I think the assumption (which I certainly hope comes to pass!) is that self-driving cars will eliminate the urban traffic jam, which will reduce pollution. They could also be tuned to drive in a way that produces less emissions.
I’ve done the thing where I put on the MPG readout and try to do an approximation of hyper-miling (minus the dangerous tailgating), and like most people, I just find it too high-maintenance (and annoying to other drivers), so I eventually go back to normal driving habits, and get (rough guess) about 20% less mileage. If a computer is driving, I won’t mind the quirks of hypermiling because I’ll be doing something else like reading. And I won’t have a choice.
I don’t doubt that, though I think the more practical solution long term is some sort of low/zero emission public transit. Plus, even if every single automated car was electric (and our electric grid was mainly from renewables), I’m not sure how having millions of cars on the road would cut down on traffic jams. It’s a volume problem and adding more cars to the mix, no matter how is driving them won’t help that.
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Instead of owning my own car, I currently have a subscription to a car sharing service - it’s pretty good. But if a shared car could drive itself to my door when I needed it, it would no longer having any practical disadvantages relative to owning a car. I’m pretty stoked about this idea. Also, I hate driving, so there are basically no downsides for me
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