[krschultz]

I do not think the outcome is only Uber / Lyft but with AI, but if that is the outcome I still think it would be a win. Today supply of Uber / Lyft in my area at off hours is spotty, and that makes it unreliable. I have gotten stuck walking home 2+ miles multiple times in the last year because I couldn't get a ride at any price. That's not a problem in Manhattan, but not everywhere is Manhattan. Driverless cars would be on 24/7/365 so wouldn't have that problem. The more reliable these taxi services are, the more viable it is for people to get rid of their cars.

I also expect long term self driving cars will be safer than humans, and as a person that primarily walks around instead of driving that's a benefit to me even if I'm not in the car.

[mechagodzilla]

Why wouldn't driverless cars have the exact same problems? A driverless car is pretty expensive, so it needs to be making money a high fraction of the time or it's not economical for a company to invest in it, just like a regular taxi service (I'm really curious how they would handle 'surge' times - have fleets of cars that sit parked and unused 99% of the time??). Uber and Lyft actually have a lot of flexibility in this regard, since the cars already exist for other reasons (and don't cost Uber/Lyft anything when they're not driving). The idea that 'driverless' somehow means 'lots of cars, everywhere, at all times, very cheap' doesn't make any sense to me from an economics perspective.