It’s not what we think of it, but what we’ll make of it.

There are many predictions regarding the coming changes to be ushered in by vehicle robotics. You may already have your favorites: greater safety, less congestion, easier commutes, more cars, fewer cars, more sharing, fewer jobs, less parking. Even this fantasy Jetson’s view by Jason Raish to the right.

Grush Niles Strategic thinks that the key opportunity presented by the autonomous vehicle is the dramatic reduction in personal vehicle ownership, which is not going to be easy to achieve because personal travel demand is not going to diminish.

Our work, thinking, and writing is directed towards a single global goal—be able to absorb the coming quadrupling of personal travel demand using the one billion vehicle count registered worldwide in 2010. This will be done with a combination of massive fleets of robo-taxis, and robo-transit vehicles in public service set up to increase occupancy and vehicles miles traveled (VMT) per vehicle to meet this goal.