[digital-cygnet]

Can you explain more why you think this? As I see it, cars in general remain very highly negative-externality, and self-driving doesn't change it much.

Regular ICE cars: - air pollution from tire wear and brake dust - air pollution from exhaust - embodied carbon - noise - endangering other road users - traffic congestion - land use (sprawl) - long term health impacts (encouraging sedentary lifestyle)

Switch to all-electric and you lose a bit of noise and all the tailpipe emissions, but gain whatever emissions generated the power (sometimes solar, great, but sometimes lignite, boo), whatever environmental damage resulted from the battery materials, and probably marginal worsening of safety as the same ranger requires a heavier vehicle

Switch to self-driving and you may increase safety (feels like Waymo basically yes, Tesla probably no based on their track record with stat manipulation), but also vastly increase use, worsening congestion and land-use. The others stay the same.

So I don't understand why you're saying the externality ratio is good. From my perspective self-driving cars don't really move the needle.

[blueblisters]

I guess I place a premium on safety over land use and congestion.

I also suspect any future congestion and land-use problems will get better after an initial dip. Urban living becomes more desirable as city parking lots disappear.

If roads are used exclusively for self driving cars, this would probably improve traffic flow. Robot cars multiply current highway and city street capacity by coordination. They can smoothen traffic flow due to hard braking, and drive much closer to each other.