Autonomous car

Main article: Autonomous car

A robotic Volkswagen Passat shown at Stanford University is a driverless car
Fully autonomous vehicles, also known as driverless cars, already exist in proto
type (such as the Google driverless car), and are expected to be commercially av
ailable around 2020. According to urban designer and futurist Michael E. Arth, d
riverless electric vehicles in conjunction with the increased use of virtual reali
ty for work, travel, and pleasure could reduce the world's 800 million vehicles to
a fraction of that number within a few decades.[55] This would be possible if a
lmost all private cars requiring drivers, which are not in use and parked 90% of
the time, would be traded for public self-driving taxis that would be in near c
onstant use. This would also allow for getting the appropriate vehicle for the p
articular need a bus could come for a group of people, a limousine could come for
a special night out, and a Segway could come for a short trip down the street fo
r one person. Children could be chauffeured in supervised safety, DUIs would no
longer exist, and 41,000 lives could be saved each year in the US a