This market is manned and a serious challenge. The trial is Arizona is in an extremely quiet, predictable suburb as well as being small scale; unmanned but not as serious a challenge.
Each of these is different but neither's existence by itself proves unmanned in challenging locations is right around the corner. It's kind of an exercise in Baysian statistic, how much more likely this makes one think unmanned taxis in serious location is depends on what one thinks the initial probability is.
SF seems like a pretty serious location to me. Granted, its still manned, but it makes sense that they'd start out manned in any new environment out of an abundance of caution. It seems likely that we could see a switch to unmanned in SF in the next 1-2 years if things go well. I have to think at least Waymo believes this is likely, otherwise they wouldn't be doing this.
Each of these is different but neither's existence by itself proves unmanned in challenging locations is right around the corner. It's kind of an exercise in Baysian statistic, how much more likely this makes one think unmanned taxis in serious location is depends on what one thinks the initial probability is.