Google co-founder Sergey Brin steers left: End individual car ownership, tax things ‘we don’t want’

The freedom of owning a car provides should be sacrificed for greater good of improving road congestion, a Google co-founder said.

Sergey Brin, during a recent interview along with fellow Google co-founder Larry Page, championed the use of driverless cars, a technological advancement he said could ultimately bring an end to vehicle ownership.

“I hope that that could really transform transportation around the world, and reduce the need for individual car ownership, the need for parking, road congestion and so forth,” Mr. Brin said.

“With self-driving cars, you don’t really need much in the way of parking, because you don’t need one car per person. They just come and get you when you need them,” he added. “You can also make much more efficient road use, if you — and this is not something we’ve developed yet, but it’s certainly been simulated by many — they can form trains. They can go at high speed, perhaps much higher than our highway speeds here.”

Mr. Brin also weighed in on ways the government can expedite a better future, saying that officials should “tax more of the things that we don’t want, like carbon.”