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"the [science fiction] writer should be able to convince the reader (and himself) that the wonders he is describing really can come true...and that gets tricky when you take a good, hard look at the world around you."
- Frederik Pohl

Autonomic Cab  
  An automated taxicab (without robotic driver).  

This is an early instance of this phrase in Dick's work.

"Thy destination, your eminence," the autonomic cab informed him, halting before a large but mostly subsurface structure...

He paid the cab, hopped from it, and scuttled across a short open space for a ramp...

Technovelgy from The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, by Philip K. Dick.
Published by Doubleday in 1965
Additional resources -

Dick expands on the idea in Now Wait For Last Year, published in 1966.

The cab said, "Are you Mr. Rip Van Winkle or something, sir? It's 2055. And I hope it satisfies you." The cab was old and was somewhat seedy, needing repairs; its irritability showed in the activity of its autonomic circuitry.

Compare this to the autocab from Heinlein's 1951 novel Between Planets and the Tin Cabbie from James Blish's 1957 Cities in Flight.

The earliest mention I know about is the driverless taxi from The Living Machine (1935) by David H. Keller.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
  More Ideas and Technology by Philip K. Dick
  Tech news articles related to The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
  Tech news articles related to works by Philip K. Dick

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