In 1897, you could hop in a commercial electric taxi in London. Alas, Londoners still have many gasoline cars on the road.
Availability and mass adoption are two very entirely different things.
The time in which people take most commutes by any kind of car is: today... 51% of people commute by car currently. That took 136 years.
'most of the time' for 'most people' is quite a high bar. That's a lot of travel, for about 4 billion people. A few people in Phoenix taking one after a night at the bar doesn't even to begin to scratch that surface.
We're very much still at the 'Carl Benz demoing his horseless carriage' stage of self-driving cars.
IF, and this is a big if - self driving cars prove safer than human drivers in all conditions - governments will mandate it in all new cars and in 12 more years they will be the majority, and a few more years and governments will ban everything else (if not directly insurance via high rates).
However right now they are not ready for that. They don't work in all conditions and we don't have unbiased safety studies.
For varying definitions of “governments” and “will”. You’re looking at this from a very western perspective.
For example, airbags have proven to drastically increase safety, yet almost a half-century later they’re still not required by many countries across 2 and a half continents. Governments only require safety equipment as far as their population can afford it.
Availability and mass adoption are two very entirely different things.
The time in which people take most commutes by any kind of car is: today... 51% of people commute by car currently. That took 136 years.
'most of the time' for 'most people' is quite a high bar. That's a lot of travel, for about 4 billion people. A few people in Phoenix taking one after a night at the bar doesn't even to begin to scratch that surface.
We're very much still at the 'Carl Benz demoing his horseless carriage' stage of self-driving cars.