Some 22 million self-driving cars are expected to be on the roads worldwide by 2025 - a metric with huge implications for the travel sector.
The manufacture of the vehicles will accelerate rapidly at around 2020 from just a few thousand per year to 14.5 million by 2025, giving the 22 million total.
This increase will be driven by "stringent safety specifications" on vehicles becoming the norm and accepted, plus further pressure from governments and lobbying groups around environmental considerations.
Juniper Research, which carried out the study, says the adoption of self-driving cars is likely to have a "disruptive impact" on taxis and other forms of ground transportation, leading millions of professional drivers being made redundant.
Research author Gareth Owen says:
"The introduction of driverless cars will result in fundamental changes to the automotive world and society in general; and it is clear that the boundaries between private vehicle ownership, car sharing and rental fleets will increasingly become blurred."
So-called Level 4-type vehicles ("vehicle performs all safety-critical functions for the entire journey with the driver not expected to control the vehicle at any time. Vehicle capable of travelling with or without driver") will not be deployed until closer to 2025.
But other levels ("feet-off", "hands-off" and "eyes-off" driver experiences) will be motoring into most major cities around the world.
Juniper forecasts that the Far Eat and China will have the largest number of vehicles by 2025 (34%), with North America and Western Europe not far behind in terms of market share.
Alongside the driver-less nature of the future of ground transportation is also the way vehicles, services and users will be connected via devices over the web.
A device will pre-order vehicles from airports or other locations, then guide the passenger to the awaiting vehicle whilst checking them into a hotel, for example.