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Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source
- carlosnunez 11y agoI hope they use these for more S-Class UberBlack service. I wanted to get driven in one for our anniversary but found it difficult.
- mlrtime 11y agoMercedes/Audi/BMW taxis are common in Germany. This doesn't mean you'll be able to order your S class in NYC/SF any time soon.
- ThomPete 11y agoAnd most of northern Europe
- semi-extrinsic 11y agoHere in Norway we even have Tesla Model S taxis. (The government subsidies are a bit crazy.) Edit: to be clear, these are regular taxis, not high-end/limousine/whatnot-service
- ZeroGravitas 11y agoI've seen it claimed that due to the lower fuel costs, and the lower maintenance, that taxis are a fast growth market for electric cars so that may be a factor as well.
- JupiterMoon 11y agoAre there actual subsidies or just lower taxes on electric cars in Norway? EDIT We are being pedantic apparently. Are there any cash or cash like payments or is the subsidy purely in the form of a tax reduction?
- semi-extrinsic 11y agoInvestopedia defines subsidy as "A subsidy is a benefit given by the government to groups or individuals usually in the form of a cash payment or tax reduction."
- semi-extrinsic 11y agoMost of the subsidy is in the form of tax reductions, a little is in cash like payments (e.g. increased car allowance). But what does it matter? The distinction is purely arbitrary. If the government said "there will be no tax reductions, you get an equivalent cash payment instead", the end financial situation for both you and for the government is exactly the same. If I sell you a donut for $3 and then give you $1 back, or I sell you a donut for $2, is there any meaningful difference?
- elorant 11y agoSouthern too. There are tons of Merc taxis in Greece. Beemers or Audis not so much.
- maxxxxx 11y agoTaxis are not S class in Germany.
- _ak 11y agoHere in Berlin, they're E class. So you're talking about E-segment vs F-segment cars here. Not that big of a step here.
- jdietrich 11y agoMy thoughts exactly. Uber are struggling to get a foothold in Europe because of regulation. I suspect the plan is to become a traditional taxi or limousine operator in these hostile markets, leasing cars to licensed taxi drivers. Using S class rather than the more common C class cars would fit with their existing Uber Black service.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago> in these hostile markets "markets where regulations are enforced"
- tdaltonc 11y agoHave they piloted this idea? Because 100,000 cars is big bet if they haven't established service-market fit.
- zippergz 11y agoYou can get an S Class or similar via Uber today, but you have to order an Uber Lux, which is quite a bit more expensive than a regular Black (though I have gotten a BMW 7 Series as a Black before). Of course, none of these cars are owned by Uber.
- pcl 11y agoWow, I wonder what a contract like that looks like, and how many years the payments and deliveries are spread out over. Assuming a massively-discounted price of $25,000 per car, that comes to $2.5 billion!
- csours 11y agoThe lowest I could imagine them selling for is 45k per car. 25k isn't a discount, it's a loss.
- mmakunas 11y agoMaybe I'm missing something but that number sounds hard to believe. An S-Class in the US is $100K. Even if a stripped down "utility" version was available at $50K that's $5B worth of cars. Yes, it's a "long term" order (i.e., not paid for and delivered at once), but that seems way beyond anything even Uber would do.
- nodesocket 11y agoAgree. Even if Uber got them at 1/2 price, let's say $60,000, the math doesn't add up. Assuming they don't do some fancy accounting and tax magic.
- pbreit 11y agoOr something completely boring like leasing them.
- WalterSear 11y agoOver ten years, that's $6k a year.
- gk1 11y agoI'm sure there's a volume discount when you order 100,000 of anything, even an S-Class. There's also the possibility of this not entirely being a cash sale. That is, if the report is even true.
- hazelnut 11y agoThink so too. Most likely Daimler will get a stake in Uber - which makes sense for both sides.
- fit2rule 11y agoUber is what you need to make an auto-driving automobile acceptable to the general public. With Uber spin, Daimler can push on the driver-less car in many markets.. Sci-fi days ahead methinks.
- nodesocket 11y agoWow, that's a huge amount of capital to spend upfront. Wonder if this is for their black service or more targeted in Europe.
- pbreit 11y agoWhat gives you the impression it would be an upfront expenditure? My guess is it would be a 5-20 year deal and likely include financing.
- thedz 11y agoThe article specifically mentions this is a long term order. So it's likely on the scale of years, and not upfront
- uremog 11y agoI admit I didn't RTA, but people keep saying things like, "Uber had placed a long-term order"...
