alt Hacker NewsMost of the city buses in my UK home town are now battery electric double deckers. These carry up to 85-90 people (with 25 standing), weigh 11 tonnes, and is 10.5m long.
A typical jaguar Waymo usually carries up to 4 people (usually just one), weighs 2.1 tonnes and is 5.2m long.
So the double decker bus should be more environmentally efficient with maybe 5 passengers making independent journeys, though operational costs for paying a driver probably make the Waymo more financially efficient in that situation.
I suspect robotaxis will become very important in suburban areas with distributed jobs where buses don’t work well. In busy cities there simply isn’t the roadspace to replace buses with robotaxis (or any other form of car) for commuting.
> A typical jaguar Waymo usually carries up to 4 people (usually just one), weighs 2.1 tonnes and is 5.2m long.
A more reasonable taxi for single riders is going to weigh around 1.5 tons (e.g. the prototype Tesla Robocab).
You also incorrectly assume that the efficiency depends linearly on weight. It doesn't, it depends more on aerodynamics, speed, and the number of stops. London buses (11 tons) average around 2.2 kWh/mi, Tesla Model 3 is at 0.21 kWh/mi while weighing 1.8 tons.