All of these maintenance issues exist with regular taxi fleets driving equivalent miles, though. The main difference is the taxi driver salary vs the cost of the self-driving tech plus some support and extra interior cameras and this should be in favor of self-driving cars. From the customer's point of view, self-driving cars might be slower but safer.
It depends on who owns, maintains, and is paying for the vehicle and license/medallion to operate.
The whole system - whether Uber/Lyft drivers who "relied on their unfamiliarity with capital depreciation calculations"[1] or traditional cabbies who, let's be honest is not a glamorous job, is tenuous at best. Cutting out the lowest cost factors and replacing them with technology and also incurring the fleet costs doesn't really seem like a great business.
