Robotaxis Create ‘No Net Positive’ Says Guy Who Oversaw San Francisco’s Transportation System

I am frequently gripped by all the contradictions that my career inevitably surfaces. I care about the environment and, yet, I lust over the sound of an unchoked V8. I think there should be fewer new cars, eventually, while spending a lot of time here chiding automakers when their sales fall. I love all that new technology brings, though I often wonder if the newness of said technology distracts me from the fact that it’s at cross-purposes with my own values. Driverless cars, in particular, are something I think about all the time.

There’s an interview that David Zipper did with the outgoing head of San Francisco’s powerful transit agency, which oversees the city’s robotaxis, and there’s a lot there that’s got me on tilt this morning. Right up at the top is Zipper’s key question: Do robotaxis make life better for the larger population? The answer is worth discussing.

It’s going to be one of those Morning Dumps, so buckle up. Let’s transition to talking about Mercedes-Benz. The company got electric cars to the market quickly so we’ve got a good chunk of data to evaluate and can see pretty clearly that the company’s first effort didn’t work. They’ll get another chance, though.

You know who is doing it right? Cupra. Volkswagen is great at spinning off brands that are more successful than the home brand. You know what another great brand is? Alpine.

Robotaxis Are Great For ‘The Privileged’ But ‘Create Problems For The Efficiency Of The Transportation System As Whole’

It would be bad if I quoted the whole Bloomberg article, which features Jeffrey Tumlin, the soon-to-leave head of San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA). The job is somewhat unique in that the SMFTA is responsible for all transit, streets, and cabs/livery, which means that robotaxis fall under Tumlin’s purview. This gives Tumlin the best external view of how robotaxis operate holistically within an urban environment.

Again, read the whole interview, because it’s fascinating and I can’t blockquote all of it.

Tumlin starts by pointing out that robotaxis, especially Waymo, do a better job of predicting erratic human behavior than he originally expected, crediting the technology with clearing that seemingly high hurdle. He also acknowledges what anyone who has used a Waymo knows, which is that it’s extremely nice. Or, well, it’s extremely nice for the people using it (at least when the car isn’t confused). I’ve had women in my life text me their location because an Uber driver or a cab driver seems weird, is going the wrong way, and they otherwise fear for their safety. Services like Waymo dramatically reduce this risk.

Great, right?

Overall, are robotaxis a positive or negative for San Francisco?

So far, there is no net positive for the transportation system that we’ve been able to identify. The robotaxis create greater convenience for the privileged, but they create problems for the efficiency of the transportation system as a whole.

What do you mean by that?

What I like about Waymo is that the user interface design works well. I don’t have to talk to a human, and the vehicle’s driving behavior is slow and steady. I think robotaxis offer the potential for significant upsides for personal convenience, but it remains to be seen whether they offer any overall benefit to the transportation system.

He also pointed out that, for as nice as the service is, if society puts billions of dollars more into public transit then public transit could also be nice. And if society wanted cars that didn’t speed it could just put mandatory governors in all cars (please don’t do that).

Here’s another bit that struck me:

[I] have sat in on panels at transportation technology conferences discussing the “pedestrian problem.” There have been many such conversations asking, “If we have ubiquitous autonomous mobility, why would anyone ever need to walk again?”

Waymo has at least demonstrated that we don’t need to install chips in all humans so that AVs can identify pedestrians. That’s good news; industry is not having that conversation anymore. But yes, I am very worried that so much of the joy of the remaining walkable cities in the world could be at risk from self-driving cars.

San Francisco is a place, in my experience, that’s great at creating positive outcomes for people of extremely high income at the expense of the livability of everyone else. It’s not alone in that, but at least in New York when people buy a car just to drive from their apartment on one side of Central Park to their apartment on the other side (a real thing I saw someone do) there’s no pretending that they’re trying to make the world a better place.

Driverless cars displace jobs. According to Tumlin, they displace transit. This seems more than net-neutral, this seems net-bad. I’m not saying that the technology shouldn’t exist and people shouldn’t be allowed to have access to it. I do wonder if it wouldn’t be better if this were priced at a level that makes it not the default and if we took some of that money and funneled it into better transit/bike paths/pedestrian paths.

That’s not how this works, though. What these services will do is they’ll take their immense wealth and investment and, if not undercut transit or Ubers, make the price so low that they inevitably reduce the reliance on these systems until they no longer seem necessary. And then they’ll jack up the cost. It’s basically what Uber did to cabs, so there’s probably some cosmic justice involved if that happens.

I don’t know the answer here. I don’t know what the better path is. I just know that I can’t shake the question.

Oh, and our favorite person, Cruise founder Kyle Vogt shows up in this interview:

Was there a robotaxi moment over the last several years that prompted you to think, “I cannot believe this is happening”?

In my first meeting with the original CEO of Cruise [Kyle Vogt], I was in City Hall trying to lay out the case why good data supports public trust, and explaining why I didn’t expect robotaxi companies to be perfect. San Francisco streets can handle a good deal of chaos, but I can’t have dozens of Cruise vehicles being immobilized in traffic and blocking my train lines.

He leaned across the table from me, pounded his fist on this heavy oak table, and said, “Jeff Tumlin, you are the single greatest threat to the American autonomous vehicle industry.”

