-Large transfer from real estate convenience value to delivery companies, car makers, energy
-Potential huge change in energy inputs
The internet has taken massive amounts of advertising money from TV and print media. Driverless cars though... that takes your attention from your surroundings – to books, TV, internet, work, chatting. How much of the business world relies on physical location for their advertising, or even business plan? This is going to cause a huge transfer of “advertising” money from real estate to the internet. Where do you go get a haircut? I used to go where I remembered seeing one. But if I'm using my computer while driving I haven't ever seen one – so I run a search, or perhaps see what my friends have recommended on Facebook or Yelp.
How much money in real estate is advertising? I have no idea how to break that out. I know when I made a business I paid $1600/mo for a tiny little place for the superb foot traffic. The exposure+convenience was worth about $600-800/mo in my mind.
How about convenience? For some real estate, the value won't change – if I'm in an office building and I want to lunch or coffee on a normal day, it's not worth calling (or even getting into) a car. I'm going to take what's in the building or the next place over. But if you're going to get into a car anyway, there's not a big difference between a 5 minute and a 10-15 minute drive if you're checking your email at the time. So location becomes a lot less important for sit down restaurants and stuff. Automatic pick up or automatic delivery fleets also make 'fat tail' food choices more competitive with McDonald's in terms of convenience. More than McDonald's though, I would expect grocery stores to lose out because of this. I go to grocery stores because it's hard to get healthy food quickly. Someone like Whole Foods, on the other hand, might do very well – they have a strong brand and the kind of prepared foods I would expect to do well.
Some changes depend on how many people would switch away from car ownership completely – opting instead for a taxi service. Full time taxiing cars would probably be most cost efficient as electric or natural gas vehicles. Depending on the number of people who switch, this could pummel petrol heavy energy companies and destroy nations (and their companies) reliant on current oil prices. Travel prices would drop.
It will be interesting to watch the regulatory progress.
[originally written 6/10 - since then, Nevada seems to be pushing forward. I've heard 2018 as a potential production date]
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