0. Encourage the use of cars in cities rather than public transit & walkability.
1. Centralize wealth by replacing payments to many drivers with payments to one large company.
2. Allow for further surveillance of individuates. It seems likely that Google will eventually create ad inventory by adding screens to the cars and incorporate travel history into peoples marketing profiles.
1 - I think the impact of parking is actually more insidious and detrimental than roads by themselves. AVs will have high utilization of a much smaller pool of vehicles and remove the need for the huge parking lots we currently have. The land-use issues from parking are perhaps the largest impediment (together with the requirements/zoning) to the density which would allow transit to outcompete private cars.
2 - The centralization of wealth is one thing, but the real economies of fewer, newer vehicles will be a boon for almost everyone. The cost of the automobile operation is about 1/4 of the average uber fare. That is a lot of room for price compression. Perhaps more will be going to a large corporation, but there will be a huge consumer surplus as well.
3 - The reduction in the size of the car fleet will likely reduce the lobbying power of the automobile industry, which may in turn lead to changes to the urban environment(bike lanes, transit expansions) which will likely shift mode share away from cars.
But the public will face negative externalities of greater congestion (noise, pollution, slower travel times for busses & walking).
Without congestion pricing and right of ways for bikes, walking, and transit, automated taxis seem like a way to double down on a space inefficient mode of travel.
Is anyone currently doing this? I’ve seen proof of concepts for racing in motogp or something, but didn’t realized autonomous motorcycles was a thing outside the racetrack.
Headline: Self-driving cars are actually a thing!
"Yeah so here's why that's not very exciting and actually bad."
1. Agree. But Taxi drivers are a relict of the past already. You can drive your own car and need no navigation skills. It's called Uber and it sucks hard already. Nothing much of value lost here (most of the economic value is captured by Uber anyway.)