[prawn]

"A bus is possible, but if this was a viable business, it should exist already. The only difference is the cost of the driver, so the automated bus might save passengers $5/day. Is that $5/day extra cost keeping this business non-existent at the moment? I'm a little skeptical."

$5/day could be enough, especially if the parking situation changed for drivers at the other end. Take away street parking (no longer required when most cars are autonomous) near my office and I'd likely catch the bus. Have a bus that took me virtually door to door (rather than walking 3-4 blocks at each end) and I'd likely switch already.

I think lack of imagination might be one thing stopping a service like this existing now, and volume of passengers. If you wanted to start it now, you'd need coverage to justify the advertising campaign to build customers and to make it worthwhile. You'd need a fleet and then to hire and train drivers.

In the future, it will be APIs/software.

Imagine it's almost worth my while to pay $15/trip now. Then take out the driver and make it $10/trip plus pain-free bookings - I could read/work without feeling like I was being rude to the driver. Then imagine my booking app offers me $5/trip if I'm willing to car-pool, with the software automatically picking my ride-mates and most efficient pick-up and drop-off route. I'm pretty likely to do that. In dense areas and with time, manoeuvrable vans could be even more effective and the upgrade could be done with a software update.

Not to mention the bonus of taking cars off the street.

Autonomous vans on demand are going to be incredibly useful for wine tasting trips...