[bendbro]

I expect the media led zeitgeist to slime you on a few fronts:

1. AI/automation/tech bros undercutting the working class.

2. The mortal danger of self driving cars to pedestrians and the public- perhaps with an AI bias/racism zest.

3. The price, location-availability, or otherwise explicit exclusion of people that damage the cars or are otherwise unprofitable being harmful.

4. The proliferation of self driving cars reducing public transit use, thus reducing public transit investment, reducing transit access for poor, increasing pollution, and clogging roads.

5. Something something self driving taxis are subsidized by the government via public investment in roads.

All of these arguments are bullshit and I am not excited to hear people recite them to me in 5 years.

[babyshake]

All-electric fleets of safe, non-honking AVs that are fine with whatever routes are required of them and go to designated areas to park and charge are going to make our downtown areas so much better.

[astrange]

The urbanist PoV is that anything car-shaped is bad for a city and it doesn't matter how smart it is. The proper answer is micromobility, aka ebikes and smaller vehicles that don't need to ever go highway speeds.

Full size EVs are still bad for air quality too because of tire dust.

[bluGill]

Full sized EVs have their place in cities. However it isn't for mass transit, the train or bus is for getting people around. EVs are for getting goods and maintenance tools around. This is a small minority of traffic in most cities.

[mvhvv]

Just because you don't want to think about externalities doesn't mean they don't exist. There are a lot of strong ideological assumptions you have to make to handwave all these away as "bullshit".