Call me crazy but why not consider ways to let someone remote drive the vehicle? I'm sure there are all sorts of corner cases (bad signal for one) but it's done all the time with drones.
Theoretically you could find someone far away who will drive cheaply.
Lot of trust in that individual when they too don’t get killed if the car crashes. Also hope you never have packet loss!!! There’s also that pesky speed of light restrictions on low latency, etc.
I think the key would either have them not be far away (so same city), hauling long distance, or even just driver assistance. I'm fully in the free thinking zone here tho.
It's probably not practical but if it were it might make for decent cubicle work for unskilled labor.
