God I hate so much the technowizards who think all of our society problems around cars are going to be fixed by self-driving cars. My dad always does this -- any time you point out the issues with expense and congestion near him in the city downtown, he'll start talking about how any day now the self-driving cars will fix it and won't need to park and it'll be sunshine and roses.
Nope. The geometric problems of cars are not solved by fleets of vehicles that park in huge lots at the edge of town. It may mitigate issues, but it does not fix them.
Want to get rid of downtown congestion? Putting people in automated cars won't do it. Only getting rid of the cars will.
The only upside is it will make it that much easier to get rid of mandatory min parking rules which are totally unscientific and should never have been codified to law in the first place.