According to researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, if you want to cut greenhouse gas emissions by up to 90% in 15 years, use driverless taxi to travel. Doing this, the greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced to a large extent compared to the ride of same length in a car that is privately-owned and uses gas.

It has been calculated by researchers that even if one has a more efficient hybrid car in 2030, a ride in an autonomous taxi would cut per-mile greenhouse emissions by up to 82%. The research has been published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Driverless taxis are still an imagination; however, it is expected to become a reality by 2030 and this could be possible because of many reasons. As per a report by the Rand Corp., manufacturers that are carrying out work on such cars are looking forward to release vehicles having semi-autonomous features by 2017.

It has been announced by Google that it will be releasing a functional autonomous vehicle the same year. According to reports, it is expected that autonomous vehicles will be as much as $100,000 costlier than regular cars.

According to Austin Brown of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Washington, “Autonomous taxis make a promising early business case for connected and automated vehicles because they spread the purchase cost among many users and match appropriate vehicles to trip needs”.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory researcher Jeffery Greenblatt said in a statement that many people in the US travel alone during trips; this indicates that one- or two-seat cars would be apt for most of the trips.