"Simply getting more buses on the road when you're dealing with pretty huge suburbs is going to get very costly..."
The service we're talking about with the Cruise vehicles (and "easier to bring profits from") is getting more buses on the road in huge suburbs, right?
Why couldn't a service like this be purchased/leased by a community/city/state to become part of its public transport mix?
It's not like this will be the only self-driving minivan in the future.
So, this method is easier to roll-out, easier to bring profits from (especially with an ageing population who don't want to live in city centers), and can easily fit into nearly any community in America with ease.
Ideally, you would be right, we would instead be investing in a massive public transit overhaul from trains to buses but as the saying goes, we do not live in a perfect world.