Show notes
Self-driving cars will transform urban economies
A robotaxi boom is coming. The impacts might be broader than you expect
Nov 27th 2025|San Francisco|6 min read
Urban Economies reflect how their residents get around. And before long, that will start to change—more dramatically than at any time since the automobile was invented over a century ago. The robotaxis now autonomously shuttling passengers around the Bay Area or Los Angeles may look like ordinary cars, perhaps with a few ungainly sensors, but as they spread and develop, they will operate under different constraints to human-driven ones, and accordingly reshape cities.
Over the next year, robotaxis will become** increasingly** difficult to ignore. Waymo, Google’s offering, plans to expand to cities including Miami and Washington. London will mark the company’s first international expansion and put it in direct competition with Uber, which is also set to launch a self-driving offering in the city. San Francisco’s experience suggests that public and regulatory resistance—a formidable force in many cities—can be overcome. A thin majority of residents opposed robotaxis in 2023 when Waymos hit the streets. Today two-thirds are in favour.
Pioneer cities offer a glimpse of changes to be expected elsewhere. Road safety ought to improve: Waymos are involved in ten times fewer serious crashes than an average human driver. So far, at least, in San Francisco there have not been job losses among cab or rideshare drivers. The cars operate at the top end of the market. A trip with a Waymo costs roughly a third more than a ride-hailing service on average, reflecting the swish Jaguar cars the firm uses and research spending that must be recouped. Despite the cost of a ride, robotaxis’ market share is rising fast .
This is just the start. Robotaxis are losing money at present, but they ought to become much cheaper. The most important fact about them is also the most obvious: no one is at the wheel. That makes their economics entirely different to either regular taxis or cars. Unlike taxis, per-trip costs can be low. A rider no longer needs to buy a driver’s time at a high enough wage to make it worth their while. Although robotaxis still need to be charged, maintained, cleaned and so on, doing so is far cheaper. Unlike regular cars, robotaxis do not sit idle for most of the day, meaning their main cost—the investment to build them—can be spread across many more journeys. Such costs will also come down once fleets begin to be built in bulk. Carmakers will be able to fiddle with the shape of cars that no longer need to accommodate a driver. Tesla, Elon Musk’s firm, is trying to work out how to just use cameras rather than more expensive lidar sensors.
Further down the road
Thus the economics of owning a car, even an autonomous one, will be altered. In the countryside, which may lack the population density to sustain a robotaxi network, things will probably not be too different. Yet car ownership could lose appeal for many city- and suburb-dwellers. The average American household **allocates **15% of its spending to vehicle ownership. For anyone who is not a ferocious gearhead, drastically reducing this would be tempting.
A world of cheap urban transportation is alluring. But it could also cause a real problem: horrific traffic jams. Congestion is** a classic economic externality.** The cost of any single car’s contribution to a jam is not borne entirely by its occupants. Instead, it is spread across everyone on the road. At present, urban traffic is constrained by the fact that getting around by car either requires (expensively) paying someone else to drive or (inconveniently) driving oneself. Without such constraints, the result could be brutal gridlock—negating many of the benefits of robotaxis.
An economist’s answer to this conundrum is straightforward: put a price on traffic. Although congestion charging has been a feature of European roads for decades, it is formidably unpopular in America. New York recently set road fees, but only after a protracted battle. Swarms of robotaxis may force the matter. Self-driving cars are much less likely to break traffic rules and incur fines, meaning something will need to fill a hole in city budgets. Presenting a congestion charge as a “robot tax” might even make it easier to swallow.
San Francisco may not yet have seen job losses, but that is likely to change as costs fall. America is home to 1m taxi and bus drivers, as well as over 3m truck drivers—adding up to 3% of the working population. Other potential losers are less obvious. Without car accidents there will, for instance, be less demand for personal-injury lawyers. If people stop buying cars, dealers and used-car salesmen will go. Robotaxis might compete with short-haul air travel and even hotels if some are kitted out with beds. Although new jobs will be created—in, say, managing fleets or manning depots—they will hardly make up for the losses. Social disruption is likely; at the same time, job losses will be an opportunity. Workforces in the rich world are shrinking as populations age. Freeing people to work elsewhere might be invaluable.
Productivity in the transport industry would surge. The rest of the economy ought to perk up, too. An average working American spends just under an hour commuting each day, against eight hours on the job. Turning even a sliver of that into work could boost output appreciably, says Will Denyer of Gavekal, a research firm. Self-driving cars offer a smoother ride, which, along with better suspension, should make it easier to get work done onboard. And fewer accidents not only mean fewer human tragedies—they also mean lower hospital and rehabilitation bills.
Then comes the impact on urban areas. Parking spaces take up a quarter of the downtown of the average American city (see chart 2). Most could be put to better use, perhaps as housing or offices. On-street parking could become drop-off bays or pavements, making city strolls more pleasant. More urbanites might cycle if traffic accidents become less common. Denser and better connected city centres ought to be an economic boon.
Outside city centres, however, robotaxis will probably lead to sprawl, since longer journeys will be more tolerable. Self-driving cars could pull people away from more space-efficient transport such as buses, subways and trains, prompting a “death spiral” where fewer customers mean lower revenues, leading to worse service and, in turn, fewer customers. Policymakers will have to increase funding and use autonomous technology to improve public transport (think of self-driving buses).
