Everyone I know in SF is excited it's really only the officials and some news stories. The wait list to join the App is crazy long demand outpaces the number of cars they have on the road. You're just seeing a very skewed narrative.
I'm not in SF, or even inte US - but the view I get from the internet reading stories, posts and comments is that only people in the NIMBY community really gets to voice their opinions in SF.
I'm not sure how one would go about substantiating that "nobody wants them there". It's hard to get the pulse of it outside of the media bubble which tends to be tech-negative.
Wouldn’t get your hopes up on it being 90% cheaper—typically Waymo cost the same or slightly more than Uber for me. Obviously the economics change as time goes on but I doubt they will make it that much cheaper.
Without the need of a driver, cars will increasingly be offered as a rental service rather than an ownership object. In a good month, the only expenses I pay for my car is gas, which is 150-200 USD. Do you think driverless car services will somehow be immune to the pressures every other rentier model (actual rent, SaaS, Netflix, etc etc etc) succumbs to?
