Fred Wilson chose the perfect quote by William Gibson, here, to describe the current status of self-driving cars: "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." That's how it feels right now.

Waymo isn't in Toronto yet, but they are expanding rapidly throughout the US and elsewhere. Last week they announced fully autonomous driving in five new cities: Miami, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando. Autonomy is here, as we have talked about many times. There's no longer a question.

But what's interesting is that we're at the point in the hype cycle where expectations are not as inflated as they were a number of years ago (at least that's the way it appears to me). Years ago, everyone in real estate was talking about how it would disrupt parking requirements and reshape the landscape of our cities.

So when does this happen?

Fred ended his post by saying that "the downstream effects of this technology and behavior change are going to be profound." But he doesn't get into what these changes might be. Let's do a reminder of that now. Some of the most commonly believed consequences are as follows:

• Cars consume a vast amount of real estate and also spend the vast majority of their lives just sitting around idle. Switching to a "mobility-as-a-service" model will require dramatically less parking. This is going to force landlords to repurpose the parking they already have and it's going to encourage developers to build new buildings with reduced parking, or no parking at all. That will be good for housing affordability.

• However, the autonomous vehicles will need to park and corral somewhere at some point. My guess is that we will see something akin to rail yards today. This would be a good use for some of our excess parking, though this use won't require nearly as much. I would also imagine that many of the cars will leave the most valuable and dense parts of a city during off-peak periods.

• At the same time, it's not clear what the winning business model for AVs will be. Will it be a Waymo-like model where the ride-hailing company owns and operates all of the cars? Will it be a Tesla Robotaxi model where individuals own the cars and put them out to work? In this case, maybe the Robotaxis just go back to people's individual garages. Or will Uber remain the dominant platform? Meaning, an asset-light model that aggregates customer demand remains the highest-value component of the stack. Personally, I can't see Tesla's Robotaxi model being very lucrative for individual owners, so I'm inclined to look toward Waymo and Uber.

• Street parking will be replaced by a proliferation of pick-up/drop-off zones. This urban design problem will need to be solved as we dramatically increase the number of people getting in and out of AVs on busy urban streets.

• In the mid-1990s, Italian physicist Cesare Marchetti remarked that, all throughout history, humans have tended to cap their commute times at about 60 minutes per day. Something like a half hour each way. This became known as Marchetti's Constant. What this has meant is that as new technologies (streetcars, cars, and so on) allowed us to move faster within that 60 minutes, humans have tended to sprawl further outward. Will AVs do the same, and could they actually break Marchetti's Constant?

• As we all know, the key difference with AVs is that we will no longer need to pay attention to our commute. We could sit in an AV and sleep, work, watch a movie, or do whatever else we'd like. One can think of it like a mobile office or mobile living room. This should, in theory, make commuting long distances a lot more enjoyable and encourage even greater "super sprawl."

• The counterforce to this phenomenon is that if more people are willing to commute long distances in an AV, we will see demand greatly outstrip supply on our roads. In other words, traffic congestion in large cities will get even worse. I think this will force more/most cities to adopt congestion pricing. Politically, it will finally become acceptable, because now we'll be able to use "the machines" as our scapegoat. They're overrunning our cities! Ironically, this means that we won't adopt the thing that makes driving a lot better until we all stop driving.

So where do these opposing forces ultimately net out? Well, my view (and bias) is that human-scaled walkable communities will always have value. We are social animals. I also think that the experience within our cities will improve dramatically. Pedestrian safety will increase (the data already supports this) and far less space will be dedicated to cars. Good.

At the same time, I think that reducing commute friction will encourage an exurban explosion. Like the technologies that came before AVs, it's going to empower humans to further decentralize. What this will do is exacerbate the divide between our urban cores and our suburban and exurban fringes.

Of course, this is just me surmising. I don't really know. But AVs are here, and I think it's time we get back to discussing and planning for the second and third-order effects of this technology.

Uber's stock has done exceptionally well this year. At the time of writing this post, it's up over 60% year-to-date. But at the same time, it remains unclear to me what the relationship will be between Uber and this brave new world of autonomous vehicles.

I mean, right now, if you're in Phoenix, I'm told you can order a Waymo car through Uber's app. But if you're in San Francisco, Waymo customers must use the Waymo app. It's all bit mirky right now, but Uber is just trying to put "as many cars on Uber's network as possible."

There's also an argument that, for the foreseeable future, ride-hailing networks are going to need some mixture of both human and robot drivers. I get this argument. But beyond the short term, I think there will be strong incentives to completely eliminate human drivers.

Last month, the New York Times announced that Uber is in talks with Travis Kalanick, the company's co-founder who got pushed out 8 years ago, to help him buy autonomous vehicle company Pony.ai.

