Mostly the people who think taxi services will reduce ownership have no idea of the economics
I know nothing about Taxi services
you are welcome to enlighten me, my presumption is:
The most expensive element, currently, is the Driver. Uber
et al seek to mitigate that cost by taking multiple fares, or encouraging private drivers to pick up some (modest) fare paying passengers on their journey e.g. to work
The other major cost is the Matching of Car and Customer - the Dispatcher - taking calls and finding where their cars are and then getting someone to go to the pick up. With software apps that has already started to be a different ball game - all the vehicle locations are know, and the location of the person wanting the ride, and with AVs the vehicles will be moved close to locations where need is predicted - maybe that already happens with Uber; I've always been surprised, over the years, that when I arrive at the local station there are loads of Taxi drivers parked there (average pickup wait must be 30 minutes or more), reading a paper, drinking a coffee ... huge static-cost of Driver wages (sure, the vehicle couldn't be doing anything, as clearly more supply-than-demand at that time, but AV removes the overhead cost of Driver, and thus the cost of ride comes down and more people find it affordable)
No wonder the existing Taxi companies hate Uber, its hugely more efficient at matching a Ride with a Rider, and thus reducing Ride-cost
Night fares: currently more expensive because of, again, the Driver - antisocial hours. AVs won't care about that.
Whether people - who are currently used to having their own car, getting into their own mess, or "no mess", or just having their "stuff" in the car with them - will switch to no-car and ride-hailing ... I have no idea. The only "junK" that we have in our cars is a pen or two, some tissues, an umbrella and some reusable shopping bags - I could manage my life without always having them available for unexpected Colds, Shopping and Rain ...
I live in the countryside and there a big problem of transportation for the elderly. The small villages that have bus services are infrequent & inconvenient, many villages have no public transport, so the elderly retain a driving license - long past when they should be driving. Sure, buying an AV solves that, but I reckon that there are a high percentage of such elderly drivers, on pensions / reduced incomes, who would find an AV Taxi more affordable than ownership.
Personally I think that AV Minibuses, rather than Cars which can only take a couple of passengers, doing on-demand pickups, particularly in rural areas, are a more useful solution than personal-taxi vehicles. i.e replace conventional, large, busses with smaller mini-vans, with on-demand routing. Rather than fitting your journey to the, relatively useless, bus timetable instead "book" a ride, and let the routing software figure out the best mix of vehicles to get you to your destination.
The biggest threat that autonomous cars poses is to mass transit, not private car ownership.
I agree that mass transit will be made much better, none of that "Sorry, several of our drivers didn't show up today, we're running a reduced service" ... but ... if mass transit becomes more convenient and cheaper then individual vehicle ownership can reduce.
people arguing for taxis to beat private cars are like people arguing for pay phones to beat cell phones.
Cost of cell phone relative to average income compared to the cost of both buying a car, and owning it - fuel, service, insurance, etc. - are two hugely different things
