What will it take for self-driving cars to go mainstream?
Uber CEO says ‘eventually AVs will win,’ becoming the norm.
In San Francisco, it’s commonplace to see a car driving downtown with no one in the driver’s seat, the steering wheel shifting and turning all on its own. Autonomous vehicles (AVs), one of the most notable physical manifestations of AI technology, are quickly arriving in cities across the U.S., with self-driving tech company Waymo operating fully autonomously in five cities and expecting to add two dozen more globally.
Uber, which uses AI for dynamic pricing, matching passengers with drivers, charting the best route, and more, is also expanding access to self-driving cars.
“Just like you have these private equity and private debt companies that are financing these data centers and buying NVIDIA chips, that same ecosystem is going to be buying fleets of [autonomous] cars,” said Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. “These financial owners are going to want to maximize the revenue from the car, and the way that you maximize revenue from the car is put it on the Uber ecosystem, because we’ve got more demand than anyone else.”
Robotaxis aren’t the only AVs on the road. Another self-driving vehicle company, Aurora, has introduced self-driving semi-trucks to Texas and expects to expand to the Sun Belt this year. Aurora CEO Chris Urmson and Khosrowshahi are both optimistic that autonomous vehicles will become the norm rather than the exception on the road, though they say the transition will take several decades. The immediate hurdle to the industry, they said, is public trust. At a recent Discovery Series event with Kara Swisher and Vox Media, they shared what they think it will take to make that future a reality.
Safety is the main benefit of self-driving cars
Nearly 40,000 Americans died in traffic accidents in 2024. When it comes to freight, crashes are less common but more catastrophic for those in smaller passenger vehicles.
Though there are studies and analyses that suggest AVs are safer than human drivers, autonomous vehicle crashes are highly scrutinized, and the cars still face public hesitation.
“No one ever sat back and asked how safe is safe enough for any of the vehicles that we have for any of the systems that we have,” said Johnathon Ehsani, associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “Autonomous vehicles are forcing us to kind of ask questions that have always been there.”
While public opinion research shows that safety and transparency are key considerations for trusting autonomous vehicles, Ehsani said, a third pillar is often overlooked.
“If the [autonomous] trucks or autonomous vehicles are being used for social good, we see public opinion double in terms of accepting these vehicles on the road,” he said. “The industry can advance, both through forging credibility through safety, but also through demonstrating that the social impacts are not only going to be minimizing job losses, but also serving society.”
Other benefits experts cited include:
Fuel efficiency. An Aurora report notes that autonomous trucking could improve fuel efficiency by 13-32 percent per loaded mile. “If you’re a trucking company today, that’s your third-largest expense, so that’s a big deal for you as a trucking company,” he said.
Quicker freight deliveries. Because autonomous freight trucks have 360-degree computer vision, don’t get distracted, and don’t have an hours-of-service limitation, they “can move goods almost twice as far as a person driving a truck can, without all of the negatives that come along with that person having to drive the truck,” Urmson said.
Electric vehicle investment. While many U.S. automakers have walked back plans to transition to EVs, Khosrowshahi said the rise of self-driving cars might actually help tilt the scales back toward electric cars. “The good news on AVs is that AVs are EVs,” he said. “I actually think that the EV transition in the U.S. [and] the rest of the world is going to get a big boost by AVs because I haven’t yet seen an AV that’s a gas-powered car.”
Transitioning to autonomous vehicles will take many years
Autonomous vehicles are “probably the biggest change in transportation infrastructure in a century,” Aurora’s Urmson said, and the trucking industry, which is experiencing a shortage of drivers, is essential to the U.S. economy. While he acknowledged that autonomous trucking will replace human drivers, this won’t happen for another several decades. And right now, Aurora trucks primarily drive between distribution centers, which Urmson said are the “less desirable of the truck driving jobs.”
Khosrowshahi echoed this timeline, adding that a hybrid approach of human and autonomous drivers is the current path forward, especially as AV manufacturing scales. This hybrid experience exists on the rideshare app already. Uber lets passengers choose the type of ride they’re more comfortable with, employing human drivers while making AVs more accessible simultaneously.
Ten to 15 years from now, AVs will also be a cheaper form of transportation, Khosrowshahi predicted. “Eventually AVs will win,” he said. “I think it’ll be 20, 30 years from now, but incrementally you’re going to see AVs increase, and they will become more and more part of our everyday lives.”
Navigating AV policies and regulations
Autonomous semi-trucks currently operate within existing trucking regulations, yet labor unions like the Teamsters are advocating for specific AV policies, such as a national regulatory standard that would require a person inside all autonomous commercial vehicles. Despite union pushback, recent regulatory efforts seem poised to pave the way for more autonomous trucking. California regulators have proposed revised rules that would lift the state’s ban on self-driving trucks and allow them to eventually operate on public highways. There’s also proposed federal legislation—such as Rep. Vince Fong’s, R-Calif., AMERICA DRIVES Act—to help scale autonomous trucking.
Universities can also help advance the “broader societal agenda of the public good” that can come from self-driving technology, Ehsani said. Drawing from aviation standards, universities can help stand up a system through which companies share crash data to help the AV industry improve safety.