One thing that hasn't been addressed, given the limited test markets, is whether autonomous taxis actually will actually be popular and preferable among consumers. Theoretically having a car that drives itself seems like a great product/service, in practice it's more clunky and awkward than you would hope. From the experiences I've had, a human driver is undoubtedly the better option. Many things happen on the road were a driver may be forced to speed above the speed limit, circle around the double yellow line, reverse on a one way street. Be a passenger in an autonomous car within an urban setting and you'll know immediately why a human driver is the superior service (and likely to remain so). The "potential" future of every car becoming autonomous driving on highly controlled roads being able to drive in the highest level of efficiency isn't a likely scenario.
This is very true, but it sounds to me like a classic case of design iterations: find patterns, develop them among users, learn ways to introduce new users… A search engine, an email, chat… non of that was natural, and the first iterations where clunky, but you know can’t imagine they’d be any simpler or that anyone would want anything else.
So if we look exclusively at only successful software products for our comparison, we'll see success for a completely different product category with high capital costs--got it.
I imagine autonomous taxis will be significantly cheaper than driver taxis. From a quick search it looks like in general Uber drivers earn somewhere around $9 for a 30 minute ride [1].
And out of that $9, the driver has to pay for their gas (or electricity) and upkeep of the car. Uber apparently earns about $3-4 for their service. If Uber is now covering the costs of an expensive for now autonomous vehicle, it's not clear to me the fare drops at all.