It's a bit of an interesting story. Pony is a Chinese company, but because the US doesn't want Chinese tech to become too deeply embedded in the American economy — and has become increasingly hostile to such companies — it has been readying a clean US subsidiary of the business for sale.

This is what Travis allegedly wants to buy with the help of Uber. And it's particularly noteworthy because it could be an indication that Uber is worried about Waymo and wants to have its own AV unit (which it had previously, but then sold off in an effort to quickly reach profitability).

My sense is that Uber needs to do something along these lines. The risk of not having autonomous vehicle capabilities is simply too great.

Cover photo by Viktor Avdeev on Unsplash

I watched Tesla's We, Robot event last night. As many of you know, Elon and his team showcased a Cybercab, Robovan, and a humanoid robot that dances funny, all of which will be available in the market for purchase at some unknowable date in the future. What was obvious is that Elon himself has no clear idea of when this will be.

What I will say, though, is that the designs look cool. The Cybercab looks like a Porsche and a Cybertruck had a love child, and the Robovan looks like an Art Deco rendition of what the future is supposed to be like. I first wondered why they'd create a robotaxi with only two seats. But thinking about it now, most Uber rides probably only have 1-2 passengers.

Despite these pretty designs, the overwhelming reaction to the event seems to be one of disappointment. We've heard what was said before. Public transportation is bad (I disagree). Autonomy will free up your time and remove unnecessary parking spaces from our cities (allowing for more public space). And soon you'll be able to put your under-utilized car to work and earn extra cash.

Cool, but when?

Waymo and Uber are not, as far as I know, hosting similarly flashy events. But as far as I can tell, they're making meaningful progress in advancing toward full autonomy. As of June of this year, Waymo had already logged over 22 million rider-only miles. And in September, they announced a partnership that would bring AVs to Austin and Atlanta by way of the Uber app.

At this point in the hype cycle, I don't think anyone is interested in hearing promises about what the future of autonomy will be like, especially without any firm dates. They want to know: Are we there yet? So I think it's no surprise that people, including investors, weren't all that pumped up by the event.

On a more important note, Tesla had bicycles with brightly illuminated wheels circulating around their event set (at Warner Bros.) to presumably demonstrate that their Cybercabs can successfully navigate around moving objects (when brightly illuminated). If you missed them, look at the 29 second mark in the below video:

I can't be the only one who thought: "What are those? Now, that's what I want!" So I've asked Elon when they'll be available and when I can buy one. I'll keep you all posted on his response.

Fred Wilson chose the perfect quote by William Gibson, here, to describe the current status of self-driving cars: "The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." That's how it feels right now.

Waymo isn't in Toronto yet, but they are expanding rapidly throughout the US and elsewhere. Last week they announced fully autonomous driving in five new cities: Miami, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando. Autonomy is here, as we have talked about many times. There's no longer a question.

But what's interesting is that we're at the point in the hype cycle where expectations are not as inflated as they were a number of years ago (at least that's the way it appears to me). Years ago, everyone in real estate was talking about how it would disrupt parking requirements and reshape the landscape of our cities.

So when does this happen?

Fred ended his post by saying that "the downstream effects of this technology and behavior change are going to be profound." But he doesn't get into what these changes might be. Let's do a reminder of that now. Some of the most commonly believed consequences are as follows:

• Cars consume a vast amount of real estate and also spend the vast majority of their lives just sitting around idle. Switching to a "mobility-as-a-service" model will require dramatically less parking. This is going to force landlords to repurpose the parking they already have and it's going to encourage developers to build new buildings with reduced parking, or no parking at all. That will be good for housing affordability.

• However, the autonomous vehicles will need to park and corral somewhere at some point. My guess is that we will see something akin to rail yards today. This would be a good use for some of our excess parking, though this use won't require nearly as much. I would also imagine that many of the cars will leave the most valuable and dense parts of a city during off-peak periods.

• At the same time, it's not clear what the winning business model for AVs will be. Will it be a Waymo-like model where the ride-hailing company owns and operates all of the cars? Will it be a Tesla Robotaxi model where individuals own the cars and put them out to work? In this case, maybe the Robotaxis just go back to people's individual garages. Or will Uber remain the dominant platform? Meaning, an asset-light model that aggregates customer demand remains the highest-value component of the stack. Personally, I can't see Tesla's Robotaxi model being very lucrative for individual owners, so I'm inclined to look toward Waymo and Uber.

• Street parking will be replaced by a proliferation of pick-up/drop-off zones. This urban design problem will need to be solved as we dramatically increase the number of people getting in and out of AVs on busy urban streets.

• In the mid-1990s, Italian physicist Cesare Marchetti remarked that, all throughout history, humans have tended to cap their commute times at about 60 minutes per day. Something like a half hour each way. This became known as Marchetti's Constant. What this has meant is that as new technologies (streetcars, cars, and so on) allowed us to move faster within that 60 minutes, humans have tended to sprawl further outward. Will AVs do the same, and could they actually break Marchetti's Constant?

