I'm curious what makes you say this.
So, a few things.
- A wired up Street Sam or a Mojo'd Adept will have 5d6 initiative dice, meaning an extra action over the 4d6 that a Rigger gets while jumped in.
Granted, Riggers aren't meant to displace the combat specialists as the premiere combatants. Still, +5d6 is the hard cap anyone gets and arguably, a Rigger isn't restricted to the hot sim dice bonus. Remains to be seen/clarified, but augmentations and/or drugs may still allow a character in hot sim to hit 5d6.
- The bonuses from augs/magic can match or even exceed the +3 from an insanely expensive (both nuyen and Essence) Rating 3 Control Rig.
Yes, but not by much. Augmentations are capped at +4. Hard stop. Yes agility and reaction are easier to augment than logic and intuition, but there are some options. And if you bring magic into the picture, a teammate (or a burned out rigger mage) can cast Increase Attribute. Relevant attributes are different, but they still all cap at +4 from augmentations. Furthermore, you've also got a hard cap of +4 from bonus dice on any skill test (pg 39) so you're not going to do much better than a Control Rig.
- The edge you get is a bonus edge for that test only, so no you cannot store edge from the Control Rig.
Per page 283: "When you’re jumped into a vehicle or drone,
the control rig provides its rating as a dice pool
bonus on all vehicle skill tests and a bonus point
of Edge."
No use-or-lose restriction is given.
- Control Rigs no longer lower the thresholds for Piloting tests, so everybody is rolling against the same target numbers.
That is true. The edge gain replaces this. Someone with Reaction as tricked out as a Rigger's Intuition is, with equal skill, roll comparable dice pools before factoring in gear. Control rigs give riggers more dice still, or maybe just makes up for an unaugmented Intuition vs an augmented Reaction. Quantitatively, the non-rigger can at best match a rigger dice pool for dice pool. The rigger's advantage is in the edge gain. Sure you can give your sammie or adept gear or augmentations that let them gain edge too, but not necessarily edge gains
for driving the vehicle.