You are describing a bus company ;)
"a shared fleet of cars continuously picking up and dropping off passengers within cities"
And just like existing bus companies, the self-driving ones will also require you to take a detour so that other passengers can be picked up or dropped off along the way.
So the main novelty is that you eliminate about $0.2 per minute in salary, but in exchange you now have to maintain much more complicated vehicles with much more expensive replacement parts.
Oh and have you ever considered that the same people that you hate meeting on the bus could also be combined into your ride? Except that now they are not 3 weirdos out of 80 people but 3 out of 4.
So unless this is so expensive that most people cannot afford it, it'll have the same drawbacks that rich people currently hate about taking a public bus.
I expect these companies to lead to more traffic, because afterwards you will have the regular poor-people bus and in addition the almost empty rich-people bus vehicles.
"a shared fleet of cars continuously picking up and dropping off passengers within cities"
And just like existing bus companies, the self-driving ones will also require you to take a detour so that other passengers can be picked up or dropped off along the way.
So the main novelty is that you eliminate about $0.2 per minute in salary, but in exchange you now have to maintain much more complicated vehicles with much more expensive replacement parts.
Oh and have you ever considered that the same people that you hate meeting on the bus could also be combined into your ride? Except that now they are not 3 weirdos out of 80 people but 3 out of 4.
So unless this is so expensive that most people cannot afford it, it'll have the same drawbacks that rich people currently hate about taking a public bus.
I expect these companies to lead to more traffic, because afterwards you will have the regular poor-people bus and in addition the almost empty rich-people bus vehicles.