Don’t expect to see self-driving cars widely used anytime soon, according to Lyft CEO David Risher. The technology doesn’t work yet, government regulators aren’t ready and consumers don’t like them, he says.
It’s a surprising opinion, considering he expressed it during a conversation at the Web Summit in Lisbon last week, where the 71,000 attendees seemed overwhelmingly convinced that AI will be able to solve virtually any future problem.
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Reality will get in the way, Risher told Fortune.
“This will continue to be the case for many, many years,” he said. “You [fabricantes de carros] are not yet fully ready. The technology is not yet fully prepared to deal with fog, snow, heavy rain or any other condition. People, passengers, are not necessarily excited about it, and regulators are not necessarily excited about it everywhere,” he said.
This is expected to slow the rollout of self-driving cars. Risher said he would be surprised if 10% of Lyft’s business came from autonomous vehicles by 2030.
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He believes most people are wary of self-driving cars and prefer a human at the wheel. “Customers aren’t going to demand it. They’re just going to say, ‘I don’t want to get in a self-driving car.'”
Furthermore, the economic logic of self-driving cars is less attractive than many imagine. At first glance, eliminating all drivers seems like an opportunity for ride-hailing apps to cut costs while maintaining an available fleet that can answer any call, for any trip, at any time — because driverless cars don’t need to sleep.
But Risher points out that a fleet of self-driving cars quickly becomes an asset depreciation problem. Every night, while human customers sleep, the fleet would essentially sit idle, its value literally deteriorating. All maintenance, cleaning and fueling costs would fall on the company — not the drivers. And self-driving cars aren’t cheap. “Today, they cost maybe $250,000 to $300,000 — a very expensive product — whereas a Prius or Corolla costs maybe $30,000 or $40,000.”
Based on this, it is much more efficient for transport companies not to own cars, but rather to rent them from individual drivers on demand.
“I don’t think the idea of a driver being replaced by a robot is very likely. In fact, I think it has zero chance of happening in any reasonable timeframe,” he said.
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