There's also a huge sunk R&D cost and an ongoing R&D cost that probably dwarfs operating costs. But the per-car cost drops as more cars are deployed.
On the other hand, robot vehicles can have higher utilization than single-owner vehicles. They can be on the road as long as there are customers. Observation of their parking lots indicates most of the cars are out on the road about 12 hours a day.
What I noticed about China is that they employ a lot of people to stand around in nice looking government (non-police) uniforms and do various menial work or not much at all.
The US does this to a perhaps a lesser extent with jobs like TSA agents.
Sure, I guess you can do UBI, but what if that’s less efficient overall?
Example given with made up numbers:
Status quo, an Uber driver makes $20/hour out of a revenue of $50/hour total covering vehicle operating costs and platform fees.
Self-driving cars: self-driving cars cost $40/hour to operate, UBI pays someone a wage of $20/hour since there’s no job available. This basically means that rideshares now cost $10/hour more to operate than before.
Or, maybe that person on UBI makes $10/hour instead of $20/hour and gets a worse job to cover the difference.
Obviously there are many flaws and assumptions with the way I present this scenario but it’s a really good question to bring up whether putting everyone out of work is actually going to be a net positive.
Regarding what you said about driver hours, it’s not unheard of to run multiple drivers on multiple shifts with the same vehicle. Not all rideshare drivers own the vehicle nor use it as a personal vehicle. But the other factor is that the drivers who do use personal vehicles effectively subsidize the fact that they can only drive it for a human-length shift. Waymo has to buy every car (more expensive than a normal car) and use it only for business purposes while an uber driver can just use the same used Toyota Prius they use to take their kids to soccer practice.
Run a jobs program building public transit instead. We built an entire nation on unskilled workers laying rail, we can do it again and it will benefit everyone, not just car manufacturers.
Many people actually like driving their cars. Who are you to decide they shouldn’t be allowed to do this? Cars are more than just ‘get me from point A to B’.
The reason it would be unreasonable in America today is because there is no alternative, and people are expected to be able to commute long distances. Bring in alternatives and it becomes logical.
Look at the cities in Japan, most people live within a 15 minute walk of a subway station, but people still drive.