The idyllic picture painted by automakers and regulators may sound overblown, but a new report from consulting firm McKinsey & Company says it is, for the most part, accurate. Automakers expect to introduce autonomous technology in phases, rolling out the cool new features in otherwise conventional cars. In three to five years, we can expect cars to do the heavy lifting during traffic jams and highway cruising, but cede control to their carbon-based occupants the rest of the time. Beyond that comes the more difficult challenge of driving in urban arenas, where there are far more obstacles and variables, like pedestrians, cyclists, cabbies and the like. That’s a tougher nut to crack, but our cars will become increasingly autonomous over the next 25 years, and we can expect them to be fully autonomous by 2040...The McKinsey report, based on research by McKinsey analysts and interviews with industry experts, buys into this idea of gradual introduction, and divides its findings in three phases. In the first, which runs through 2020 or so, the impact of autonomous technology will be limited: While self-driving vehicles already have infiltrated industrial and controlled settings like farms and mines, passenger vehicles will remain in the prototype and testing phase. This jibes with the timelines laid out by the companies like Mercedes and Nissan, which plan to offer cars with autonomous features by 2020. Audi’s shooting for roughly the same date, and while Volvo is targeting 2017 for a large-scale, real-world test involving 100 customers...Meanwhile, consumers will start to really get accustomed to the idea of giving up the wheel, and they’ll probably like it. Safety benefits should come quickly, as precursors to full autonomy have already had an impact: The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) reports a 7 percent reduction in crashes among cars that have a basic forward-collision warning system [apparently sourced from http://www.iihs.org/iihs/sr/statusreport/article/48/7/1 ]. Include automatic braking features, and that number is 14 to 15 percent, according to Consumer Reports. More self-driving will mean bigger reductions, which is why autonomous features are a big part of Volvo’s plan to eliminate deaths and serious injuries in its cars by 2020. And given how much time Americans waste in traffic—111 hours annually per driver, per a study by INRIX —that means anyone with one of these cars will be able to significantly boost their productivity.

"Self-Driving Cars Will Make Us Want Fewer Cars"; can't seem to figure out where the actual McKinsey paper is. There's one on their site from 2013, but not 2015.