Other policy conundrums will also emerge. Roads dominated by robotaxis may need to be regulated more tightly. Already, human drivers tend to bully their robot counterparts; risk-averse algorithms tuned for safety would rather get cut off at an intersection than risk a crash, and drivers know that. Besides, there is no one behind the wheel to honk or yell profanities. Pedestrians, too, can wander across streets without the frisson of fear that comes from jumping in front of a vehicle with a potentially erratic human driver. Crime might be another problem, since driverless cars are easy to steal from and vandalise.
The final shape of the self-driving city is hard to predict. Nearly a century passed after the automobile’s invention before the car-oriented city reached its apogee in places such as Atlanta, Dallas and Los Angeles, each with thick arterial roads, enormous parking lots and sprawling suburbs. The self-driving era carries risks of its own—but also vast promise. ■
無人駕駛車將翻轉城市經濟
機器人計程車（Robotaxi）熱潮即將來臨，其影響力可能遠超乎你的想像。
城市經濟的樣貌，往往取決於居民的移動方式。不久後，這一切將迎來百年前汽車發明以來最劇烈的變革。目前在舊金山或洛杉磯街頭穿梭的無人駕駛計程車，雖然看起來跟一般車子差不多（頂多多了些笨重的感測器），但隨著技術普及，它們不再受限於人類駕駛的種種約束，進而重新形塑城市。
接下來這一年，機器人計程車將讓你無法忽視。Google 旗下的 Waymo 正計畫擴張到邁阿密和華盛頓；倫敦則將成為其進軍國際的首站，直接對上同樣準備推出無人駕駛服務的 Uber。舊金山的經驗顯示，原本強大的法規與輿論阻力是可以克服的——2023 年 Waymo 剛上路時，過半居民是反對的，但現在已有三分之二的人轉向支持。
先驅城市的轉變跡象
從這些先驅城市可以預見未來的改變。首先，道路安全會提升：Waymo 發生嚴重車禍的機率比人類駕駛低十倍。此外，目前舊金山的運將或外送員尚未出現失業潮，因為無人車目前鎖定高端市場，由於採用捷豹（Jaguar）車款且需回收研發成本，車資比一般叫車服務貴約三分之一，但其市佔率仍快速攀升。
這僅僅是個開始。雖然目前機器人計程車還在虧損，但未來價格一定會大降。無人駕駛最核心的關鍵就在於「沒人開車」，這讓它的經濟模式與傳統計程車完全不同。你不必支付司機薪水，雖然仍有充電、維修與清潔成本，但相對便宜許多。而且與私人轎車不同，無人車不會整天閒置，建造成本可以分攤到更多的趟次中。未來車廠若能大規模量產，甚至能因不必預留駕駛座而改變車體設計；特斯拉（Tesla）甚至嘗試捨棄昂貴的光學雷達（lidar），改用純相機感測來壓低成本。
更遠遠景的連鎖反應
這將改變擁車的邏輯。鄉村地區因人口稀疏可能維持現狀，但在城市與郊區，買車的吸引力將大減。一般美國家庭約有 15% 的支出花在養車，除非你是鐵桿車迷，否則這筆省下的錢極具誘惑力。
然而，廉價交通雖然誘人，卻可能導致災難性的交通大塞車。塞車是典型的「經濟外部性」：單一車輛造成的延誤是由路上所有人承擔。目前城市交通受限於司機的人事成本或親自開車的體力消耗，一旦這些限制消失，路面可能會陷入嚴重的癱瘓。
經濟學家的對策很簡單：徵收「擁擠費」。雖然美國人一直很反對這項收費，但當無人車不再違規、導致城市少掉罰單收入時，市府預算缺口將迫使規費轉型。若將這筆費用包裝成「機器人稅」，或許大眾會比較容易接受。
產業結構的重組
雖然目前還沒看到失業潮，但隨著成本下降，這將不可避免。美國有百萬名運將，還有超過三百萬名卡車司機，佔勞動力 3%。其他受害者包括：事故減少會導致人身傷害律師需求下降；沒人買車，車行與二手車商就會倒閉；如果無人車內裝配備床鋪，甚至會威脅短程航空與飯店業。
當然也會創造新工作（如車隊管理），但很難抵銷損失。雖然會造成社會動盪，但從人口老化、勞動力萎縮的角度來看，這也是釋放人力到其他產業的契機。
對城市空間與生活的影響
運輸業的生產力將大幅躍升，上班族每天平均一小時的通勤時間，若能轉換成在車上工作或休息，對經濟大有幫助。更重要的是，美國城市中心平均有四分之一的空間是停車位，未來這些土地可以改建為住宅或辦公室。路邊停車位能變成行人步道，當交通事故減少，騎單車的人也會增加，更緊湊、連結度更高的市中心將成為經濟助力。
不過，這也可能導致「城市擴張」（sprawl），因為通勤變得輕鬆，人們願意住得更遠，這可能導致公車與地鐵陷入「乘客流失、收入減少、服務變差」的惡性循環。政策制定者必須加強補助，並利用自動駕駛技術來優化大眾運輸。
最後，當路上都是機器人時，交通規則可能需要更嚴格。因為人類駕駛會「欺負」奉公守法的無人車，行人也可能大膽穿梭車陣。此外，車內沒人看管，犯罪與破壞行為也可能增加。
雖然無人車時代充滿風險，但其帶來的繁榮潛力同樣驚人。一如百年前汽車改變了城市地景，新一波的變革也正在路上。
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