> How does an autonomous car not need to be parked?
As in, they don't need to be parked after every ride in the current personal transport model.
> The vision that seems more realistic to me is that lucrative areas would have traffic jams full of empty self-driving taxis circling around waiting for fares.
They will be run as part of a coordinated fleet of robo taxis. Why would they be circling around waiting for customers in an area where there is no demand? Answer is they won't. They'll be directed to where people want rides much like Uber, but considerably more efficient, because they don't have constraints of a human driver they have to accommodate.
Say there's an area that will have heavy demand soon but doesn't yet, maybe someplace with a lot of bars on a Friday night. Where do all those cars come from? There has to be a holding garage sort of nearby, but land nearby is expensive, and if there's competition for the faster service, you get a race-to-the-bottom.
As in, they don't need to be parked after every ride in the current personal transport model.
> The vision that seems more realistic to me is that lucrative areas would have traffic jams full of empty self-driving taxis circling around waiting for fares.
They will be run as part of a coordinated fleet of robo taxis. Why would they be circling around waiting for customers in an area where there is no demand? Answer is they won't. They'll be directed to where people want rides much like Uber, but considerably more efficient, because they don't have constraints of a human driver they have to accommodate.