The idle time will not change by much anytime soon. Everyone commutes in the same hours and at night all cars stand still. Yes, society becomes more flexible and diverse but this is a very slow process.
5:30 PM in Seattle on a weekday is peak traffic, 1 in 5 daily use vehicles are on the road.
So in a hypothetical wherein Robotaxis have acheived full penetration, maybe we'll need 1/3 of the vehicles we use today.
There would likely be a lot less steel in those vehicles as well, since they'd largely be optimized for single commuters, and would need less of the redundancies built into current cars for safety.
"Still, Priebus’ comment, tying the entirety of the drop in the labor force participation rate to “the Obama economy,” ignores some of the demographic and structural forces that have been driving the participation rate down for more than a decade, and that are expected to continue to drive the rate down for decades to come."
