Robotaxi dreams are based on provable falsehood. There can never be a reduction of vehicles to ⅓ of present taxis/cars. The lies could be dispelled if people only understood the basics.
This little side trip from EVs to robotaxis is a disaster and a distraction and has nothing to do with reducing global warming or improving the environment.
Instead, we should be discussing real solutions to transport and why we are oil addicted and overly car dependent. But that is for another future discussion. First the myth has to be broken and the spell car centrism has on minds has to be undone. The answer is not more cars, any kind of car. That discussion is way too large for a single article and deserves a much longer explanation.
Maybe I’m a little confused but robo taxis generally aren’t intended (from news articles I’ve seen) to be ICE vehicles. Instead they seem to be posited as EV’s from what I have seen. Meaning they would contribute if they took the place of ICE taxis (though perhaps not in a meaningful way if this is an attempt to reduce the number of vehicles total).
I don’t really believe in the idea that EV’s will save us either because there’s definitely a human component that got us to this point with ICE vehicles and the EV’s don’t solve that problem they just mitigate some of the fallout.
I also don’t think Robo taxis are a good idea for several reasons, but mostly I’m not sure any company has made them viable for widespread use, so I struggle to understand why this is even a talking point.
I also want to make it clear that we’re unlikely to create large scale EV public transit without the R&D of EV’s, and this includes taxis.
If the argument is against self driving vehicles, that makes more sense to me given what iteration of self driving vehicles we’re looking at in the present.
I’m not trying to argue, I’m looking for someone to explain “the basics”.