> Ask yourself. If you own a car today, would getting a 50% discount on taxi rides completely change your behavior. Maybe it would for some at the margins but only at the margins.

Look longer term.

Parking spaces in cities cost ~30k. (And in some cities, a lot more than that). Included with a house, they are still part of the price (no free lunch).

Over a 30 year mortgage, that is 1k a year.

In California, car insurance is almost 2k a year. (Oddly enough, 1.1k in New York State!)

So 3k a year just to have the privilege of driving a car.

Apparently an average new car now days cost 31k. (Which seems insane to me, but that is what people are buying).

Being generous and rounding down a bit, that is another 5k a year.

So now 8k a year, before gas, before maintenance, before any warranty problems, before screws in tires, etc.

If mass transit can replace commuting to work, then weekend outings with automated taxis become very doable. If you give $5 per ride (on par with UberPool, though I realize that isn't profitable), it is 1600 rides a year to break even with owning a car. (Though ownership goes down after the car is paid off, 600 rides a year to break even!)

1) Now the taxi can operate day and night without substantial breaks. That reduces per-passenger-mile amortization costs by at least a factor of 2.

2) Especially since amortization cost is also reduced, you might as well electrify the vehicle (this requires some sort of robot arm for fast charging, but I suppose you could pay someone like $0.50 per cycle to plug and unplug a bunch of vehicles in the interim). That reduces fuel costs by a factor of 2 and maintenance costs even more.

3) No driver means room for more people or ability to shrink the car, reducing all the above costs.

So you've now reduced all the other costs by a factor of 2. That means your overall costs are now reduced by 75% or more. Yeah, that's starting to look pretty attractive.

1) It's already very common for taxis to operate two shifts per day with two drivers. Also, there's less demand in the middle of the night than there is at peak hours.

Sure. But even if we all own our own cars, level 5 autonomy is still a game-changer.

IMO the killer app is in freight anyways.

Getting a 50% discount on taxi rides would make me never consider any other option when I need a taxi.

It depends on the circumstances. On the other hand, for me, if taxi rides were half the price I doubt it would affect my ridership at all over the course of a year. MAYBE for one or two marginal car rentals.