• As we all know, the key difference with AVs is that we will no longer need to pay attention to our commute. We could sit in an AV and sleep, work, watch a movie, or do whatever else we'd like. One can think of it like a mobile office or mobile living room. This should, in theory, make commuting long distances a lot more enjoyable and encourage even greater "super sprawl."

• The counterforce to this phenomenon is that if more people are willing to commute long distances in an AV, we will see demand greatly outstrip supply on our roads. In other words, traffic congestion in large cities will get even worse. I think this will force more/most cities to adopt congestion pricing. Politically, it will finally become acceptable, because now we'll be able to use "the machines" as our scapegoat. They're overrunning our cities! Ironically, this means that we won't adopt the thing that makes driving a lot better until we all stop driving.

So where do these opposing forces ultimately net out? Well, my view (and bias) is that human-scaled walkable communities will always have value. We are social animals. I also think that the experience within our cities will improve dramatically. Pedestrian safety will increase (the data already supports this) and far less space will be dedicated to cars. Good.

At the same time, I think that reducing commute friction will encourage an exurban explosion. Like the technologies that came before AVs, it's going to empower humans to further decentralize. What this will do is exacerbate the divide between our urban cores and our suburban and exurban fringes.

Of course, this is just me surmising. I don't really know. But AVs are here, and I think it's time we get back to discussing and planning for the second and third-order effects of this technology.

Uber's stock has done exceptionally well this year. At the time of writing this post, it's up over 60% year-to-date. But at the same time, it remains unclear to me what the relationship will be between Uber and this brave new world of autonomous vehicles.

I mean, right now, if you're in Phoenix, I'm told you can order a Waymo car through Uber's app. But if you're in San Francisco, Waymo customers must use the Waymo app. It's all bit mirky right now, but Uber is just trying to put "as many cars on Uber's network as possible."

There's also an argument that, for the foreseeable future, ride-hailing networks are going to need some mixture of both human and robot drivers. I get this argument. But beyond the short term, I think there will be strong incentives to completely eliminate human drivers.

Last month, the New York Times announced that Uber is in talks with Travis Kalanick, the company's co-founder who got pushed out 8 years ago, to help him buy autonomous vehicle company Pony.ai.

It's a bit of an interesting story. Pony is a Chinese company, but because the US doesn't want Chinese tech to become too deeply embedded in the American economy — and has become increasingly hostile to such companies — it has been readying a clean US subsidiary of the business for sale.

This is what Travis allegedly wants to buy with the help of Uber. And it's particularly noteworthy because it could be an indication that Uber is worried about Waymo and wants to have its own AV unit (which it had previously, but then sold off in an effort to quickly reach profitability).

My sense is that Uber needs to do something along these lines. The risk of not having autonomous vehicle capabilities is simply too great.

Cover photo by Viktor Avdeev on Unsplash

I watched Tesla's We, Robot event last night. As many of you know, Elon and his team showcased a Cybercab, Robovan, and a humanoid robot that dances funny, all of which will be available in the market for purchase at some unknowable date in the future. What was obvious is that Elon himself has no clear idea of when this will be.

What I will say, though, is that the designs look cool. The Cybercab looks like a Porsche and a Cybertruck had a love child, and the Robovan looks like an Art Deco rendition of what the future is supposed to be like. I first wondered why they'd create a robotaxi with only two seats. But thinking about it now, most Uber rides probably only have 1-2 passengers.

Despite these pretty designs, the overwhelming reaction to the event seems to be one of disappointment. We've heard what was said before. Public transportation is bad (I disagree). Autonomy will free up your time and remove unnecessary parking spaces from our cities (allowing for more public space). And soon you'll be able to put your under-utilized car to work and earn extra cash.

Cool, but when?

Waymo and Uber are not, as far as I know, hosting similarly flashy events. But as far as I can tell, they're making meaningful progress in advancing toward full autonomy. As of June of this year, Waymo had already logged over 22 million rider-only miles. And in September, they announced a partnership that would bring AVs to Austin and Atlanta by way of the Uber app.

At this point in the hype cycle, I don't think anyone is interested in hearing promises about what the future of autonomy will be like, especially without any firm dates. They want to know: Are we there yet? So I think it's no surprise that people, including investors, weren't all that pumped up by the event.

On a more important note, Tesla had bicycles with brightly illuminated wheels circulating around their event set (at Warner Bros.) to presumably demonstrate that their Cybercabs can successfully navigate around moving objects (when brightly illuminated). If you missed them, look at the 29 second mark in the below video:

I can't be the only one who thought: "What are those? Now, that's what I want!" So I've asked Elon when they'll be available and when I can buy one. I'll keep you all posted on his response.