What to Think, Ep. 47: The future of cities with swarms of driverless cars

In the future, you might not own a car. Instead, you’ll get around town by hopping into one of many autonomous 3-wheeled pods swarming the streets.

To get a picture of how we’ll get there, we invited Xerox executive David Cummins to talk to us about the company’s efforts to improve parking — yes, parking — and the future of transportation in cities around the world. He’s the vice president for mobility solutions at the company, which gives him a remarkable perspective on the future: That’s because many big cities use Xerox services to help them process parking payments, plan traffic and parking flows, and get prepared for the future.

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In Cummins’ view, automobile ownership is on the decline. Millennials are leading this charge, with many of them deciding that they don’t need to own a car — or even have a driver’s license — when services like Uber, Lyft, or the local public transit system can take them wherever they need to go.

Autonomous vehicles will accelerate that trend. In the coming years, cities may be filled with fleets of self-driving cars — not owned by any individuals — that come to you whenever you need a ride, and drop you off where you need to go. Cities may even put in dedicated “autonomous car lanes,” just as they have started to do with bike lanes.

Cummins chats with me and VentureBeat’s Mark Sullivan about how we’ll get there, and what to expect in the next few years.

Plus, we tell you what to think about:

• ‘Becoming Steve Jobs,’ the biography Apple actually wants you to read
• Microsoft offering free Windows 10 upgrades to pirates worldwide 
• Reddit’s most toxic and bigoted threads

All this and more is in our latest weekly episode. Why don’t you give it a listen?

You can also find the latest edition of What to Think on iTunes, or on SoundCloud.

In addition, you can find What to Think on Stitcher or get the What to Think RSS feed for the podcast player of your choice.

Enjoy the show!

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