Driverless cars will come sometime in 2020 or even earlier

Your next car might be a self-driving car. Barack Obama said this month: "This technology is basically mature." Transportation entrepreneur and Zipcar co-founder Robin Chase believes that driverless cars "will come again in three years and three months." . However, we have hardly begun to consider how they will revolutionize our lives, our cities, and destroy tens of millions of jobs.

After years of trial operation on city streets, driverless cars are now about to enter the practical application phase. Last month, Lyon, France began using unmanned buses to transport passengers. GM's foresight and trending chief management, Chad Holman, said that most auto industry insiders believe that driverless cars will be on the road sometime in 2020 or even earlier.

Driverless cars initially coexist with human-powered cars. But driverless cars will first dominate in densely populated urban areas – those that have been hit hardest by the automobile era. At the Autonomy conference in Paris this month, Chase said that this is "the opportunity for the city to start from scratch." Many developed cities have cut the role of cars. Driverless cars will speed up the process.

The city does not want everyone to have their own driverless car. That will exacerbate congestion and is not necessary. A driverless car is the perfect cheap taxi that can take you to the company and then pick up others. If you still insist on driving your own car, the city is likely to charge you for this privilege: driving will be a luxury, just like having and driving your own aircraft. Driverless cars allow the city to cut the number of cars by about 90% while keeping the number of people moving. Driverless cars will bring us great benefits:

• Pascal Demirre, general manager of the French insurance company MAIF, predicts that driverless cars will reduce the number of accidents by about 90%. This is very remarkable – about 1.2 million people die every year from traffic accidents worldwide, twice the number of people killed in armed conflicts and murders.

• Pollution and carbon emissions will decline as urban driverless cars will be electric.

• Older people, people with reduced mobility and young people will be able to travel at once.

• Abandoning cars will save people money. Chase said that in Europe, the average cost of owning a car is around 6,000 euros per year. If you think that a private car will continue to exist as a status symbol, then don't forget that Ma was once a symbol of status.

• Driverless cars almost never need to be parked and certainly do not need to be parked in the city centre. As a result, the city can transform parking lots—now many cars in the parking lot for most of their life—to bicycle lanes or parks.

• Traffic congestion will be reduced because driverless cars can travel more intensively, without getting lost, or turning around to find parking spaces.

• The police will not let the black drivers turn over and stop. In fact, they will not let any drivers turn to the side.

• Commuting will no longer be boring once the driverless car is promoted outside the city centre. Carlo Latti, head of the Smart City Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said: "You can eat, work, sleep and kiss in the car."

On the other hand, driverless cars will bring disaster. The biggest benefit of the automotive era is that it provides employment opportunities for car manufacturing, marketing, insurance and driving for tens of millions of people. In the next 20 years, those who drive trucks, taxis and buses (mostly low-skilled workers) will lose their jobs. We may see taxis and Uber drivers unite to set fire to driverless cars instead of taxi drivers burning Uber cars. If you think that Donald Trump is terrible, wait and see the male losers brought about by the next wave of modernization.

Or think about insurance companies, many of which now have half of their income from auto insurance. Warren Buffett said that anything that drastically reduces traffic accidents "will be excellent. But we will not party at our insurance company to celebrate." Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway company owns the auto insurance company Geico. Demir heat sinks, we "may almost become insurance companies without insurance." The government and the city will also lose revenue from parking, speeding fines and petrol taxes.

Car manufacturers are particularly alarmed. A few cars in the future may be made by technology companies such as Apple, Baidu and Google. Think about the impact on Germany – the automotive industry is the largest industry in Germany.

Automobile companies (mostly European companies) and US technology companies may have conflicts in the future. Automakers want people to continue to buy and drive their cars (although with the help of new technology). Instead, technology companies will lobby the government to favor driverless cars.

Huge changes are coming, but governments have hardly begun to consider these things. Obama has mentioned self-driving cars, which are already rare among politicians. Of the largest cities in the United States, only 6% of cities have auto-driving cars that take into account long-term planning. By 2020, driverless cars may be on the road, but most mayors and transportation ministers are thinking about what will happen next week.

Ten years ago, almost no one foresees the arrival of a smartphone. Today, smartphone addiction is rampant. I hope we can do better in dealing with driverless cars.