That's a reasonable business model. But their self driving doesn't really work reliably yet.[1] Their "deployment" in San Jose is three cars, max speed 25MPH, with a "safety driver" on board. Now they've hired people from the "fake it 'til you make it" self driving projects. Not a good sign.

This is similar to what Local Motors and Navya, which make minibus-sized driverless vehicles, are doing - the area and routes are very well known, but there may be some intrusions into the driving lane. Nobody has this working well enough for an airport parking lot shuttle yet.

It's too bad Waymo didn't continue with the Google mini-car. They could probably make this work. It's not as hard at 25MPH, because stopping solves most problems and sensor range is more than sufficient.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/04/technology/driverless-car...