The US is no longer the center of innovation. It will happen somewhere else, and I predict Korea or China first.
They both have huge traffic congestion problems, and heavily state (or Chaebol) controlled economies.
In Korea Samsung and Hyundai control over a third of the economy, including car manufacturing, road construction, gas distribution, aerospace, navigation, cell phones, LCDs, CPUs (ARM based), Flash, RAM... insurance, home appliances, happiness, food, water, air, dreaming... Ok I'm kidding about the last 4... or maybe dreaming is largely controlled by the Chaebol as well. They are competent and think long term, something you can not say about our government or most of our business leadership.
The efficiency of car trains and automated parking could be huge... The taxi concession isn't going to like it, and they do prevent most mass transit from going airports for that reason. There are huge vested interests as well as an irrational public (and dysfunctional media). I heard a great description of what a journalist is supposed to do, "to make important things interesting, not to make titillating things important".
If an Asian government decides that automated driving is better and more efficient, they will start to develop them, implement them, enable them, distribute them, and eventually enforce them. We will end up buying them from someone else after we are considered more insane that the drivers of Rome and Naples.
I once told Larry that I thought he needed to solve a political/emotional problem to make driverless cars happen... I no longer think so after spending a lot of time in Asia over the last few years. He could make a good friend in Korea and make his dream come true at the same time. (probably the same in China, but Google isn't as well received there...)