- jellicle 11y agoI doubt they're spending a single cent up-front.
- iandanforth 11y agoAnyone know how this volume compares to a Mercedes dealer's volume over 5 or 10 years?
- jmatthews 11y agoLarge dealers in california sell around 1200 S classes per year. More common dealers sell between 200 and 300 per year. Or were you comparing that to total volume? Market leaders sell a bit over a thousand per month.
- iandanforth 11y agoAwesome, thanks, that helps bring some perspective.
- vnchr 11y agoAt that scale, customization is a given. Uber could leverage their own robotics resources together with Mercedes' to speed up autonomous vehicles time to market which Uber stands to benefit from substantially enough to justify this kind of investment.
- spaceflunky 11y agoAt that kind of volume, would it make more sense to have MB develop a bespoke car for Uber? The S-Class is a great car, but I'm sure there are Uber-specific improvements that can be made. Why would you order some many of something 'off-the-shelf'?
- toomuchtodo 11y agoI don't think you'd find any manufacturer who would tool up for a bespoke car. Uber either needs to buy an existing manufacturer with existing large scale capacity, or build out their own capacity. And we've seen with Tesla how much and long that capacity takes to build out for only 100K vehicles/year. Uber is capital chasing a potential treasure chest. Google, Tesla, GM/Lyft/Cruise are the real players it appears.
- maxerickson 11y agoThey might do a special trim package for that volume. That's one way a precommit makes sense to me; a contract could be structured such that Uber gets a certain price as long as they keep up with their commitments, if they don't keep up, they pay a penalty.
- toomuchtodo 11y agoI could see a trim package, but if autopilot hardware is only a few thousand dollars, it would behoove Mercedes to put it in all of its vehicles. At that point, any startup could build an interface to allow any Mercedes owner with the hardware to lease out their car through a P2P ridesharing platform. Bye Uber.
- nmrm2 11y agoPeople said the same thing about Microsoft. As it turns out, going from sensors to working self-driving car is a pretty difficult task, and Uber has some of the best self-driving researchers in the world working for them.
- alvern 11y agoThis makes a lot of sense. S-class cars already have the sensors for self-driving in highway conditions. Uber UATC is actively working on the software for autonomous drivers. This is a large scale capital investment in a safe luxury service that Uber can sell in certain markets. I'm betting the s-class needs very little hardware to wire into what UATC is developing.
- pmlnr 11y agoself-driving Uber cars? What could possibly go wrong? ... There comes a point at which the helpfulness of technology becomes a form of oppression: walled gardens, predictive services making the wrong predictions, and every social platform forcing us to use our real names. It's cute when it's small, but what happens when self-driving cars can collude with the cops? https://motherboard.vice.com/read/one-star https://motherboard.vice.com/read/one-star ( previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11149653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11149653 )
- pmlnr 11y agoDownvotes? Lol. Start reading some oldschool science fiction: those are to point out possible outcomes, both bad and good, of technical evolution. Self driving cars in our current world, in our current system will not go well. We need changes in the heads first.
- f_allwein 11y agoThis is the (German) article this is based on: http://m.manager-magazin.de/unternehmen/autoindustrie/a-1082886.html http://m.manager-magazin.de/unternehmen/autoindustrie/a-1082... It says they plan to buy "a six digit number of cars", and they're only interested in self driving cars.
- bertil 11y agoIt Daimler can deliver cars that are able to handle Uber rides without a driver, including driving empty to location (considering Uber would send a destination location) then 100k vehicle does not sound like a lot. That feels like a big if, though. Having a deal in stock rather than cash also makes sense: it is unlikely that many people would buy cars from Daimler or anyone if Uber charges at cost (gas + maintenance).
- f_allwein 11y agono pressure on Daimler then...
- saalweachter 11y agoIt's like a Kickstarter, but with several billion dollars.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- ape4 11y agoI know Uber calls their service "Black". But in hot climates white cars make more sense. Burn less resources keeping cool.
- encoderer 11y agoThe S-Class is an interesting choice. I'd wager that most people have never been in a car as nice as an S Class before -- no comparison really to the town car people associate today with Uber Black. The back seat has massage, heat and cool, individual entertainment options, power recline. Some of these things could be customized, but Mercedes isn't going to tarnish the reputation of their flagship sedan so Uber can have a more utilitarian taxi.
- jgrahamc 11y agoThe S-Class is a very common model for a taxi in Germany.
- encoderer 11y agoIn my experience, the E class is far, far more common.