LOL. It should be noted that Cruise’s robotaxis did exactly what Tumlin predicted, blocked emergency service vehicles, and that Vogt himself had to resign after one of his company’s cars dragged a pedestrian and he, according to an internal GM report, tried to conceal data about the incident from government regulators.

Mercedes-Benz Electric Cars Drop 22% In 2024

Mercedes is a great company and, of all the German automakers, the one I think is best suited to thrive in the coming ‘Darwinian Period’ of the auto industry. No one builds a better S-Class than Mercedes, and there are incredible vehicles up and down the lineup.

The EQ-line of electric cars, though? It didn’t work. Wave the flag. Let’s just call it what it is.

I kinda respect Daimler for taking a huge swing with the EQS, EQE, and the SUV versions of those cars. They were expensive, tech-forward, with giant screens and all sorts of useful features (the dramatic rear-wheel-steer makes these fun to drive). It was a very Mercedes approach and, a few years earlier, it might have worked. In my last job I did a lot of work with Mercedes and had a chance to explore these cars up close and to understand all the thought that Mercedes put into the EQ vehicles. There was no half-assing here.

What Mercedes missed was what most people missed. For all the cool features, people want range. The killer app of any electric car is the ability of that car to drive very far over long distances and to do so at a decent price. What all those features were covering up was that, even with giant battery packs (115-118 kWh), the Benzes weren’t particularly efficient.

No one complains when an E63 AMG Wagon uses a lot of fuel, because that’s the point, right? That logic doesn’t apply to electric cars. It especially doesn’t apply in China, where there are at least 112 different brands selling electric cars.

Mercedes put out its full year numbers today and they’re not great, not terrible. Overall, the company lost 4% of sales year-over-year, even with a stronger fourth quarter. If you look at the total Mercedes-Benz Group, electric cars dropped 22%. If you take out everything except for the Mercedes-Benz brand, the numbers are slightly worse at a 23% year-over-year decline. Sales in the company’s biggest market, China, were down 7%. Sales were up 9% in the United States, so that’s something. Here’s what Ola Källenius, head of Mercedes, had to say:

“In 2024, Mercedes-Benz once again demonstrated the power of our brand and the depth of our broad product offering. This culminated in strong sales of our Top-End and Core vehicles in the fourth quarter. We continue to consistently strengthen our portfolio with the biggest product offensive in our company’s history starting this year with the all-new CLA.”

Mercedes can get this right, but it’ll take a do-over and at least the company seems to recognize this.

Cupra Is Killing It

Remember when I wrote about how Volkswagen was replacing itself In America with the Scout brand? That’s probably even more true with VW’s sub-brand Cupra, which has a super hot lineup of affordable and fast EVs, hybrids, and regular cars.

Both SEAT and Cupra (Cupra is a sub-brand of SEAT, so it’s a sub-sub-brand), had big years. From the company’s press release:

SEAT S.A. achieved sales growth of 7.5% in 2024, despite the challenging environment affecting the global automotive industry. The continued success of the SEAT and CUPRA brands allowed the company to deliver a total of 558,100 cars (2023: 519,200).

CUPRA continued breaking records and reached 248,100 cars to deliver a 7.5% increase compared to 2023 (230,700). The SEAT brand also maintained its positive trend and deliveries grew by 7.5%, reaching 310,000 vehicles (2023: 288,400). In a declining electric vehicle market, SEAT S.A. defied the trend by achieving growth in sales of electrified vehicles with 49,400 plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) and 48,000 electric vehicles (BEVs), increases of 14.0% and 5.9%, respectively.

Cupra is coming to the United States and, if you ask me, it can’t come quickly enough.

The Alpine A290 Is The European Car Of The Year

I don’t give a ton of truck to Car Of The Year awards, mostly because they seem designed to grab automaker money and keep mediocre hanger-on journalists still in the business. One day I will be a hanger-on journalist so I guess I should at least give an F-150 and join one of these organizations.

Gotta hand it to the European Car of the Year folks, though, because the Alpine A290 is the car I’m most excited about in Europe right now. I haven’t driven it and, yet, I know for sure that this is the right choice. It’s just one of those things. You can read all about it right here, but at just under 3,300 pounds and with 215 electric horsepower on tap it’s right in the hot hatch crosshairs for me.

Here’s what ECOTY said:

Europe has elected its new king. The Renault 5 (along with the Alpine A290) has become the Car Of The Year 2025. In a ceremony held at the start of the Brussels International Motor Show (which will return to the stage after the 2023 edition) and in a Eurovision style, the 60 members of the jury of The Car Of The Year award have issued their verdict choosing the best car in the automotive market in Europe.

The Renault 5 was crowned best car of the year 2025, beating in the final six other contenders Alfa Romeo Junior, Citroën C3-ëC3, Cupra Terramar, Dacia Duster, Hyundai Inster and Kia EV3. This year’s edition was more competitive than ever, as all the finalist models had electrified features, most of them 100% electric.

Oh, yeah, the Renault 5 also won because it’s kinda the same car. I’ll take either.

What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD

Since we’re talking about Europeans, please enjoy Peter, Bjorn, and John’s “Objects of my Affection.” It’s extremely Swedish and is the most Jens Lenkman song that has ever existed, even if it was neither written nor performed by Jens Lenkman:

And the question is, was I more alive then than I am now?
I happily have to disagree, I laugh more often now
I cry more often now, I am more me

The Big Question:

Are robotaxis, which are probably safer than regular drivers already, net positives for society?