http://fortune.com/self-driving-cars-si ... ey-detroit
We'll see where it goes.
Highlights:
driverless vehicles are poised to threaten the $570 billion that Americans spend each year on new cars. For 125 years U.S. auto companies made their money on the manufacture of motor vehicles. Now they must be in the business of ride-hailing apps, shuttle buses, 3D maps, and computers on wheels that drive themselves. They’re no longer automotive companies either—they’re now calling themselves “mobility” companies, just in case all those predictions about the end of car ownership come true.
Buried in this paragraph, one can presume that a dropoff in car manufacturing will also mean less energy consumed in the manufacture of cars and less gasoline burned (especially if these self-driving cars are EVs). On the flipside, doomers will just counter with "But it will kill jobs! Hence still doom!" And so the debate will rage on forever.
More:
analysts have long speculated about the coming of peak car, comparable to the peak in horse ownership in 1920. With cheap robo-taxis available to chauffeur people around cities, households that spend an average of $9,000 a year on transportation could lower that outlay to just $2,000. “Can the mobility sector capture all of that? I think no,” says Robin Chase, co-founder and former CEO of car-rental company Zipcar. “Car companies will still make money selling cars, but the whole market will shrink because we’ll use those vehicles more efficiently.”
