Driverless cars could be used to provide on demand accommodation for one day or even longer periods of time, at prices 10 times lower than your current rent bill.

“Good evening Ladies and Gentlemans, We are about to commence our descent into Sydney.Please fastened your seat belts and placed your tray tables in the upright position.Local Time is 8:42 pm and a humid 27 degrees Celsius.Our Flight Crew wish you a happy new year,and we hope you travel with us again in 2025”

Relax! It’s time for some relaxation.

You were just about to book this flight, and now it’s the other side of the world. That’s amazing! You’re nervous but excited about visiting Australia for the first time, and one week to explore the city before starting work on a new client. When that client match showed up in your newsfeed, you claimed it in two clicks. You’ve already made 24,000 dollars in the peerist economy.

Ping. “Need a room?”.

You hadn’t book anything for accommodation yet. “Yes please”, you responded.

“Number 420 just came out the front.”

You gape, then take the augmented directions leading to an elegant driverless hotel suite. It’s about the same size as a minibus but without the seats, wheels and engine. A gigantic transparent panel stretches the width and depth of the vehicle as you enter. The panel slides open and you step into the space.

Inside is everything you would expect. On the left, an easy chair that folds into a full-size bed with the press of a button. To your immediate left, a small kitchenette complete with refrigerator, oven, sink, and countertop. Beyond that is the bathroom module with a shower stall, sink, and vanity area.

“Hello, welcome back. Are you hungry?�

You say, “I could eat some pad thais and beers.”

“I’ll show you around town if you want.”

“No way! We’re going out for dinner at 8pm. Let’s check out Bondi Beach tomorrow”, you

Your bedroom starts driving itself toward Bondi Beach and a live GPS display shows on one of the side screens. You can watch TV on the other screen. Exactly six minutes later, a drone drops off your delivery right onto the rooftop. If you need to deliver any package, just tell the robot and it’ll drop it off. It even does laundry!

“Bondi Tower 7”

You see a lego-like skyscraper reach for the sky. Your bedroom docked with an electric skates and is raised 30 stories up before sliding into a windows facing position. A panel slides open smoothly revealing a large adjoining living space.

You can request any number of additional features on demand. For example, if you want a separate bedroom, you can ask for one when booking.

As you sleep, your hotel room charges itself and prepares for your next day. It will be customized to your exact needs, from invites to local community groups to event invitations to social networks.

“Goodnight”.

Crisis of Car Manufacturing

The image above shows thousands of new, unused automobiles parked at a dock in a city called Sheerness in the UK. This is just one of dozens of locations where new automobiles sit idle and unused. And while automakers usually keep a 60-day supply, U.S. automakers reached a record level of nearly four million unsold autos in their inventories last year.

Overproduction is a problem in capitalism because too much stuff gets made without enough people buying it. When this occurs, the price drops until the surplus is sold off at a loss. However, instead of lowering production, some companies just destroy the extra products.

Vehicles face a unique challenge with over supply because the initial cost of setting up a vehicle assembly line is very high and stopping one is even more costly. If a particular vehicle model isn’t selling, the company will keep producing them until the next model comes out.

On demand self-driven vehicles pose a huge threat to the entire automotive industry.

Automobiles consume vast amounts of energy and materials to produce millions of different types of automobiles every year. We then spend most of our time driving these cars around, parking them at garages, and waiting for someone else to drive them.

If self-driving cars become commonplace, then your $10 Uber rides will be cheaper than ever before. At that point, the appeal of driving yourself will decrease for most people, so there would be an oversupply of unneeded human-driven vehicles.

With the forecasted increase in vehicle numbers from 2 billion today to 4 billion by 2040, and given that autonomous cars require no drivers but must recharge their batteries when they’re not driving, we can estimate that only 100 million on demand autonomous vehicles will be needed to replace all 2 billion traditional human-driven vehicles.

To put it simply, if every car manufacturer starts making autonomous vehicles, they will be able to produce them at an unprecedented rate within a single calendar month.

How and to where would automakers pivot to survive?

One of many

IDEO Automobility

Moving Spaces concepts

Modular Driverless Rooms

Driverless car technology really changes everything we think we know about driving. It replaces combustion engines with two small electric motors, removes the dashboard and steering wheel, and adds redundancy for safety.

A driverless vehicle is just a room with an electric drivetrain and rechargeable batteries. It has some additional sensors for safety reasons.

By 2025, all new cars will be fully electrified and cost far less than the most affordable gas powered cars available today.

With this technology, we could create new types of vehicles that would be able to cater to a wide variety of human needs and desires.the driverless officethe driverless boardroomthe driverless gymthe driverless bedroomthe driverless bathroomthe driverless cafethe driverless cinemathe driverless shop

You don’t necessarily need to use these modules in isolation. They can be dynamic and modular, and connected to each other via an on demand request. Just tap a button or say something, and moments later you could have a bathroom or fitness room arrive at your location and autonomously link up to the office you’re currently using.

As soon as car manufacturers start producing self-driving cars, they will inevitably shift their focus from making cars to manufacturing driver-free modular rooms that serve specific human needs. If any car manufacturer fails to pivot, it will cease to exist.

After five days, Toyota has decided to pivot from being an automobile manufacturer into becoming a “mobility services” provider by developing its own self driving vehicle technology.

Lego Skyscrapes + Decentralized Cities

We can assume that if we assume the technological and economical drivers push our world towards driver-less modular rooms, then they’ll eventually need to stack vertically in skyscraper buildings within urban centers. However, the forces of inertia will always exist, so we won’t expect people to desire to move constantly.

On demand driverless cars will definitely allow us to travel from place to place without having to stop at traffic lights or drive into garages. However, as more and more drivers adopt this new form of transportation, we would ideally prefer to decrease the roadways, decrease the amount of available space for car parks, and decrease the environmental impact.

To get the most out of autonomous vehicles, they need to be able to move quickly from one place to another. They also need to be able to travel long distances without stopping.

These autonomous vehicles can autonomously drive themselves to different locations, where they pick up people who want to go somewhere else. They then take them to their destination, where they drop off the people at their desired location.

The image to the right shows a futuristic pod-vendor idea by designer Haseef Rafi. It would be a cool way to convey the vision of a futuristic city where people live in pods. Imagine a similar tower made out of glass and steel with different levels including restaurants, nightclubs, shops and even an amusement park.

One thing that’s interesting about this idea is that self-driving cars aren’t really any different from self-driving apartments.

Today, most people think of hotel rooms as expensive accommodation meant for a few overnight stays, but they’re actually charging expensive rates because of their fixed location within the city.

Decentralizing accommodation means that people no longer need to stay at one specific place. Instead, they can choose where they want to live. For example, if Bondi Tower 7 charges a $50 overnight charge but Bondi Tower 36 charges a $10 overnight charge, then your room could negotiate for you and move to the cheaper option.

These driverless rooms and “parking” buildings can use blockchain technology to eliminate the need for landlords entirely. They can be produced at current rates of one to two vehicles per minute and immediately begin providing affordable homes and transportation services.

Driverless cars could be owned by themselves, managed by them, and scheduled for maintenance automatically using smart contract technology. Once they’ve paid off their construction costs, they could charge rental rates just high enough to cover their low operational costs, but at no profit.

If we continue scaling our vision of the world out even further, why not build whole cities from driver-less modular rooms? Starting with a flat and solid base, we could instruct these rooms (or pods) to act as buildings, parks, bridges, etc., which assemble themselves into skyscrapers, streets, parks, etc.?

Decentralized, modular cities could be designed to provide optimal living conditions for everyone.