[randomdata]

The comment beside you says that a car has a useful lifespan of 200,000 miles, or 50¢ per mile for the tech. The internet suggests the average highway speed in the US is 70mph. That suggests that it will cost $35/hr. for the autonomy and probably that much again for the car itself.

At $70/hr., I expect people will still opt to own their own vehicle.

[njarboe]

When driving your own car at 70mph for an hour you are not getting that distant for free.

[randomdata]

Certainly not, and in many cases it may even cost more than that to drive your own car. But the car comes with a huge advantage that taxis have fallen short on:

The cost is upfront. People sit down and budget $x for transportation and then they know that amount of money will get them anywhere they want to go. People hate having to decide in the moment whether they want to spend the money or not. I notice a similar phenomena when it comes to mobile phone service. People would rather pay extra for a plan that provides more than they could ever need than to have a lesser plan and pay overages when needed because the overages require thinking about it in the moment, rather than pre-planning how much they want to budget. $70/hr. isn't even going to have anyone thinking twice about changing their behaviour completely.

Maybe robs-taxi services will pioneer a pay ahead of time service that captures the necessary mindshare that will make ownership obsolete, but that won't have anything to do with the technology. There is nothing stopping a taxi service from doing that today with human drivers. It's just a tough business model to work with when providing services, so it is uncommon.