I hope they succeed, for the sake of my mom who's legally blind and has dreamed about them for decades. but I'd be significantly more excited about self-driving if you could buy level-4 AVs that you can actually own.
Cars aren't the best option, but you can drop self-driving cars into an existing car-centric society one car at a time, with the car buyers paying for themselves.
Making a car-centric society meaningfully less car-centric requires the enthusiastic support of that society, along with competent political leadership, and probably a fair chunk of taxpayer cash too. Suburbs with huge lots make for long walks to the transit stop - but densifying those suburbs is not easy.
I don't own a car; I travel everywhere by bicycle and public transport - but the public transport I use was all built in the 1850s. Some time between then and now my society reorganised into a form that has a lot of difficulty delivering public transport projects.
This is a false alternative, because robocars do not exist, while public transit does exist but simply hasn’t been adequately implemented everywhere.
Politicians (and grifters alike) like to point to a future technology to solve an existing problem only to delay existing solutions which they don’t want to implement, most often for political reasons.
Robocars most certainly exist. They’re probably about 5% of car traffic in San Francisco. I’ve not taken one yet (taxis/ubers/Waymos are mostly impractical with a young kid in the US as you must use a car seat unlike in most European countries) but as a pedestrian they seem mostly a safer than other drivers. As a driver I expect they will eventually induce gridlock but the city can always create more bus lanes.
Portable booster seats are pretty small. I can’t see it working if you have a kid younger than the booster seat min though. Only a few states have strict rules here, Washington and California being a couple, although I think California has a taxi exemption.
The robotaxis that do exist only do so in very limited places using very expensive technology (including off-shored service center for intervention) that is not available for the public consumer markets.
In the USA where transit in most cities sucks? Seattle is supposedly one of the best but you can’t get to work downtown most days without being harassed by a fent zombie.
Surely, not until public transit networks covering literally everywhere regular roads can get you.
Public transit is better, but building it outside of dense metro areas to the extent it becomes competitive is probably even more difficult than building a self-driving car.
Can I ask why you prefer that some future technology will solve her problem when actual solutions (such as access vans; public transit; etc.) already exist?
And before anyone points this out, if your local government does not offer these solutions that is a political choice of your local politicians. Plenty of local governments all over the world (even in dictatorships) are able to provide these, and changing the policy of your local government should in theory be easier then to roll out technology that does not exist.
I'm blind. I wish to hop in a robocar and drive from Denver to go visit my folks back home in Florida. Is the Denver Access-A-Ride going to take me? Which public transit is available?
I preemptively addressed this. Not providing access is a political choice. The airports/train stations/bus stations in both Denver and Florida should have assistants ready to guide you to your flight/train/bus and the Colorado government could have an agreement with Florida to share services with residents of either state. If they don‘t, there was a political choice not to, which can be changed. If there is no public transit available... well... neither are robocars, but only the former is a political choice.
I want to drive. I want to bring my cat and bring some stuff back from my dad's house. My parents just drove up here to visit me, I would like to do the same. Not take a train. Not take a plane. I want to hop in a robocar and drive to Florida. The same thing that every other person with a car can do whenever they want to. Freedom.
I have a hard time imagining how driving a car is freedom but hopping on a bus is not. In my mind a car is a liability in ways the bus is not. You have to insure your car, find parking, get a license, you cannot drive drunk, your license plate is tracked, etc. etc. vs. a bus which you can just hop in (as drunk as you want) fall a sleep or whatever and when you arrive the bus just drives away and you don’t have to think about it ever again in your life. For me that is true freedom.
Because technological freedom has, historically, vastly outperformed political choice?
I can buy a robotic car, once they're available. I am nowhere near rich enough to afford even one politician, much less enough to get public transit to happen in California.
Political choices also take time. You have to get people to vote on a budget, you have to actually build the infrastructure, etc. - even busses require bus stops and drivers and maintenance facilities.
Given that robotic cars already exist today, and are planning to expand, basically every reasonable expectation says that robotic cars will happen before politicians change tack on public transit (especially in the USA, where Trump is currently our president - he does not seem gung-ho on public transit)
Like I said, dictatorships manage to do this. Claiming that America is different is just another form of American exceptionalism.
And no, robotic cars do not exist. A very limited version of robotaxis do, but they are nowhere near ready for public rollout on all public roads for the consumer market.
(I was once legally blind, still not a fan of cars myself. Though I understand the appeal when externalities are out of the picture.)