That's not true at all. There are a lot more use cases for self driving technology than taxi services. In fact I'm continuously perplexed as to why this specific use case, which is obviously the most challenging and likely to be the last to reach the market, is always first in these discussions.

There are very good reasons as to why Waymo and all the other major players are focused on robotaxis.

A truck still needs to be able to drive in cities, and if you figure out how to automate all the other thing a trucker does you can replace 3 million of them. Big whoop. Robotaxis stand to challenge the economics of personal vehicle ownership, the potential market is many orders of magnitude larger.

Why can't they just have normal cars for sale that also drive themselves to start with? Like I have a car and recline and read a book on a commute most of the time. If snow gets crazy or there's very strange construction or a flooded road or a flat tire we go back to manual driving.

That's plausible and incremental. No cleaning problems, no homeless people living in them, no need for remote monitoring, a far simpler liability and insurance situation, and so on.

My assumption is we'll start talking seriously about robotaxis on the day this scenario is practical and battle tested. The idea of starting with taxis seems ludicrous in comparison.

> That's plausible and incremental. No cleaning problems, no homeless people living in them, no need for remote monitoring, a far simpler liability and insurance situation, and so on.

These are all solved problems, I mean when was the last time you saw a homeless person camped out in a Zip Car? BMW's ReachNow vehicles are all over Seattle and they are clean, insured, fueled/charged and exactly 0 people live in them.

I live in Brooklyn, where ReachNow launched with much excitement and pulled out within a year or so due to problems with maintenance, damage to cars, and difficulty with the technology.

Yup. I'd sell my car almost instantly if I could take a robotaxi to work/etc with zero hassle and near instant availability.

> Robotaxis stand to challenge the economics of personal vehicle ownership

I have yet to hear a compelling reason why I would give up my car, and if I did why public transit isn't a better option.

In suburban environments, robotaxis are likely to be a key firm of public transit rather than an alternative (rideshare as public transit if already a thing in some suburban environments.)