Sorry, Mitch, but there is absolutely nothing exciting about public transit.  It's usually noisy, dirty, run-down, expensive, and doesn't go where you need it to.  It reduces choice, and reduces freedom.  Yes, there's that word: freedom.  With a car, you can go where you want, when you want, at least until some pinheaded urban planner decides he hates cars and wants to ban them.  The simple fact is that once again, the middle class is being asked to pony up the costs for something that benefits them not one whit.  What say we do something intelligent for a change, and ban public transport instead.  The roads would be instantly clearer (because there's nothing more disruptive to traffic flow than a large, ugly bus in the middle of everything), and thus pollution would be reduced (less standing means less fuel used and exhausted into the atmosphere).  Clearly, eliminating the high social costs of public transportation would go a long way toward cleaning up the budget shortfalls plaguing most urban areas these days.  Of course, none of this has anything to do with IT, so let's just computerize all the cars while we're at it.  Voila!  Perfection has been attained....   ; -)

One of the things that make robocars exciting is that they have many of the advantages of mass transit -- reducing invidividual car ownership, reduced pollution, reduced congestion -- without sharinging the chief liability, which is the need to rebuild infrastructure. Robocars can drive on existing roads; you don't have to lay down tracks. 

Also, people outside of densely populated areas like NY have shown little interest in mass transit. People, or Americans at least, like their cars. 

Kim, you're CW McCall? That explains so much. 

I have to say I was a bit skeptical when I saw 'affordable' followed by 'luxury' in the title. In this day and age, it's pretty hard to find an affordable luxury. So I'd have to say this is pretty exciting.

Also, Alison, thanks are in order for your tracking down and posting the video! It does look pretty awesome!

but it sounds sort of sad. for me, the journey is the destination, and I *want* to be able to pull over at things that sound interesting.

I took my first train ride this summer in a while, and it's pretty impressive. You can walk around, there's a club car, there's a lot more room than an airplane seat, etc. On the other hand, getting dumped in the middle of the night to a strange city and then finding out that it would take half an hour for a cab was nonoptimal.

Especially if these things run on dedicated roads, the 'first mile' and 'last mile' problem is going to need to be solved first.

Hilarious Jabailo.  I like the idea that it worked out for twenty minutes or so.

Makes much more sense Scott, although again it makes me wonder about cost (not just constructing the roads, but maintaining them).

@Kim & Mitch:  I would expect that such robo-cars would probably have a special highway to travel on.  Such special highways would eliminate most of the obstacle issues and make it much easier to handle the docking cars.  After all, they're already super-luxury cars with high maintenance costs (who wants to empty out the toilet car?) -- might as well have their own highway too.  It would also allow vehicles like ambulances to get on/off the special highway and the robo-cars would all automatically get out of the way in advance.

I was watching one of those "World's Stupidest Accidents" (or some similarly titled) series from Spike TV and in one case, they described two Brits who were visiting the US on holiday.   They rented a luxury RV and set off to tour the Southeast.  They were rich party people who liked to imbibe and inhale a bit.   One day they were going down a country road and the wife, who was driving, noticed a button that said "Automatic Cruise Control".  Being half tipsy already, she engaged it thinking it was an Auto-Pilot!   Since they were on a relatively straight road, with no traffic, she figured it was ok to leave her seat and go back to share a fifth with the hubby.  This went on for twenty minutes or so until one of those, you know curve things.

Well, end result is they ended up both in the hospital with multiple fractures.

Still the idea of a Google RV is a good one.   Also, like with a sightseeing Amtrak train, if you have a luxurious mobile suite, it doesn't have to go 400 mph, it can roll down the highway at 100 mph while you live your life.  But hey, at that point, why have a house at all.  As long as it has wireless broadband, you could call it home and live life in state of permanent vacation.   Doing work, while your home robotically crawls the country to the next point of interest!

Hydrogen can be generated limitlessly using solar energy, and Northern Europe has already built a Hydrogen Highway and is taking delivery of production model fuel cell SUVs from KIA in 2013.