I see the idea thrown around a lot that self-driving cars will make us all use taxis because, absent human drivers, the taxis will be far cheaper than owning a car -- but I have yet to see strong analysis on this claim. There's lots of issues here:

* inconvenience: Unless the network is extremely dense, this means waiting for a taxi vs. driving myself. Denser networks, however, all things equal, mean lower utilization.

* storage: All sorts of people need to store things in their car. Contractors with tools, parents of toddlers with car seats, etc. Taxis prove to be too inconvenient, leading this population to prefer owning (hurting network density)

* traffic patterns: Commute patterns are heavily one-way, meaning in practice, after dropping someone off, the car will need to return without a person. Say you have a core commute time of 2.5 hours and take people on 30 minute journeys; you've managed to turn 3 cars into 1 [1], but at the cost of increasing miles by 60%. It's somewhat questionable if such a conversion has positive ROI.

* existing contrary evidence: You see plenty of private car ownership in areas with cheap labor (Chinese cities come to mind). Even cheap taxis aren't sufficiently solving transit needs.

[1] Yes, you could also pick up multiple people.. but now you introduce inconvenience again!

I live in silicon valley, and the traffic isn't SF or LA bad yet, but it's pretty bad, and it's also clear that the voters around here aren't prepared to vote in usefu public transit; (one could make the argument that VTA is proof that voters are prepared to pay for public transit but aren't willing to allow useful public transit)

The upshot is that most people outside of NYC don't think automotive transportation is broken. Most people prefer automotive transportation. I personally am with you; driving when you could be on transit is nuts, but I'm clearly in the minority.

No, this looks like SV companies drinking their own coolaid and ignoring actual world problems they can’t get rich off of.

It's that the car is tied to you.

Everywhere you go, it needs a place to stay while you're doing anything outside your car. Parking spots average $5,000 per surface space, $20,000 per space in an above-ground parking structure, and $32,0000 underground. Every moment your car sits in one, it depreciates without performing useful work.

My point of view would be that Americans are spending on average about an hour every day driving. That's an hour that could very well be spent doing any number of more interesting and/or productive tasks. How is that not a high priority problem?

Rides are often too short to context switch into doing anything useful.

Even then there are all sorts of situations today where people are being transported in a car not requiring focus -- but aren't effectively recovering this time:

* Riding in a Lyft: I suppose in practice someone could whip out a laptop, but you rarely see it happen. Rides too short, induces carsickness, etc.

* Riding in a vehicle that is L2 autonomous. While not legal or particularly safe, in practice, someone driving an Autopiloting Tesla can read and respond to emails. (i.e. similar situation as being in a Lyft)

People on public transit usually use their newspaper / book / phone. Sometimes they miss their stop because they are too involved doing that. Have you used SF<->Bay transit on Google buses or something like that? From my experience it's pretty comfortable and productive to use laptops during ride to check tons of morning emails and it saves a lot of on-campus time.

> where people are being transported in a car not requiring focus -- but aren't effectively recovering this time:

Your examples require some kind of attention to driver or focus on road situation:

> Riding in a Lyft: I suppose in practice someone could whip out a laptop, but you rarely see it happen.

Riding alone vs riding with human driver differs a lot, especially for introvert people (e.g. talking in company of friends is much more comfortable then talking in company of strangers). It's hard to ignore presence of other human during ride.

> Riding in a vehicle that is L2 autonomous. While not legal or particularly safe, in practice, someone driving an Autopiloting Tesla can read and respond to emails. (i.e. similar situation as being in a Lyft)

You have to use your peripheral vision to control situation on the road. You can't fully concentrate on your work and be productive.

My car’s utilization rate is about 8%. The remaining 92% of the time it’s sitting idle and since I work in a metropolitan area I even get to pay $190 per month to have it sit idle in a parking garage while I work.

My car is an enormous expense. It’s my second largest expense outside of my house. And it sits idle 92% of the time. I pay $900 per year to insure it, I pay to register it, get it inspected, pay for maintenance, depreciation, etc.

Autonomous cars run by service companies like Lyft and Uber will dramatically reduce costs for anyone driving their own cae today. Eventually overall car utilization will flip from 8% utilization to something like 90% utilization making transportation drastically more affordable.

And like you said, you get to work (or sleep or FaceTime with your kids) on your commute.

We really are on the cusp of L2 highway autonomy, and will get there in 2020 as originally envisioned. This WSJ article is insufficiently researched.

There's also efficiency gains to be had since computers don't need sleep, could have reduced insurance premiums, etc.

I also expect that with lighter vehicles, the cost of labor is an even higher percentage of total costs.

  Driverless cars are IMHO a classic example of technology looking for a problem to solve