And towing boats, or ATVs, or anything that won't fit in a small vehicle. Or going to Costco/Sam's Club and loading up on groceries. Sometimes I think many on HN live in an urban bubble without children, where everything is either ordered online or picked up at a bodega on the corner. For much of the US, life is nothing like that. There's a reason the Ford F-150 has been the most popular selling vehicle in the US for many, many years.
What makes you think you wouldn't be able to summon a self-driving Ford F-150 via the Waymo app? It's not like minivans are the only cars capable of being self-driving.
I think in a lot of places the low population density would mean the F-150 would be 20+ minutes away every time. You might get sick of that and be willing to pay to always have it.
I don't know about that. Imagine for a minute that every car on the road right now were self-driving. How far away do you suppose the nearest pickup truck is from you right now?
There may indeed be locations where 20+ minutes is a realistic answer, but I suspect those places are more rare than you think.
But I don't think you can get to "every car is self-driving" without a pretty high proportion of self-ownership in rural or exurban areas. Lots of people live ~20 minutes from the nearest downtown-ish area, and you can't really serve all those people without a pretty serious wait.
You'll end up a) waiting longer for "uncommon" vehicles, b) paying more than for an L5 econobox stuffed with three other commuter.
Minivans are being used in these trials because they can carry multiple people to different destinations. That's the only reason. Minivans suck.
Imagine a boat owner. They need an F-150 with a trailer hitch, plus the wiring for the boat trailer's lights. So if they want to move their boat around, they need to wait 20 mins for something they can currently do right now without waiting, without dealing with network outages, with the ability to tow something heavy.
Look at the sustained performance of a Tesla S at Nurbergring. Towing takes a lot of torque, and will kill a battery like a Tesla. Plus the car needs to be able to get a bit wet/muddy sometimes.
