An interesting angle on autonomous vehicles that was recently pointed out to me is the rise of vehicles with no passenger whatsoever.
This seemed obvious as soon as somebody spelled it out, but I had never really dwelt on the ramifications.
Commercial transportation often has two components: a cab and a trailer. The purpose of the cab is to provide power and (human) control, while the trailer contains the load.
With autonomous vehicles, human control is no longer necessary and I can imagine removing most of the cab. Basically what we wind up with is autonomous shipping containers.
Imagine a long stretch of rural highway where most traffic consists of self-driving shipping containers with no humans in sight. It’s kind of a wild vision.
David Silver 