The problem with this whole argument about Waymo being self-driving is that for the foreseeable future they will always have some kind of human oversight while the car is driving. Just like Tesla requires human oversight to use Smart Summon.
To do otherwise would cause too much liability. The public simply isn't ready for self-driving cars, and all the companies in the game with exception to Tesla are being extremely cautious. Waymo doesn't care about how technically advanced their vehicle is. They will not free the reigns on it. The fact that it's google is their biggest weakness. They'll be some major outcry when they have their first at fault accident that gets someone killed.
You do know that Waymo already announced that they're about to start doing trips without safety drivers, right? And that Waymo hasn't been part of Google since late 2016?
You're right that private ownership of level 5 autonomous vehicles doesn't really make any sense. That's why Musk says that Tesla will no longer sell cars once FSD is working.
I think that's a rather naïve way to look at the market, personally. For people in urban areas, full self driving means you don't need to own a car, but most people who live there already don't. They take an Uber/Lyft/Yellow Cab car or use public transit. For people in rural areas, there's no way in you-know-where that a self-driving service would replace personal cars, because too many people drive too far, and everybody is going into a city in the morning, and out of a city in the evening, and nobody wants to wait an extra hour because all the cars are already taking someone.
I fully expect self-driving cars to replace taxis. And for some percentage of people, they will replace personally owned cars, but only if the cost of the taxi service ends up being less than the cost of owning a car. But for a decent percentage of people, that won't be the case.
Also, there's something to be said about having a car that is actually yours. I can't imagine taking a taxi around every day, even if it were
free, because I drive around with the back of my car loaded up with musical instruments, music, laptop bag, etc. It would be a
huge hassle to have to constantly load and unload all of that stuff. At least four days a week, I'd end up having to keep the meter running for a minimum of five hours at a time just to avoid going completely nuts, and even that would still require loading and unloading everything twice on three of those days (and possibly more). Short of the car having a detachable trunk section or something, I just can't see a shared vehicle ever working for me, nor can I see myself making money by letting anyone else use my car, for the same reasons.
I think folks drastically overestimate how disruptive self-driving tech will be in terms of private car ownership. People who live in relatively dense areas where ride sharing is practical are already using it pretty heavily if they can, and people who don't or can't are not going to suddenly find that it works just because the lack of a driver makes it cost a little less. So the only people who would switch are the ones who only drive a car because they can't afford to use ride sharing. Given that approximately none of those folks are in the market for a new car anyway, I'd be amazed if self-driving taxis made more than a single-digit percentage difference in car sales.
What it will do is eliminate taxis, truck drivers, pizza delivery people, and other entire categories of service workers — ironically, mostly people who would use ride sharing but can't afford it, which, of course, is likely to make the impact even smaller.
