Automated Vehicles - Virtue or Vice?

Two distinct markets are developing for vehicle automation: semi-automated vehicles for personal/household ownership and fully automated vehicles for shared and public service use as robo-shuttles and robo-taxis. These two markets will compete for consumers (car-buyers vs. ride-buyers), as household vehicles and public transit do now. As these markets develop, the competition between them will complicate infrastructure, require complex regulations, delay our path to the promised 90% reduction in crashes and fatalities, and push out the time at which we can achieve a hoped-for new level of optimal land-use and optimal urban mobility given by lowered pressure from massive storage of parked vehicles and the flaws of human drivers. This paper outlines why this is competition unavoidable and will mean a significant period of difficulty on the way to a new era of mobility.