There is 'zero likelihood' self-driving cars will replace human drivers in any reasonable timeframe, Lyft's CEO says | Fortune

"Don't expect to see autonomous self-driving cars in widespread use anytime soon, according to Lyft CEO David Risher. The technology doesn't work yet, government regulators aren't ready, and consumers don't like them, he says. That's a surprising opinion, given that he aired it in a conversation at Web Summit in Lisbon last week, where 71,000 attendees seemed to be mostly convinced that AI will be able to solve almost any future problem."

""That will be the case for years and years and years to come," he said. The [car manufacturers] aren't entirely ready. The technology isn't entirely ready for fog or snow or heavy rain or whatever it is. People, riders aren't necessarily excited about it [and] regulators aren't necessarily enthusiastic about it in every place," he said. That's going to make the rollout of self-driving slow. Risher said he would be surprised if 10% of Lyft's business came from self-driving vehicles by 2030."

"At first glance, getting rid of all your drivers seems like an opportunity for ride-hailing apps to reduce costs while having a fleet of cars available that can respond to any call, for any ride, at any time-because driverless cars never need to sleep. But Risher points out that a fleet of self-driving cars quickly becomes an expensive asset-depreciation issue. Every night, when the human customers are asleep, the fleet will sit largely unused, its value literally rusting away."

Autonomous self-driving cars are unlikely to reach widespread use soon because core technology remains unreliable in fog, snow, heavy rain, and other conditions. Government regulators are not uniformly prepared to approve widespread deployment, and many consumers prefer humans at the wheel, dampening demand. Rollout speed will be slow and market penetration may remain low; one projection expects under 10% share of a major ride-hailing company's business by 2030. Economic benefits are weaker than assumed because vehicle purchase prices are high, the company bears maintenance, cleaning, refueling and depreciation costs, and idle fleets lose value overnight.

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