You will notice that I did not even touch :

- full autonomous driving

- robotaxis

Robotaxis will presumably take some of their volume from public transportation and increase “local” road travel

All of the catalysts would seem to increase “long distance” road travel

- visits to places of natural beauty

- greater freedom to visit friends and family

- increased overnight “camping” as vehicles gain more amenities for user convenience

As battery costs come down maybe we should not be surprised to see two strong trends emerging in opposite directions from today’s “middle ground” :

1. Smaller and simpler but very convenient vehicles for local runabout purposes, probably very upright and “boxy” for grocery bags