Comment by jimmytidey

I think non-human payloads make more sense for virtually every kind of innovation:

-- Radically reduced safety margins, if the vehicle itself contains no humans.

-- You can often move cargo at any time of day or night, and therefore do a much more sophisticated job of collaboratively load-levelling traffic.

-- Doesn't matter how uncomfortable a non-human payload is with in reason. Acceleration, cornering, waiting, daylight, motion sickness are all constraints that are eased for cargo.

-- It would be nice if you can move freight anywhere, but even if you can only serve a very limited network its still useful - say between fixed points in major cities. By contrast, a car that can't go almost everywhere is very severely limited.

Example: in major cities, all the freight moves in lorries, which are extremely dangerous and polluting. Meanwhile, the humans are packed into trains in underground tunnels. Surely freight should be moving in autonomous underground trains and the humans enjoying lorry free surface travel?