The point of autonomous electric vehicles isn't to revolutionize personal transportation. Everyone's not just sitting around trying to re-think how we can improve our lives as aggressively as possible.
As radical as it is removing a driver in terms of what it means for people's economic relationship to cars and for business operations it's still an incremental adjustment in human behaviour...for regular people. That's how technology gets adopted in the real world.
You don't need to think hard and long about why ebikes are still going to be limited to downtown-living urbanites and recreational casual riders [1]. Basically in an ideal world it will significantly expanding the existing niche biking population in American cities, taking existing riders further/long (ramping up average usage) and introducing tons of new riders to the streets. But still not enough to significantly take cars off roads in a macro-context, especially considering how many people live in suburbs or city neighbourhoods which are glorified suburbs.
[1] I'm just trying to imagine 95% of my family members even getting on an e-bike for recreation let alone as a serious alternative to using a car.
As radical as it is removing a driver in terms of what it means for people's economic relationship to cars and for business operations it's still an incremental adjustment in human behaviour...for regular people. That's how technology gets adopted in the real world.
You don't need to think hard and long about why ebikes are still going to be limited to downtown-living urbanites and recreational casual riders [1]. Basically in an ideal world it will significantly expanding the existing niche biking population in American cities, taking existing riders further/long (ramping up average usage) and introducing tons of new riders to the streets. But still not enough to significantly take cars off roads in a macro-context, especially considering how many people live in suburbs or city neighbourhoods which are glorified suburbs.
[1] I'm just trying to imagine 95% of my family members even getting on an e-bike for recreation let alone as a serious alternative to using a car.