Traffic of the future. Our on-demand e-chauffeur (pun).

Only the crazy rich people and conservative rednecks own a vehicle in the future, I believe. Who needs a transport, rents a car in the right size. It - the car - will arrive at your door minutes later and announces itself via instant message. "I'm standing right in front of your flat", it will write. And then it takes you where you want to go.

If you have luggage, you box it into al container module that fits perfectly into the car. If the trip goes further away, the car and it's helper bots load your luggage box into a train and you drive a part of the track comfortably by railway before you back switch to another self-driver in the destination region and arrive chilled.

Such cars will not stand around anymore for 23 1/2 hours per day. The will have a full time job until their batteries are empty and they have to go to sleep in a charging station. They also communicate with each other and with surveillance systems so there will never be traffic jams. Also car accidents are a thing of the past.

The cities will improve over time. With more intelligence and efficiency, the streets can become narrower over time. Parking spaces are not needed anymore and everything is freed up for housing and especially green spaces.

Reality Check

Self-driving cars are an achievable goal that would solve a tremendous amount of our problems and drastically improve the quality of many of our living spaces including the effect on our climate. Such cars would be constantly fulfilling orders. If there are no pedestrians to transport, they would deliver packages or food.

Why aren't we doing it? Because entire industries depend on the production of so many cars. Nobody there wants 10x fewer cars. Millions of jobs depend on it. And jobs are the number one leverage tool for lobbyists.

Further reading: Self Driving Cars in category Predictions