The claim that they can undercut human driven taxis I guess, but then as all enshittified services it won't stay true. They would only do that until people have become used to them then jack up the rates far beyond what cabbies ever were

You don't have a creepy driver transport you/know your address.

I can see the value of data networks. If every car on the road is self driving and interconnected, they know where every other car is and can cooperatively adjust their speed and routes to basically eliminate traffic. Even if it's just every car in a taxi fleet, they can still share their sensor data to build a better operating map from multiple angles. The privacy side of that is rough, but it could drastically reduce accidents compared to individual human drivers.

The theory is that you can own a fleet of robotaxis while you have a job without the hassle of maintaining vehicles or employing drivers.

The fact that all self drive taxis are company owned and no plate owners will touch them tells the real story.

Computers don't get drunk, high, distracted, or sleepy.

Humans are absolutely awful at safely operating 2000lb+ death machines.

Question: what value do self driving taxis add to regular taxis?

Additional profit for the owners.

Paying drivers cuts into the profits.

Regular taxis kill a lot more people

A full minute of processing power and the best it could come up with was crashing through a divider and ending up in the far lane

I'm honestly surprised that a Tesla Model Y fit in this gap. Maybe it ran over the first bollard a bit?

Edit: And, IDK, "managed to get out appropriately" in this case would unfortunately mean throwing it in reverse and doubling back through the cross-walk, I think. It's never a good idea to run stuff over to get where you're going.

Getting out appropriately would have been reversing to the place where it entered the flex-posted area, not simply smashing through them.