There is no such thing as a sustainable future that centers around automobiles. The US might not internalize this for a generation or two, but it's true. It doesn't matter if they're electric or ICE, or if they're driven by humans or AI, they just don't fit in a sustainable future. There are 278m cars in the US, roughly 83% of the population. To scale to the world, that means 6.7b cars. That's completely absurd and wildly unsustainable, even at half the scale. Here's what's unsustainable:
- sourcing rare earth materials needed for batteries and computer components
- powering them
- handling the waste cars when owners upgrade or crash them
- putting tires on them
- the space needed to operate and store them
- the amount of time people spend in them
- the amount of labor required to build and maintain them
- the amount of labor required to maintain roads for them (maintenance, snow removal, etc.)
Doing any of this arguably involves human rights or ecological disasters. But that aside, barring widespread fusion reactor deployments, it is impossible. This above all else is why I just can't agree that Tesla will save the world or that self-driving cars are the future. They simply can't be, unless the future is absolutely terrible.
The western world is due for a reckoning. If we flatten out living standards across the world, GDP per capita is $12,414. If you want to be extraordinarily generous/cruel and leave out everyone except the US, Canada, Europe, India, and China it only goes up to $17k. That doesn't leave room for things like car ownership, air travel, Macbooks, college, eating out, child care, health care, etc. etc. It also doesn't help (to put it lightly) that the overwhelming majority of population growth is going to occur in poorer parts of the world.
The simple truth is either the western world figures out how to make do with far, far less than it currently does (and notably its elite essentially learn to be poor) or we suffer a prolonged period of intense violence while everyone else either quietly suffers/dies or loudly makes us pay for hoarding. There's a sliver of a chance where we figure out how to generate enough clean energy to raise everyone's living standards enough to pacify them, but it seems inevitable that the inequality that characterizes the current arrangement will apply to that as well, i.e. 1% to Africa 99% to Europe. It's possible they're just used to it and won't complain, but my guess is that climate change will force the issue.