I'm Carla Zeus, and today's show puts one high profile subject in the driver's seat.

Driverless cars.

This means autonomous vehicles, cars that do all of the work of handling themselves without any input from people.

Manufacturers worldwide are investing in the technology to make this happen, but right now full automation doesn't exist on American roads, at least not legally.

The carmaker Tesla offers both an autopilot and a full self driving capability package, but it says neither of them actually makes the vehicle fully self operating.

They're intended to be used with a completely attentive driver.

This year, the company has investigated a couple incidents in which crashes occurred when the autopilot feature was reportedly enabled.

So there are concerns about the safety of this technology, and that includes the fact that it's on Lee possible with computers.

What if they lock up or need a reboot like your smartphone?

What if they're hacked?

Also, privacy advocates have sounded the alarm about your every movement and speed and destination being tracked and logged.

Who gets access to that information for today's show?

Though we're giving you a glimpse of a driverless ideal.

What could the future look like for a city filled with autonomous vehicles?

Assuming everything goes, his manufacturers and supporters of the technology hope it will Americans love their cars.

Getting my first car was one of the happiest days of my life, and I've loved driving ever since, especially fast cars.

Uh, yeah, that's not actually my car, but hey, look, this is my story, and I can dream if I want to.

But what if I'm part of the last generation to get excited about driving a car?

I've spent the past year traveling the country, talking toa entrepreneurs, engineers and test drivers who are building the cars of tomorrow.

And when they imagine the future driving the car isn't part of it.

They envisioned roads full of cars driven by machines where traffic jams are no more, where the death rate by car accidents drops to zero.

The end of car ownership as we know it, even to the point of human driving.

One day becoming illegal, I asked them all the same thing.

What will the future look like?

And what will it take to get there?

What I found was really exciting, but also a bit shocking.

Okay, so out of this parking lot, I'm gonna very James.

Self driving.

Technically, we don't need a driver in the car.

So you and I are basically, in a way, just passengers now, yes, we're test driving a car powered by autonomous vehicle startup drive a eye on the streets of northern California.

It's one of several companies working toe utterly transform how we live.

This test car could be the prototype of an automobile that not only takes you out of the driver's seat, but creates a future where you might not need to own a car at all.

At least that's what the people building him think ownership probably abandoned.

You mostly have cars that we summoned on our phone.

The car become empty, tow us and pick us up, and we get inside and out of office or house, and it drives us straight to the restaurant.

And there's no time basis of parking in a world self driving cars utopia in the future.

The only vehicles operating the city are driverless electric emission list vehicles that they can position themselves in a state where you were I hailing one from our smartphone has one there.

Within a minute, we will look back and say, Wow, people own cars to get.

From this point of that point, eliminating car ownership would drastically change the way we shape our cities.

The thing I'm most excited about is the ability on the street to reallocate space away from the storage of vehicles.

Right now.

Car sit idle, 94.8% of I mean, that's staggering.

And I think we could literally close 30 40% of our streets.

Automobiles.

You don't need cars on neighborhood streets anymore.

You just need them on the perimeter of your neighborhood.

All those parking facilities today get turned into residential space or parks or offices or restaurants.

And we can kind of give back the city to the people who live in and take it away from the automobiles, right?

I think that the quality of life and the opportunity to kind of re use that space is gonna be pretty magical.

Imagine it never driving again.

The nation of muscle cars, NASCAR on open road.

You're gonna tell Americans they can't drive well, eventually.

Maybe that maybe a law in place that basically say 50 years from now.

Humans cannot drive on public roads.

And if a human doesn't want to drive, likely goto a private car of ranch bacon.

Basically gonna be a hot Scott.

All right, I know what you're thinking.

Ah, Car ranch.

But it's actually not that crazy.

Remember when we transition from horses to automobiles?

We didn't shoot all the horses.

Well, guess what?

The's car ranch is actually already exist.

Think of car companies that build high end sports cars that are meant to be driven by humans, not robots.

They're already building driving courses around the country.

And, yes, Paris fun as they sound Way opened in May 2015.

You'll come in, you'll meet your your register and meet your driving coach and then driving.

Coach will then take you onto the track.

We believe this this destination that we've created has got a long term future portion knows that driverless technology is around the corner, but they still want people to love driving, even if they do less of it on public roads.

All right, let's get back to the real world.

The rise of car sharing service is has already made people accustomed to the idea of not owning a car today.

Human drivers pick us up when we use uber or lift.

But that's not gonna last Aton of this ride.

Sherry's absolutely coming.

It is right around the corner, and you'll see it in pockets at first and slowly and surely you'll start to see these vehicles all over the place.

There is an opportunity on a long enough timeline where we may have a fleet that is fully autonomous.

As you start to see people adopt to transportation as a service.

The hope here is that cars will car ownership will slowly decline.

The ripple effect of automation on our cities will be felt beyond just cars.

Drones will roam the skies, making deliveries and robots like this one already in Washington, D.

C.

May bring food orders to your door very soon.

In the nation's capital, Starship Technologies delivers food by an automated robot.

That is, Hello, robot.

I'd like a sandwich, man.

All right, so I just had a robot deliver me a sandwich on the streets of Washington, D.

C.

It's just in the trial phase right now, but in the future it could be a lot more common robots.

Drones deliver your hoagie right to your house I got to do is push a button on a nap and you got yourself a sandwich.

All of these changes won't come easy.

Perhaps the biggest fear.

What will happen when all these robots get better at our jobs than we are?

Will they replace us?

Okay, you heard phrases like eliminating car ownership and right around the corner.

But you also heard words like prototype and test car.

To be clear, experts say, a cityscape with fully self driving cars is likely to be decades away.

And whether this would work in the country is another question entirely for the present.

Even with all the technology available to US driver's air still Autonoma mostly in control.

And even if driverless cars seemed the technological next step, the intelligence of smart cars is still artificial.

So smart design will have to take the driver's seat if people are to take a backseat role on the road ahead.