[danielbln]

Isn't that just a marketing and PR problem, first and foremost?

"The new [insert brand here], safer than any other vehicle ever developed [insert statistic here]. It will bring you where you want to go, fast, safe and while you can tend to the things in life that really matter [insert family/reading/working montage]."

I'm no adman, but I think it won't be too difficult to sell this. And if all fails, lower insurance rates, or rather higher insurance rates for manual drivers, will sway a lot of people.

[Shivetya]

One area I haven't seen mentioned is the loss of human interaction. For many just having someone to talk to/at during the trip is needed.

[flyosity]

I think many people would prefer to sleep, watch movies or read a book than talk to someone for hours in a car.

[samstave]

Here's where it will be a showstopper for me; many many times the uber map has fucked up directions and so I tell the driver the route I want to take, or to pass a particularly slow driver in front, in addition I sometimes change my destination/add a stop.

How easily can I do any of this with a robot car?

[danielbln]

Touch screen panel, make options available to adjust the route taken? Doesn't seem like a hard problem to solve, especially compared to all the other problems that need to be solved to make autonomous cars a reality.

[itchyouch]

Changing the "messed up" directions is a strawman in your head. Sure, in the beginning those complaints would be more prevalent, but as the "rate your ride" complaints get sent up to Google, I'd imagine that there will be an army of people re-training the AI to minimize these kinds of inefficient glitches to the point that they rarely if ever happen. Google does this today with an army of yellow-badge employees who fix Google Maps.

[stanmancan]

Have a big touch screen in the car that shows the destination and the route the car is going to take? And allow you to drag/drop to alter the route similar to Google Maps?

[cvs268]

Eliza and Siri can accompany them...