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veen  ·  2324 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Why driverless cars will be the next battlefield in the culture war

It is not at all clear cut, in my opinion, which one of those vehicle sizes is better. Even if efficiency will be the driving force (which I doubt as well) you have to look at the whole picture. Sure, a large bus is more efficient per passenger-mile driven in terms of fuel...but how are you going to get all 20 people in there? Because the concept of specific stop locations might evaporate when confronted with AVs. Transfers are systematically loathed by passengers - people would rather sit 15 minutes in a vehicle than have a 5 minute transfer. I'm certain people will pick 'Uber but personless' over 'PT but personless' any time of day. And that kind of service is much more efficient when you have lots of smaller vehicles.

Besides, when deciding on fleet size and characteristics, the kind of service provided is usually the focus of the decision making. Environmental and maintenance concerns come in once it's decided what kind of service will be provided, because those two depend so much on the service. For example, 90% of all maintenance on Dutch trains is done between 11pm and 6am purely to keep as much rolling stock going as possible. Cleaning the trains is done in small bursts throughout the day when trains are waiting on the platform anyways. Something similar goes for aircraft IIRC.

I think AV adoption will start out as a fringe thing, but I'm guessing that it will be adopted faster than smartphones were. At some point the majority of people will realize the utility and it will go mainstream, NVH be damned. I mean, did the customer experience really hold air travel back? Does the misery of Economy class do that now?