This may well appear before the arrival of driverless single-occupancy vehicles. From some points of view (thinking of you, Thomas) also a chance to get rid of thousands of well-paying jobs.
From CityLab:
Article and video here.
From CityLab:
Article and video here.
Driverless buses would have the potential to make taking the bus nearly as convenient as taking the skytrain,
Or even more. Driverless buses can be smaller and run more often. They could be a game changer. Also, they could run all night without much extra cost.
It looks like the driver has his hands behind his head (relaxing).
Maybe he’s required fro redundancy. The unions would love that!
But doesn’t China have lots of people who will work for cheap?
That is so ten years ago. Things are moving real fast in China. They are investing a lot in automation to bring productivity and wages up.
In the long run, economists agree, wages are determined by labour productivity. Productivity is about output created per unit of labour put in. So, believe it or not, it’s crucial that technology makes well paying jobs obsolete for there to be wage growth, and for our society to become richer.
Ultimately our wealth and standard of living is about technology allowing the creation of more output with less labour. Driverless vehicles will allow dramatically more output for the same amount of work, and that surplus will find its way into the pockets of the consuming masses, and our lives will improve. Its called the creative destruction of capitalism, and its to what we owe our fantasticly sumptuous lifestyles of today. Bite not the invisible hand that feeds.