Zoox has permits to operate autonomously on Las Vegas streets. Tesla is unable to get permits to operate autonomously on isolated, one-lane, one-way streets with no pedestrians, cross-traffic, or even vehicles not under their control. That should tell you everything you need to know about how far reality is away from their corporate puffery.
Not to disparage, but how did you come to that conclusion? A train will always be able to fit more people/m^2 than several cars of equivalent length, due to things like ability to stand, not needing to have multiple engines and trunks, etc.
I did some math and you're clearly right. I think I imagined that with driver-less vehicles leaving much more frequently (10s per minute) one could catch up to the capacity of a small light rail system but that's clearly not the case. I had imagined that _maybe_ it could be an approach for a lower capacity system in the future.
My math as someone who is not knowledgeable in how to get this data is as follows:
In Seattle is running 4 car trains at 8 minute headways at peak which works out to 7500 people per hour at crush load (4 cars, 250 people per car, 7.5 times per hour). This would require 125 vehicles with 5 seats leaving every minute which is clearly impossible.
Looking at Portland's MAX, it looks like they often run 2 car service with 160 passengers of capacity each with service every 15 minutes so 1280 people per hour (2 cars, 160 per car, 4 services per hour).
1280 people per hour could be served by a 5 seat vehicle leaving every ~15 seconds. This I suppose is what I had expected would happen when I tried to imagine the best case scenario for this service.
7500 isn't that high - the Manchester Metrolink did 46M user journeys in year ending March 2025 (~5250/hour assuming 24/7 which it isn't.) Docklands Light Railway did 97.8M (~11000/hour ass.24/7)
Numbers from https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/light-ra...
There's no real need in a static environment, and much simpler ways to do it. Children's toys can follow a line painted on something; they just need proximity sensors and a basic signalling system (RF or also painted on the road) for where to stop and done.
There's no real need for the car to "see" beyond "am I going to run into something" and they operate at speeds where stopping is very feasible.
They're also a bad rival for light rail because they already have to dig a tunnel and the conveyance operates on a fixed path. They picked a domain that light rail is already incredibly good and efficient at.
