for a reasonable price. At present this limits my options to cars under ~$40,000, though my financial situation may improve in the future.
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@TomCohen Good question. That'll count if it's cheap enough to be better than non-self-driving alternatives.
@IsaacKing Hmm, now I'm curious about the economics of long-distance trips by self-driving taxi.
Most taxi drivers don't want to take long-distance trips because they will need to get back home! A self-driving car might not care, as long as it knows it can get business in the new destination. So I imagine long-distance trips between large markets (SF - LA - NYC, Sydney-Melbourne etc.) will be cheaper than long-distance trips to less frequented destinations -- but the price factor will be at worst 2:1 (in the worst case you just pay the car to go back where it came from).
@Boklam I guess another plausible option is a partly-self-driving rental: It can drive along highways and park itself at a stop just off the highway (rest stop? purpose-built highway-side taxi stand?); you meet it there and pick it up.
@Boklam USD. That's not part of the resolution criteria, that's just helping people know what kinds of cars I'm likely to purchase.