AI Weekly: How self-driving cars could reduce emissions, eliminate parking spots, and add $1.3 trillion to the U.S. economy

Author: Kyle Wiggers / Source: VentureBeat

During Tesla’s inaugural Autonomy Day on Monday, CEO Elon Musk spoke about an idea first articulated in a document published three years ago — an autonomous taxi service built on the back of Tesla’s growing Model 3 and Model S network.

It would be powered by the company’s Autopilot software and would allow any owner to add their car if they wish to earn revenue while they weren’t using the vehicle (Tesla would take a 25% to 30% cut), or remove them at will. Rides would cost an estimated $0.18 cents a mile, compared to the $2 to $3 charged by traditional ride-sharing platforms, and on the vehicle owner side of the equation, gross profit would hover around $0.65 per mile for a total of $30,000 per car per year on average.

It’s an attractive business model, and Musk isn’t the first to propose something like it. Jaime Moreno — CEO of Mormedi, a strategic design consultancy that works in the transport sector — predicts that 80% of car sales will be to fleet management companies rather than consumers in the next decade. And market research firm ReThinkX expects that by 2030 consumer demand for new vehicles will decline by 70%, accelerated by a projected uptick in the availability of on-demand autonomous rides.

Skeptical? Consider this: Cars, which cost an average of $35,000 apiece in the U.S., are used only 4% of the time, according to the Department of Transportation’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Beyond the base price tag, there’s insurance, taxes, fuel, and maintenance to cover, not to mention interest paid on car loans. Cars require parking spaces. They sit idly on congested freeways. Moreover, they’re outsized contributors of carbon emissions; a typical passenger car emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.

Worst of all, they’re demonstrably dangerous. About 94% of car crashes are caused by human error. In 2016,…

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