> Isn't this backwards? Why should kids have to go earlier than parents if the parents don't need to drop them off before work?
Because in most places school starts before work starts, this has always been the case, even in places where people don't have cars, and not everybody has a car in places where most people do.
> Won't most automated vehicles be electric?
Yes, but that doesn't automatically mean all that power is made with renewables.
>Yes, but that doesn't automatically mean all that power is made with renewables.
Electric vehicles are consistently more carbon efficient than individual combustion engines, except for specific outlier instances in developing countries which are 100% dirty coal power grids.
This means a fleet of electric vehicles will have less of a carbon impact per mile than the average human driven vehicle.
This is true in the case where you compare a fleet of electric vehicles with the same size fleet of combustion based vehicles.
But that's an entirely different subject. We are simply looking at the effect on the total number of miles driven here, which will absolutely explode once driverless vehicles are a reality. And those KWh will have to come from somewhere and they will have a carbon footprint even when they are entirely made with renewables.
The solution to this is to drive substantially less not to drive more with cleaner vehicles.
There is no reason to believe that driverless cars will be driven more than regular vehicles, and even if they were, you'd be able to regulate fleet pricing to stem overusage.
There is still no comparison between electric vehicles and combustion vehicles in terms of carbon footprint.
Because in most places school starts before work starts, this has always been the case, even in places where people don't have cars, and not everybody has a car in places where most people do.
> Won't most automated vehicles be electric?
Yes, but that doesn't automatically mean all that power is made with renewables.