[ssdd]

To me buses and truck market seems niche as compared to personal cars for companies looking to build electric tech to drive them. Number of state departments and businesses willing to pay for electric vehicle are fewer compared to electric car customers.

[michaelt]

Trucks and busses often follow centrally planned routes without much deviation, they're too large to be sent down narrow lanes or poorly maintained roads, and the people who buy them are ready to spend a six-figure sum.

Some companies might have autonomous tech that's a good match for those constraints, despite the much smaller market.

[bmcusick]

And airlines are niche compared to mass market cars too, but they're still a good business!

One thing I think most people don't appreciate is that the switch to self-driving cars will transform America into a mostly-transit society. Once you don't need a car to live from day to day, you sell it. Then you take a self-driving Lyft from your house to the bus depot, train station, or airport.

The market for self-driving busses between cities will grow alongside the market for self-driving cars within cities.

[bluGill]

I don't understand your logic. Why does a self driving car free me from having to have a car to live day to day?

[VintageCool]

The prediction is that ride-hailing taxis will be ubiquitous and cheap once we have self-driving cars. Companies will be able to flood the city streets with them once they are purely a capital expenditure and they don't have to pay human drivers.

If self-driving taxis are ubiquitous enough, there could be very little wait time between hailing a taxi from an app on your smartphone and the taxi arriving at your location.

At some price point, it will stop making sense to spend $20,000-$30,000 to buy a car. And you won't have to pay for insurance or gas or wear-and-tear or parking. The car could be out making money instead of being parked 22 hours a day.

Businesses and apartments and home developers will stop building parking spaces and parking lots once self-driving taxis hit a sufficient threshold.

Finally, cars will solve transit's "last mile" problem. Instead of paying for a taxi from home to work, you can pay for a taxi from home to the Light Rail station.

[bmcusick]

Exactly right.

[paulie_a]

Considering the substantial amount of of bankruptcies by airlines, I wouldn't call it a good business.