The Cybercab reminds me in shape and utility of nothing so much as the original Google autonomous test car, the boob on wheels, but without the nipple of lidar. It’s a devolution to two-passenger blob, and equally useful. I was derisive of Google’s approach vs Tesla’s almost a decade ago, and I’m still of the opinion that Tesla has the right approach to autonomy across useful geographical areas instead of narrowly bounded urban areas obsessively mapped to centimeter-scale regularly by surveying cars. That Tesla’s journey has taken longer and will take longer still is somewhat a symptom of the weird challenge we have where we require autonomous cars to be perfect, but allow deeply imperfect humans to text and drive. But as a physical vehicle, the Cybercab is a devolution.

Clearly getting a family to school is not remotely something that was considered with this vehicle. No, the kids are supposed to each get their own Cybercab to go to their own schools, while the parents get their own Cybercabs to get to their jobs and Pilates classes. This is the top 20% of America’s view of utopia, where everyone in the family has their own car, even if they are too young to drive.

However, there’s one current silver lining to the USA’s requirement that everyone have their own car. 95% of the time, these cars are just sitting parked somewhere, and not congesting city streets. Cybercabs, by contrast, are always congesting city streets, even when they have no passengers as they drive to where passengers are likely to be, or drive to where they have been summoned, or drive to someplace else where they are conveniently located to be summoned. Cybercabs would be on the street almost constantly. While there would be fewer vehicles overall, they would be on the streets a much greater percentage of the time.