Understandably, we often focus on the downsides of self-driving vehicles - the loss of human driving jobs. However, that stops us from thinking about their ultimate promise. When the tech is mature and commoditized, mini-shuttles like this will be ultra-cheap to run.

They’ll also have a vast market of potential users. Furthermore, the Level 4 self-driving tech they need is already here. I suspect the future will have 10 to 100 times more public transit routes; many operated by small self-driving shuttles like this.