Transportation Thoughts

As I was driving to Solvang today, I was thinking of some of the impact that autonomous vehicles are likely to make. I think they will be a huge game-changer, and my hope is that they may help to undo the tremendous damage that automobiles have done to our society, environment and culture.
For one thing, I think that car ownership will fade away. Not at first. At first, the manufacturers will be trying to sell autonomous vehicles to everyone who has a car already, as the next step in car ownership. But eventually people will begin to realize that these robots (that's what they are) will be so efficient at getting to where they are needed, that the wait time for one to appear at your door will be measurable in seconds. Uber and Lyft already show us a model of the convenience that an app-linked transportation appliance can be. If you remove the last inefficiency -- the driver -- then the response time becomes close to nothing.
Transportation of goods and materials will also be made much more efficient. Transportation vehicles will be able to be active around the clock. The roads won't have to be as smooth either, both because the vehicles won't care how smooth the ride is, and because of active shock absorption. Air travel will disappear eventually for a number of reasons, primary among them the lack of portable fuels, but also because autonomous vehicles will be able to travel at rates far exceeding what human drivers can accomplish. The extra cost of air travel for a few saved hours won't be worth it, especially if you are traveling in what is effectively an office/lounge/suite.
But how will we power these vehicles? I think that there may be a very large solar power infrastructure that develops. Certainly the roadways will be lined with solar panels. They may even be covered overhead by panels. Getting the energy to the vehicles may be as simple as using conductive pick-offs like electric rail systems do. Or, the solar electricity could be used to crack water into hydrogen and oxygen to create portable fuels. Hmmm. Maybe air travel could use these same fuels after all; who knows? The electric pick-off systems might only be used on long highway stretches, while for urban and rural use, the vehicles would switch over to portable fuels.
Without so much car ownership, the cars that do exist will be in more constant use. Parking lots will be less and less desirable.  Won't that be nice? Maybe our society won't have to be built so much around the needs of these machines as they are for cars today. Maybe there could be more walkable plazas, social meeting places, outdoor entertainment venues, parks and nice places to be.
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.