[blakesterz]

"A decade from now, we'll be able to look back and say which companies or approaches were on the right track. For now, we can only guess."

My first thought was that a decade from now there will be a very limited number of self driving cars on the road, still. Mostly because people (not all people, but most people) will be very scared of the technology, no matter how good it is. Every time there's an accident it'll make news. Any deaths will make the news. It will not matter if statistically self-driving vehicles are safer.

I do wonder, can it ever be as good as or better than a person? Won't they always hesitate more, be slower than, and take more time than a real person driving? If it costs a little less to take a self-driving taxi than a person-driving taxi, why would anyone bother? What's the motivation for people to go with a self-driven thing over a person driven thing? Will there really be a big price difference?

[s1artibartfast]

I think this is an overly cynical take. If the technology gets there, I think there will be massive uptake for in the urban commuter and taxi markets.

when pitting Actual safety + massive convenience VS. fear, I think the former will win out for a large part of the market.

I also think the majority of people would pay more for a self driven taxi than a person driven taxi. Some reasons might be personal space, privacy, safety, and reliability in terms of dispatch and cancelled rides.

[moistly]

Insurance companies may well drive (pun intended) the uptake. If self-driving cars are an order of magnitude safer, insurance can be an order of magnitude less expensive. (Or, more likely, human-driven cars will become an order of magnitude more expensive to insure.)

[me_me_me]

If cities had really good public transport, and I mean really good services, plus urban planning moved on from current zoning housing / commercial / work into more mixed zone approach the demand for self-driving kind of disappears.

[ActorNightly]

My bet is that we will see self driving features in an emergency intervention, where you are still in control generally but if the system predicts a crash in a future time horizon, it will intervene.