Public transport is expensive to keep running, owning a car is also expensive and they eventually breakdown and need replacing, and regular taxis can be unreliable. So self-driving taxis you can call upon when needed are the future, right?

The answer to that question may be "yes," but it is also proceeded by a big "if." Specifically, robot taxis could well be the future of transport if car manufacturers can get them to work flawlessly. With that in mind, Mercedes and Bosch are teaming up to make robo-taxis a reality by the beginning of the next decade.

Neither company is new to the concept of driverless vehicles. Mercedes had a self-driving bus concept at the beginning of 2016 and is hard at work on electric vehicles, which is sure to be a feature of most cars in the next decade. Meanwhile, Bosch was showing off its Central Gateway system back in January. It's a (very fast) system for handling all data coming into a vehicle and making sure the right subsystems receive it. Bosch also already offers advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS).

By combining forces, it is expected that Mercedes will knock several years off of its existing driverless vehicle efforts. It's simply a case of throwing a lot more engineers at the problem, with Bosch specifically focusing on software and algorithms that will ultimately tell a driverless vehicle what to do.

It is expected the robo-taxi will be ready by 2020 and aims to take on services such as Uber in the US and Didi in China. Mercedes, and parent company Daimler, wants to own a big chunk of the "app-based car-sharing and ride-hailing sector." And it seems likely these efforts will filter down to vehicles purchased by consumers, offering the ability to let the car take over and drive for you.

Ola Kaellenius, Daimler board member and head of Group Research and Mercedes-Benz Cars development, believes that will happen in 2025 when robo-taxis have proved themselves reliable.