Google Cars Self-Drive To Walmart Supermarket in Trial (bbc.com)

Google's sister-company Waymo has announced a trial in which its self-driving cars will ferry shoppers to and from a nearby Walmart store to pick up their groceries. From a report: For now, the pilot is being restricted to 400-plus members of its early rider programme in Phoenix, Arizona. However, it indicates how the tech giant thinks the autonomous vehicles could be deployed if and when they exit the experimental stage. One expert said cost would be key. The only word on pricing so far is a promise to offer participants discounts when they order goods via Walmart's Online Grocery Pickup service as part of the deal. "If this is rolled out properly you would expect there to be a reasonably high threshold in terms of the price and spend commitment to justify the service," commented Julie Palmer, a retail expert at the consultancy Begbies Traynor. "You'd expect it to be limited to shoppers buying higher value items."

Comments

More rental economy stuff

[TheCastro1689]

Every company is offering this more and more to us. Don't buy a car, call one for temporary use or lease it monthly. Don't own a phone, lease it. Leasing is coming back, and it allows companies to keep paying less since you don't need as much money to lease versus own. I will just keep buying used cars, I owned a new one once. Not worth it.

Re:More rental economy stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Every company is offering this more and more to us. Don't buy a car, call one for temporary use or lease it monthly. Don't own a phone, lease it. Leasing is coming back, and it allows companies to keep paying less since you don't need as much money to lease versus own. I will just keep buying used cars, I owned a new one once. Not worth it.

Why is it so important to your brain to need to "own" something? "owning" is a pure fantasy that exists only in human heads, it literally does not mean anything.

Re:More rental economy stuff

[DogDude]

It literally does mean something, AC. But go ahead and keep renting everything. I'm more than happy to rent my stuff to people like you. It makes me a lot of money.

Re:More rental economy stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

It literally does mean something, AC. But go ahead and keep renting everything. I'm more than happy to rent my stuff to people like you. It makes me a lot of money.

you just said you do what's cheapest, so it's low price you want, not ownership

Re:More rental economy stuff

[javaman235]

There's a lot of people who do nothing, except rent what they own out to people. It's possible to buy homes by getting financing and having renters pay off your mortgage. These people suck 1/3rd the paychecks of working renters, it's iffy.

That does not apply here because cars don't maintain value, and the efficiency of sharing them should lead to low prices. For someone living the basic life needing work commute and outings in urban areas, self driving cars are a no brainier. If you don't see this you haven't live in enough of a city to understand parking costs.

If self driving cars take off, invest in beer. We will be a drunker society I garantee it.

Re:More rental economy stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

If it appreciates, buy it. If it depreciates, rent it.

Re:More rental economy stuff

[rnturn]

It doesn't make a lot of sense to be buying a new car every couple of years as the auto industry expects you to. We own two cars: a 12 year old and a 17 year old---both only recently begun showing some signs of rust. (That 17yo car replaced one we'd had for 16 years.) They've long been paid for and, despite what others tell you, it doesn't cost a fortune in repairs. Of course, things are going to wear out--brakes, tires, etc.--but anything you keep for longer than the warranty period is likely to require occasional maintenance. The worst part of owning a car is taking it into the dealer for oil changes, brake replacement, etc. and having to fend off the phone calls from the salescritters trying to get us to take on monthly car payments again.

Re:More rental economy stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

having to fend off the phone calls from the salescritters trying to get us to take on monthly car payments again.

what an ordeal for you, we all take pity on your hardships

Re:More rental economy stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

'Self driving cars' will be a disaster because the technology is not truly capable of being even as good as a human driver under ALL circumstances and will inevitably kill people so there will be ZERO 'benefit' to it, just more expensive nonsense that only benefits corporations and governments because by default they will be able to take control of your vehicle and drive it remotely and you will have ZERO ability to override it or control it yourself. You're stupid if you fall for this.

Re:More rental economy stuff

[Rick Schumann]

Who the fuck buys a new car 'every couple years'? Are you rich? Or are you dumb? Properly maintained a modern car should last you AT LEAST 10 years. If it doesn't then you're clearly not doing it right.

Re:More rental economy stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Many people think of cars as transportation fashion accessories. Can't have one that's out of style!
So long as they're happy with the constant payments they're OK with it.

These people are the market for "Cars as a service."

Out family has two cars, my heavily modified 1993 240SX and the wife's 2017 Forester. The Forester replaced her 2001 Maxima. The Maxima and Forester were bought new. I figure a new car for the wife every 15 years is adequate.

Re:More rental economy stuff

[dgatwood]

That's the sort of terrible advice that keeps poor people poor. In the real world, depreciation is always built into the cost of renting or leasing something. If that new car loses half its value over the three-year lease, you can bet your backside that the lease more than covers the loss of value plus the interest that the actual owner loses on the cost of building the car and the opportunity cost from not selling the car outright, and that the actual owner (the car company) still comes out ahead.

Thus, in practice, owning is always less expensive than renting. Anyone who says otherwise is kidding him/herself. And that's why you should always buy, rather than rent or lease. The only possible exception is if there is some compelling reason to always have a car that is less than a certain number of years old, such as carpool lane stickers that can only be renewed for a certain number of years. Even then, in practice, it will still cost you considerably more money to lease than to buy it outright and sell it in three years, but it is less hassle, and for some people, that might be worth the extra few thousand dollars.

And the same will be true of self-driving taxi services. The taxi fleet companies will have to pay for the cost of upkeep and make a profit. Because of that profit margin, the only way such a service could possibly be cheaper than owning a car would be if you live in an environment where unused cars decay significantly over time, e.g. road salt territory. In those areas, driving a car all day long until it drops might save enough money over driving a car less frequently to make a pay-per-use fleet cheaper than owning. This is, however, a fairly unusual situation, as it does not apply very far south of Michigan.

Also, cars that you own have a significant advantage over pay-per-use cars, in that you can keep things in the car. Whether it is minor stuff like hand sanitizer and sunglasses or major stuff like your laptop bag, cars have a lot of stuff in them that belongs to the owner. In a pay-per-use car service, you would either have to carry all of that with you or you won't have it with you. This makes pay-per-use cars okay for people who rarely use cars, but completely unsuitable for people who practically live out of their cars. And obviously, there's a broad spectrum of people between those two extremes for whom it might or might not work.

So yes, there are good reasons to own something. Whether those reasons matter to you is entirely dependent on how you use your car.

Re:More rental economy stuff

[Rick Schumann]

Many people think of cars as transportation fashion accessories. Can't have one that's out of style!

Okay, I'll buy that explanation, even though the mindset is foreign and frivolous to me.

These people are the market for "Cars as a service."

But, as I do somewhat understand the concept of 'status symbols' even to the point of 'conspicuous consumption', it's only really valid if you own something; just 'renting' or 'borrowing' it is cheating and identifies you as a poseur; stet?

Re:More rental economy stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you seen Book by Cadillac?
https://www.bookbycadillac.com/

Pay a ludicrous amount per month, get any car they have - maintenance and insurance included. You can swap vehicles up to 18 times a year.

Re:More rental economy stuff

[drew_kime]

I mostly agree with you, except this point:

And the same will be true of self-driving taxi services. The taxi fleet companies will have to pay for the cost of upkeep and make a profit. Because of that profit margin, the only way such a service could possibly be cheaper than owning a car would be if you live in an environment where unused cars decay significantly over time, e.g. road salt territory. In those areas, driving a car all day long until it drops might save enough money over driving a car less frequently to make a pay-per-use fleet cheaper than owning

I can get a monthly pass for the local transit system for $95. I could pay that for 10 years and it would be just over $11k, which isn't enough to buy a Nissan Versa, the current cheapest new car you can buy in the U.S. I could rent a lot of vehicles for weekend trips and vacations for what I'm saving.

This is where someone points out that a transit pass isn't the same as taking a taxi. If it goes where I want, when I want, yes it is. And no, that's not true for me, which is why I have a car. But it's true for lots of people.

Re:More rental economy stuff

[Rick Schumann]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:More rental economy stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. Not for me.

Re:More rental economy stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Thus, in practice, owning is always less expensive than renting.

thus in practice, the home team ALWAYS wins the basketball game

Re:More rental economy stuff

[mysidia]

Owning something actually means you hold the RIGHT to the thing Free and Clear with freedom from anyone else's claims. Pay for the car in cash, and it lasts 13+ years. A leased or new car bought instead --- it would have been 10x the cumulative expenses and designed to fail and become obsolete much sooner due to the more complicated key systems and cheaper less-durable parts manufacturers have been lately using in key vehicle systems.

Re:More rental economy stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider factories instead of cars. If you own a factory but only need the product it produces enough to utilize it 12% of the time and the rest of the time it sits idle because only you consume the product it produces while someone else owns an identical factory but sells it's output to the general public at a profit but is able to keep his factory running 70% of the time are the products you produced for yourself with the factory you owned *always* cheaper than those produced by someone who is making a profit off selling them? People spend less than 3 hours driving per day on average. A self driving car could operate about 17 hours a day. Whatever your fixed cost for owning the car is per day that is amortized over six times as many driving hours for a self driving taxi. They could conceivably charge you less than it costs you to make the same trip if you own your own car and still make a profit. Once you realize that a car is a capital expenditure and that the personal automobile has a very low capacity factor for that capital expenditure it's clear that society could get by with a lot fewer cars and therefore the per-capita cost of cars in general could be a lot lower. If you practically live out of your car then by all means own it. If you could make extra money by taking your personal belongings out of it and setting it to self-driving taxi mode, however, would you? If you owned the factory with 12% utilization you'd be smart to produce more than you need and sell the excess on the market.

Re:More rental economy stuff

[dgatwood]

I can get a monthly pass for the local transit system for $95. I could pay that for 10 years and it would be just over $11k, which isn't enough to buy a Nissan Versa, the current cheapest new car you can buy in the U.S. I could rent a lot of vehicles for weekend trips and vacations for what I'm saving.

You're missing the reason that the transit pass is cheap: each trip of a bus or subway carries double-digit numbers of people. The math doesn't work when you're talking about a taxi-like vehicle that carries just you, unless you treat it like a shuttle that makes multiple stops and picks up multiple unrelated people (and even then, it doesn't necessarily save that much).

For the most part, the cost of operating a vehicle is per-mile, not per year. The minimum cost-per-mile for any pay-per-use vehicle is the same as the cost-per-mile for an otherwise identical private vehicle. The maximum is far worse, because people tend not to take care of vehicles that they don't own, which means they are likely to require a lot more maintenance to fix interior damage.

Only the per-year costs go down with a pay-per-use fleet. If you drive less than 5,000 miles a year (unusually low), your driving habits might cost you an extra thirty bucks on oil changes or so per year, if we assume an ICE car. You also have the cost of maintaining the paint job and washing the car every so often. Either way, these things are all lost in the noise cost-wise, even when you add them all up, when compared against the per-mile costs unless you have to rent a parking space.

There is simply no universe in which a pay-per-use car can feasibly be cheaper than owning a car unless you are in some urban hell where they charge you a monthly rental fee for your parking space (and even in that case, it isn't technically the car, per se, that is costing you more, but rather parking it). If you're in that sort of location, you probably have mass transit sufficient to take care of your transportation needs.

For those people, the combination of mass transit with occasional use of a pay-per-use car can be cheaper than the cost of buying a car. But in those cases, it is the ultra-low cost of mass transit that is bringing the cost down, not the cost of the pay-per-use car, which will still be more expensive than owning a car, assuming again that you don't a rent a parking space by the month, and assuming that your car does not rust out before it stops working.

For everyone not in such a high-density area, many people will still probably decide that the convenience of not having to maintain a vehicle outweighs the cost difference, assuming that cost difference is relatively small. And that's a perfectly reasonable choice for many people. It is not, however, a cost-based decision, and it definitely will not be cheaper, just not exorbitantly more expensive as it is with human-driven taxis.

Re:More rental economy stuff

[dgatwood]

Whatever your fixed cost for owning the car is per day that is amortized over six times as many driving hours for a self driving taxi.

I'm not saying that there isn't a cost savings from that amortization; I'm saying that I would expect it to be smaller than the profit margin that anyone operating a vehicle fleet would expect as their ROI. Most of a car's costs are per-mile, not per-year, because a well-built car will still be running in three decades, assuming you still want to drive it.

If you could make extra money by taking your personal belongings out of it and setting it to self-driving taxi mode, however, would you?

Probably not, because I've seen how people treat cars that they don't own. :-)

Re:More rental economy stuff

[fluffernutter]

That's a pretty good transit system if it goes where you want when you want. Most buses I have to walk 20 minutes to get to a stop (not where I want) and each route comes around only around every 30-40 minutes (not when I want).

Re:More rental economy stuff

[fluffernutter]

On the contrary, buying into a fleet of self driving cars is a terrible idea if you use it in prime time. A fleet will need to have enough cars for everyone to go into work in the morning and come back in the afternoon and this will happen at pretty much the same time. You'll be paying for that fleet to be at least 50% idle the remainder of the day. Likewise on nice weekends when people want to go to the beach or to the park, etc. Normally when we do a weekend trip we pack a lot of optional things and leave them in the vehicle until we need them. That's also out the window if you are borrowing someone else's car.

Re:More rental economy stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would I want to have the same car for 10 years? Technology changes. I want new hybrid technology, safety features, style and comfort in my car. I buy a new one about every 5 years with cash minus the trade-in from the 5 yr old model. I'm not rich just middle class making $107-$124k a year.

Re:More rental economy stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

In my case, they haven't made a car I want in 20 years for a price I can afford.
I fully understand that I'm waaaay off to the side of the bell curve. I want small, light, powerful, rear wheel drive, manual transmission, and no safety nannies. I also don't like convertibles so the Miata is right out. A BRZ with a good motor would do, but they don't put one in it and I'm not going to buy a new car just to swap the motor.

Re:More rental economy stuff

[drew_kime]

You're missing the reason that the transit pass is cheap: each trip of a bus or subway carries double-digit numbers of people. The math doesn't work when you're talking about a taxi-like vehicle that carries just you

I'm not missing that at all. My point is that I don't care about the per-mile cost of owning a car vs. using a taxi-like vehicle. What I care about is the total cost of transportation.

For two years I lived around the corner from a train station that dropped off across the street from my office. My next job, the bus stop was even closer to my house and that also dropped me across the street from my (new) office. I put less than a thousand miles on my car. The only reason I kept it was it was already paid off.

Re:More rental economy stuff

[TheCastro1689]

Liver cirrhosis is on the rise with millennials so you might not be far off.

Trial in Case of Self-Driving Google Cars

[Anonymous Coward]

That headline would have garnered more clicks. msmash is not a master at baiting.

Old People

[rsilvergun]

Az is filled with old people flush with cash because they retired before the economy went to crap. A lot of them can no longer drive. I could see this service being desirable to them even at a high price, if only to get out of the house. You can't go very far in Az if you can't drive. There's just about zero public transportation. The cities were all built in the age of the automobile.

Walmart?

[Anonymous Coward]

How fat were the passengers?

Loss leader

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

The more efficient thing to do would be to take the groceries to the people. The fact that they are bringing people to the store instead suggests this is a classic loss-leader strategy: get the marks into the store so they impulse-buy beyond their list.

Re:Loss leader

[Anonymous Coward]

The more efficient thing to do would be to take the groceries to the people. .

yes please bring the entire produce department to my house so I can pick the vegetables I want, just like when I go to the store.

Re: Loss leader

[Anonymous Coward]

It would be more efficient because the delivery vehicles would not need to be set up to carry people. However, when you do online groceries at Wal Mart, you never leave your car. You pull into a special parking area and your groceries are brought out and loaded for you.

Re: Loss leader

[dgatwood]

From an efficiency perspective, it would make more sense to partition the car with cloth dividers into five areas, then load up the groceries for up to five customers, then self-drive the car to each of their houses, open up the door where that customer's stuff is stored, and let the customer unload before driving to the next customer's house, and so on, until all of the groceries are delivered.

(Discussions of the shortest path problem are, of course, expected, along with discussions of whether frozen food should be delivered first.)

But maybe there's some other goal, like getting people used to riding in self-driving cars. :-)

Re: Loss leader

[_Sharp'r_]

Yeah, there isn't much actual point in driving someone to the store so they can watch their groceries be loaded into the trunk and then be driven home again. Seems like an odd combination. "Whee, let's go for a pointless car ride instead of replacing an actually needed ride!"

The car should just be picking up the groceries for them and notifying them when it's time to walk to the curb outside their house and pull them out of the car.

Google and Walmart? Epic confluence of evil!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised Satan himself wasn't there to witness his spawn.

Walmart Supermarket?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is outrageous! It's unfair!

Reading between the lines

[SuperKendall]

You'd expect it to be limited to shoppers buying higher value items

I know what this means folks...

Forced purchase of organic produce for the elderly.

Not bunch different that IRS jail scams in my book.

Re:Reading between the lines

[dgatwood]

Forced purchase of organic produce for the elderly.

Maybe you're confusing Waymo/Wal-Mart with Amazon/Whole Foods? :-D

Re:Reading between the lines

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, people buying high value items usually (a) shop at Walmart, and (b) need a ride. Nice solution.

Next up

[Trailer Trash]

Next, they'll make the car be able to scream at the kids in the back seat and possibly even beat them.

Re:Next up

[pr0fessor]

Don't make me put you in a time out!
The seat flips backwards and the kid slides into the trunk.

When my kids where young and we went on long trips the kids would argue constantly. My wife would make me drive since I was much better at ignoring them and so she could have a hand free.

additional project goals

[nimbius]

Walmart is all well and good, but the full simulation and execution of the experience is also well within the scope of this project. Including:
1. Driving to a walmart at 4 AM and buying 10lbs of bubba burgers because thats just what dinner counts as now that you're married.
2. careening through 40 acres of empty parking lot at twice the posted speed limit because this is private property and any lane marking is merely a suggestion
3. Furiously trying to work a full size trampoline, basket ball hoop, or swing set into your car on a scorching august day because we cant do Disney this year and this will shut the goddamn kids up for a few weeks.
4. Swinging around the back of a walmart at 5 PM at four times the speed limit, dodging loading bays and trucks, to pick up a little caesar hot and ready because walmarts frozen pizzas take too long.
5. Mindlessly idling a large SUV in the fire lane over a period of hours because your wife had to get some last minute bullshit for the pasta salad tomorrow and you didnt want to get dressed.
6. Trying to avoid rolling over some weird noodle-chicken-cream whats-it in the parking spot you picked thats easily been there for 3 days, but inevitably just slowly rolling through it, grinding it into your tires where the smell will linger for a month.

I agree!

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree wholeheartedly. Just a note: I am a flaming faggot, and this idea is even gayer than me.

It doesn't get much gayer than this.

To *Walmart*?

[hey!]

I guess that's what happens when you take "Don't be evil" out of your code of conduct.

rent a car places make a lot of damage scams

[Anonymous Coward]

rent a car places make a lot of damage scams

Neo-Feudalism

[nickmalthus]

US laws are based on property rights and as we have seen with recent Supreme Court decisions corporate persons are superior to natural individuals in their eyes.

Cloud based services like music and video game services ensure content control is centrally retained and subscribers have no ownership rights. Pay the subscription fee or lose access. If the Cloud provider goes out of business all assets are lost.

The repeal of Net Neutrality means corporations can censor or discriminate communications at their whim. Freedom of Speech need not apply.

Now with autonomous vehicles the freedom of movement is under assault. Autonomous vehicle companies are lobbying together to ban private cars in cities..

In a corporatocracy individuals don't have inalienable rights, only terms of service where any grievances are handled in forced arbitration.

Re:Neo-Feudalism

[Kjella]

That ship sailed looooooooong ago when they decided software is licensed, not sold. Honestly, anything that looks like a one-time payment for indefinite and unlimited use of a software product should have been considered a sale, if it walks and talks like a duck it's a duck. That was the wedge that let them redefine everything digital as licensed. It wouldn't stop the rental model like you had Blockbuster and GameStop with physical products but then owning something would mean something. If buying a car was like "buying" a game on Steam it'd be a indefinite lease subject to [car company]'s terms and conditions.

I think you misunderstand what Organic means...

[SuperKendall]

Maybe you're confusing Waymo/Wal-Mart with Amazon/Whole Foods? :-D

Why would Walmart of all companies give up the huge margin boost for substandard products that the word "Organic" brings?

Re:I think you misunderstand what Organic means...

[dgatwood]

I'm not saying they would, just that they aren't really known for having lots of organic food. :-)

Re:I think you misunderstand what Organic means...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would I want to buy food with chemical residue on it when I can buy food without chemical residue on it?

Old People

[PPH]

Where I live, they could ferry the geezers from the senior center to Costco. Where they can wander the aisles for a few hours and eat from the free sample carts. It cheaper then actually having to feed them at the nursing home.

Send car without person!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Walmart's Online Grocery Pickup service" Since Walmart items were ordered online, why not have empty vehicle report to Walmart, order placed into car by person/machine, and car self-drive to person's residence (or desired place), where customer removed items from vehicle.

No need for customer to actually travel to Walmart, unless they want to encourage additional impulse buys or shopping. I'd use that service! Delivery service without having to deal with the delivery person.

Re:Ethnic

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't know President Trump posted on /. Welcome Supreme Overlord of America! When are you having your military parade?

P.S. While you are still here, would it be possible to implement some more tariffs? They are working fantastic so far!!! Great work Dotus. :)

Self driving

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong way to use call in, app web your order then send the car no rider to get the grocery.
Walmart employee put the bags in the car.
You get them when it pulls in front of the house apt or curb.

I dont want to have to ride with it.

I see a use case for certain demographics

[morethanapapercert]

I can see a couple of valid use cases that can help drive early adoption of this sort of thing. And of course, like any new technology or process, there are pros and cons.

The first use case is senior citizens. Lets not forget that we're dealing with a major demographic shift here as the baby boomers are now edging into retirement age. Agnes lives in a retirement community and is now old enough to feel insecure behind the wheel (dear old Arthur always drove when he was alive anyway so...). Plus, being on a fixed income, being able to call for a ride when she needs to go shopping instead of owning and maintaining a car seems a lot safer and cheaper. (among other things, Agnes is likely to feel uneasy about car maintenance since Arthur always handled that as well and she fears being ripped off or sudden unexpected and expensive repair bills) While a self driving car is likely to be cheaper than a taxi, the downside is that while she might have a bag boy help load the car at the store, she won't have a cabbie to help her unload back home.

The second use case I can foresee is people living in dense urban areas, especially areas where the market value of the parking spot associated with your house, apartment or condo approaches the value of the residence itself. As with Agnes; for Betty self driving car services offer a way to avoid the headaches of car ownership while offering more flexibility than public transit. The cost difference between human driven taxis and ride hailing services vs an autonomous vehicle will matter to her as well, but the need for human assistance at either end won't be as important.

The last use case I can see would be for shuttling kids around. (not car seat sized mind you). In my area, there are a handful of families who send their kids to school by cab because either they are not on a school bus route or they are deemed to be too close to the school to be entitled to bus service yet feel they are too far for their kids to walk unaccompanied. Autonomous cars would be cheaper and possibly more responsive to the surge demand loads of that practice. But for this use case to succeed, there would need to be some mechanism whereby parents can be assured the kids will end up at that school and not change the destination once they are onboard. A cabbie knows to disallow any changes to the destination and can be expected to remind Junior to not forget his or her backpack in the car.

The biggest downside I can see is my cynical expectation that early players in this market are going to subsidize their costs by allying with major retailers and marketing companies. e.g. I can see Wal-mart being pleased to offer free or dirt cheap autonomous transport to seniors via a partnership with Waymo. The catch of course being that you can only go to Walmart and back. And/Or an autonomous ride provider harvesting all the details of their passengers itinerary along with the credit card data the passengers have to provide and selling access to this data to the already too invasive marketing industry. I think it is patently obvious that marketing data definitively tied to a credit card is more valuable than marketing data associated with an IP or email address.

Re:I see a use case for certain demographics

[swillden]

The last use case I can see would be for shuttling kids around.

Yes, but don't think school, think karate class, soccer practice, clarinet lessons, dance class, going to friends houses, trips to the mall, etc., etc.

Parents spend a huge amount of time shuttling their kids to various activities. Giving the kid a Waymo app instead will be a big win for them, and the kids will appreciate their new mobility as well. Though I expect kids to stop caring about getting a driver's license.

Re:I see a use case for certain demographics

[morethanapapercert]

Those examples you mention are just more examples of shuttling kids around though aren't they? I did think of such extra-curricular activities, but for the sake of simplicity, I used school in my post because it is the most common example.

One aspect I thought of after posting my original post was the perceived safety of the kids in an autonomous vehicle. Right or wrong, there is a perception of putting kids at risk of encountering nefarious individuals (primarily sex offenders) when using any form of public transport. I think the local transit system is perceived as safest while the kids are on board, because there is a driver, with a known route he can't deviate from and usually other passengers to act as witnesses. (there is of course the usual risk between bus stop and door of the destination, but that window of opportunity is pretty small)

Next safest would be official taxis, because cabbies have to have a criminal background check and in most places have to have a cab specific license. And there is always a dispatcher who knows which cabbie got assigned to which fare. Official taxis are clearly marked with a distinctive livery paint job, roof light, trunk trouble light and hack license riveted to the trunk. Ride sharing apps like Uber and Lyft don't feel as safe because the drivers may get checked, but not by your local police dept, The vehicles are basically unmarked with just an easily forged sticker indicating which service they work with. I honestly don't know if taxi drivers are any safer than Uber or Lyft drivers in terms of assaulting the passengers. But given the comparative novelty of ride sharing, any misbehaviour by the drivers often gets national level news coverage, so the public perception of the relative risk is skewed.

The only thing that is likely to offset the perceived safety for the kids in autonomous vehicles vs driven vehicles is if the whole class of autonomous vehicles gets hit with a couple of big, splashy accidents that a human driver could have easily avoided. (it won't matter if the autonomous cars have a better record over all, or never make the type of mistake a human driver would.)