[linkregister]

Yes! The far suburbs of Nashville aren't going to see UberTeslaWaymo fleet cars; the utilization would be far too low. They'll see what they see right now: one or two drivers on Uber or Lyft. And the trip price will be higher to reflect the human driving the car.

[kbenson]

Well, with respect to the topic of this thread, those are specifically the jobs which people might purchase the car and sub it out to a company for a shared profit. If the cars are autonomous, there's no need for the driver to be there. It could become the equivalent of a paper route, and extra way to make some cash on the side during what are traditionally non-work hours (in this case, the cleaning and mechanical upkeep of the car).

[usrusr]

Cars deprecate by mile as much as by year (ignoring the initial drop which is only based on a non-zero preowner count instead of time or distance). So unlike a driver, who is as expensive while driving as while waiting, a robocab spending much of its time on cold standby would not require a terribly high premium on trip prices.

Adoption in the suburbs will still be much slower, but mostly because unused car storage is so much less of a headache out there.