It'll take over when people find it cheaper to ride robotaxis than to own a vehicle at all. That's potentially a much quicker transition, requiring significantly fewer new vehicles.
The only exception is the US, and even then that doesn’t apply in Manhattan.
Your public transport with robo taxis takes up far more space in the surface than there is available in a normal city, as shown in this photo.
Public transport can be faster for going from A to B, but most people live a couple of kms from A and they're not going to exactly B but somewhere in the vicinity. The "last mile" will more likely be by robotaxi.
Lower prices don't make things more convenient or fast.
> You're shopping? Just put it in the trunk. Have fun with 4 grocery bags on public transport.
Here is "The Shops at South Town" mall in Salt Lake City: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.5617162,-111.8944801,171m/da...
Note that some parts of that car park are 300m from some of the shops in that building. (There are choices of shops and parking spaces larger than that, but it looks like I can easily justify 300m without resorting to maxima).
Here is my old apartment: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Prenzlauer+Promenade+1,+13...
Note that within 300m of that address — i.e. the bounds of the example American shopping mall car park — there are 6 [super]markets, a pharmacy, at least five cafe/bakeries, two cinemas, several takeaways, at least two restaurants, a dentist, a car repair shop, a car dealership, a pet-goods shop, a kitchenware shop, a newsagent/post office, two sets of tram stops, four sets of bus stops, and I'm not counting any corner shops ("Späti" in the local language).
Carrying a few bags of groceries around inside well-planned cities is pretty trivial. Anything connected to that area by a single mode of transport is no harder to take shopping through than the transit systems within a mall — escalator, elevator, travelator — and that means one of the main commercial areas of the city (Alexanderplatz) and the road to it (which itself is basically a 3km long half-density strip mall with a tram the whole length and a railway crossing it in the middle and another at the south end) are both trivial to reach even with shopping — I've even seen someone taking an actual, literal, kitchen sink on one of Berlin's trams.
Even in my current place, still in Berlin but close to the outskirts without the advantages of density, a mere four grocery bags is easier to get through public transport than it is from one end of an American car park to the other.
You are replying to a straw man, I never said anything like that. It makes for dull discussions.
> Even in my current place, still in Berlin but close to the outskirts without the advantages of density, a mere four grocery bags is easier to get through public transport than it is from one end of an American car park to the other.
It's unclear to me why you compare it to a geographically unrelated area. You should compare the public transport with a robotaxi alternative. At similar pricing, how is convenience and speed impacted.
> You are replying to a straw man, I never said anything like that. It makes for dull discussions.
If you didn't mean that, why did you say "When price goes down, robotaxis become a more viable option due to convenience and speed"?
> You should compare the public transport with a robotaxi alternative.
The alternative being "do I put these four bags in a trunk, or on the seat next to me?"
Said another way: When price goes down, robotaxis (which are convenient and speedy) become a more viable option.
To that end, I'm not convinced automation will make things worse.
If the kid's school is near the parent's route to work, there's nothing stopping the parent from saving money by taking the kid in the same taxi.
If the kid's school is in the opposite direction, then a separate robotaxi can be more efficient. What matters is total system mileage. If a robotaxi takes the kid, then picks up a commuter starting near the school, then we save the parent's trip from the school back to their starting point.
It ends up being another form of public transport — perhaps one with no predictable timetable, or perhaps timetables are themselves a useful Schelling point, I wouldn't want to guess.
But as fixed bus routes make it possible to plan things like bus shelters, I think I'd prefer a bus over the logical progression of self-driving "taxis" that constantly move rather than finding parking spots.
Meanwhile I think plenty of people find Uber perfectly convenient, just a bit expensive.
As far as physical efficiency goes, Tesla's plan is more efficient than their competitors'. Their dedicated robotaxis are either small two-seaters, or decent-size buses.
I absolutely would do that. Sometimes I already do wait that kind of time for a taxi or bus. Having the robo taxi turn up in ten minutes from when I decided I wanted to go to the shop would be fantastic.
If I already own a car, for which am paying an emi and no hope of selling for good value (because market is dropping as newest buyers disappear) it won’t make economic sense for me till I generate LTV from the car to switch over .
Either way it till take 1-2 decades after ubiquitous L5 availability, even if that was possible at all and soon
just as a silly personal example, I took a car to the shop and got Uber credits. my wife was heading into the city for an event (had to deal with both traffic and parking) and I was like “take a free Uber” and she was like “no way, driving my own car…” my daughter on the other hand…