>When they can full automate a 400-800 mile interstate trip so that I can sleep in my car while it drives overnight, it will massively disrupt the airline industry in so many positive ways.

This could be implemented today with train tracks and automated trains.

Someone will comment that there is not enough profit but are the roads making profit?

If you have the money you can travel A class, much more comfortable then sleeping in a car or an airplane.

I am not against cars so don't reply with some examples of why you need a cat, I understand that... my point is that for long distances transport where you could sleep,rest or do something else trains could be done today where AI driven cars would take at least 20 years.

I suspect that part of it is that a lot of people in the tech and tech journalism space live in and around cities. Many of them are mostly focused on being driven around and not owning a car.

Long highway drives may be something they don't do that often. So the ability to own a car that can automate that subset of their driving probably doesn't strike them as all that interesting.

Personally, as I've said elsewhere, this seems like a much more tractable problem and gives me a lot of the total benefit of self-driving.

It's way more difficult from a fleet operational perspective and more importantly, way less profitable. Take LA<->SF as an example. That's about 6h driving, and buses do it for $25-50. That's a measly 7-14 cents per minute. Once you've made the trip, the company has to find someone going the other way. If there's any directional or temporal imbalance, the fleet ends up with a lot of cars sitting idle or driving hours to be useful, further reducing utilization. If the car has an issue halfway, now someone has to pick the customer up hours from a company facility and get them to their destination. All this for pennies. You don't even get an easier problem, because you still have to drive in the city to drop people off.

Compare to city driving: 10 minute drive, $5. That's at least 5x more profitable and takes less capex. Plus, if anything goes wrong, your facilities and backup vehicles are already nearby.

I'm assuming individuals still own cars with autonomous features (or rent them like they do today). Which is sort of my point. This capability doesn't really help those who want (or need) to be driven everywhere. It's a convenience (and safety) feature for car owners. It would be a very nice one. But it doesn't really help eliminate car ownership or the need to drive.

Basically the vast majority of people take very few 400-800 mile interstate trips so that doesn't matter [conversely the trucking industry does so long distance trucking would be a strong market]

As you said the Taco Bell trip doesn't matter.

The one area where it does matter is for the longer distance commuter--the unpleasant experience of spending an hour every morning and every night in stop and go traffic.

"I don't really care if my trip to Taco bell is automated."

Well, it would probably be a significant benefit to someone who is blind to be able to commute to work by themselves.