Googles self drive car is going to change your travel experience!

[Update] Occasionally in Oz, we have a road accident that involves a sleep deprived 'drugged to the eyeballs' truck driver. Robot trucks would remove these 'whacked out' lunatic from the nations free ways.
Then I'm thinking that once the truck's are gone, the ancillary services such as greasy truck stop cafes will disappear too.

Lets imagine...

You land at an airport in a city you've never visited before.

It's late in the evening so while your being processed through customs, you tap out a taxi request with a destination on your Integrated Transport App*.

On exiting the terminal a taxi is parked there waiting for you. There are four empty seats, and a wide screen monitor occupies most of the dash.

There is no driver. The taxi is a robot which has just exited a parking building facility** where it has been powered down. There is no need for a driver sitting in an airport taxi queue wasting time, or chomping on his lunch, or getting impatient due to lack of business.

As you enter the cabin a voice prompt asks you several leading questions and configures it's data output stream to you language. The screen displays local points of interest and information as the taxi pulls away from the curb and drives you to your destination, avoiding any heavy traffic on route****.

Note the driver is eating in the car and unlike other drivers that do the same thing, it's perfectly safe!

Next day you decide to do some sightseeing with three acquaintances you made at breakfast.

Picking up your phone you send out a request.

As you exit your hotel the same taxi (or more probably one of it's brothers) is parked at the curb waiting for you.

Climbing into the taxi your group occupies all of the seats (there is no driver taking up space in the cabin).

The wide panel monitor in the dash now glows with tourist info and the taxi whisks the group away on a guided tour of the city***.

The tour is customised for the group and registered in the cloud. The occupants can leave the taxi at any time to enter a tourist attraction or walk about. Flagging down any taxi on the street they continue their tour.

* I reckon Google is going to weld together their 'on the fly' airline app with local transportation options all over the world.

** An automated garage system (like the one in the Mission Impossible : Ghost Protocol finale) located close to the airport where a fleet of robot taxis are stored and serviced.

*** The tour itinerary was tailored using the Integrated Transport App while the group munched at their breakfast. Eventually you'll be able to book your flight and buy bus tickets at your destination on your phone.

****Availability of real-time traffic (Extract from Google Maps Help)
Live traffic data is available in major cities in the United States, France, Britain, Australia, and Canada, with new cities and countries frequently added. This map displays current coverage of traffic data.
To see if live traffic is available in your area, hover your mouse over the square widget on the top righthand corner of the map. A menu with available layers for your map will appear. Click on Traffic to turn on the layer and view real-time traffic conditions.
Traffic conditions are shown based on data availability. If we don't have enough data to calculate accurate traffic speeds for a road, then we won't show traffic conditions for that road. This is the reason why you may see more live traffic results at certain times of the day.
Source...



taxi image:
  © Copyright Stephen McKay and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.

Savoy image:
  © Copyright Steve Fareham and licensed for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence.