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I’ve been covering the robotaxi debate for a decade. I still remember a discussion Chris DeMorro and I had 12 years ago about which would end up being a bigger deal — “Tesla D” or Tesla Autopilot — and a subsequent poll. I used to be much more bullish about robotaxis, but now no longer see them as a very disruptive idea, for a few reasons. However, a comment today from a reader really helped me zero in on one key point.
First, though, let me emphasize that I do think robotaxis will take over the taxi market. Eventually, they will be good enough and cheap enough that paying a human to drive a car instead of using robotaxi software just won’t make sense. In fact, I don’t think we’re far off from this.
Additionally, I think that potentially lower costs from robotaxis and not having the limitations of human drivers will lead to robotaxis expanding this portion of the market a little bit. Robotaxis will end up eating into some portion of normal owner-driven transportation as well.
However, that is not what a lot of the robotaxi hype centers around. A lot of the robotaxi hype assumes that robotaxis will make much of the car ownership market go away, that most people (or at least many of them) will stop buying cars and start using robotaxis instead. There are a few reasons I just don’t see that happening. Let’s dive into those now.
