Fast forward to a future when all the cars are self-driving. Those future automobiles will really be more like a kind of highly granular train service.
So it is quite likely that they won’t sit in garages waiting to be used, since that would be quite inefficient. Rather, they will be deployed as needed. When they are done taking one set of passengers somewhere, they will be put into immediate service ferrying somebody else.
And that means houses will no longer need garages. Yet there are millions of houses in existence with garages attached. Whatever will become of all those garages?
One possibility is that they will be converted into portals, places people will go to have immersive experiences of co-location with friends, family and business associates. In this scenario, Zoom meetings will evolve into something resembling the Star Trek Holodeck.
That may or may not happen. But it would be nice if it did, if only because it would be nice not to need to tear down all those garages.
Of course, the first question is how many garages currently have cars in them. So many get repurposed as workshops, rec rooms, junk storage, etc. No doubt some enterprising tinkerer is already working on a Holodeck in their garage now.
Wonderful! Now we just need two of those garage Holodeck tinkerers to start having virtual visits with one another.