This doesn't seem true. In SF, waymo with 300 cars does more rides than lyft with 45k drivers. If self driving cars interleave different tasks based on their routes I imagine they would be much more efficient per mile.
Seems like we are way too early in the adoption curve to tell. Currently the average number of passengers per trip is >1.0 across the whole fleet. Some day, I'd expect that to dip below 1.0, as people send an empty car to pick up the dog from the vet, or circle the block to avoid having to pay for parking, etc.
> With more than 700 vehicles in its fleet - 300 of which operate in San Francisco - Waymo is the only U.S. firm that runs uncrewed robotaxis that collect fares.
Those numbers are from April 2025.
https://waymo.com/blog/2025/05/scaling-our-fleet-through-us-...
A car driving from A to B will cost less than 50% of the current price. Which will unlock a huge amount of new rides.