[jonknee]

The age old last mile problem. I don't think anyone is suggesting getting rid of mass transit and in fact self driving cars could be the best thing ever happen to mass transit (no need to park at the train station if coming from the suburbs).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_mile_(transportation)

[sampo]

When a whole suburb is taking self-driving car every morning to get to the train, I guess someone will innovate and start offering rides in a minibus or even a bus.

[ygjb-dupe]

Nah, self driving electric vehicles with 6 seats operating on an UberPOOL model will dominate, and it wouldn't be surprising to see the UberPOOL model be extended to a subscription service as well where you simply pay a commit for the service level each month, get an included number of trips, and a further discounted on trips over that number.

Having the commit will make it maore feasible to fund vehicles that are intended for a specific area, and the pool model allows Uber to recover margin during pricing surges and users who don't want to pay the commit (after all, the discount on the fare would only apply to the portion of the pool fare ascribed to the subscribed to the passenger).

[galdosdi]

One neat thing about this (that probably won't end up making that big a difference for most people, just those few with high-mileage commutes in low traffic areas) is minivans can safely go faster on the freeway than buses.

[cfreeman]

I know Elon has talked about some sort of minibus form factor for their taxi fleet plans.