- ams6110 11y agoYes Mercedes taxis are common throughout Scandinavia also but they are workhorse models, still very nice but without the "S" level of luxury details and engine power.
- timme 11y agoNo it's not. Most of them are E-classes.
- qaq 11y agoThat's huge order 100K is what they sell in a year. So if spread over 10 years this would mean they are buying 10% of S-class cars produced each year.
- ams6110 11y agoAt that quantity, an S class is the badge on the trunk, otherwise whatever Uber wants it to be. Likely the technology for automation, but maybe not all the luxury bells and whistles.
- tyingq 11y agoThe magnitude here is pretty impressive. I found this list of sizes for existing commercial fleets. They would be besting UPS for total fleet size if all 100k were on the road at once. http://www.fleet-central.com/content/pdf/AUTOF_top300commercial.pdf http://www.fleet-central.com/content/pdf/AUTOF_top300commerc...
- nikkwong 11y agoAnother concern for uber is what are people going to do to the inside of these driverless cars now? Passengers today are respectful to ridesharing vehicles they sit in--because the owner of the vehicle is close at hand and the human connection commands some respect. But when its just a group of (maybe drunk) passengers in an empty vehicle--where's the accountability?
- mahyarm 11y agoCameras? You could even just take a picture when they come out and when the cars come back for the cleaning crews, they'll find out pretty quickly which rider to charge the cleaning fee.
- vehementi 11y agoSame thing we do for car co-ops I guess (next people report the car is fucked up) -- plus cameras?
- mixedbit 11y agoPassengers won't be anonymous and Uber already has reputation system. Also you can already rent a car, and rented cars are usually not vandalized.
- stcredzero 11y agoThey are driven carelessly, smoked in, eaten in, etc...
- chc 11y agoCar rentals are fairly expensive. People tend to take better care of things they've put a lot into. Case in point, rental cars tend to be in much better condition than the back seats of taxis, which in turn are in better shape than the back seats of buses. I think people's concern is that single rides in self-driving cars might even rank below buses.
- alextgordon 11y ago
- williamcotton 11y agoHow does this benefit Uber? Imagine Daimler can produce 100,000 self-driving cars. They would continue to produce and sell self-driving cars to other people as well. They could sell self-driving cars to Lyft. Individuals could operate their own self-driving car services. They could organize in to cartels and have a single app that competes with Uber or Lyft. Uber is destined to be a commodity in an open marketplace of taxi services as soon as they adopt self-driving cars. Their primary roll right now is as a labor organization. They currently create the economic incentives needed to attract a fleet of drivers. Self-driving cars are not motivated by economic incentives. Uber can't control the sale, distribution and organization of self-driving cars. All that riders care about is being able to reliably get from one side of town to another. They'll know that they can trust Daimler self-driving cars, regardless of the dispatcher. We're going to end up right back to where we started, with a commodity system of private taxi dispatchers and a productive industry of automobile manufacturers, with an emphasis on the automatic nature of this new form of transportation. Daimler is the big winner here if they can bring a self-driving car to market.
- sirkneeland 11y agoI think the other function Uber serves is not just an aggregator of supply (of cars and drivers) but of demand (passengers). It is far from a trivial effort to have a sufficient amount of users know of your app/service, download and install it, trust it enough to add payment details and use it. While not quite as insurmountable an obstacle as, say, making a new smartphone platform (sorry Palm/Nokia/BlackBerry/Microsoft), it is enough of one to make this far from a perfect, liquid market.
- aetherson 11y agoCustomer acquisition is, I mean, it's not like you literally just snap your fingers, but it's very straightforward. There are hundreds of channels to acquire customers, and services to help you do it. In a hypothetical world in which we have fully autonomous vehicles and someone wants to compete with Uber, anyone who can afford capital investment in a fleet is not going to have much difficulty generating a customer base (and then they can have a mutually destructive price war with Uber).
- kin 11y agoIt's probably more along the lines of: "Whenever you guys are done making it fully autonomous, we want 100,000 of 'em to replace our drivers" If that was the case, the volume makes sense. Makes zero sense to buy 100,000 of today's model and watch it depreciate in value while providing none back 'cause you still need a driver.
- archildress 11y agoUber is an interesting company for a number of reasons, but here's the part that interests me the most: Uber operates in a grey-area legal environment in the cities it operates in. Uber's defense / view on this is that they generate such a societal positive in terms of jobs that it outweighs the legal constraints. But, when your goal is to eventually use a fleet of self-driving cars and eliminate the job possibilities for drivers, isn't that a moot point?
- benhalllondon 11y agoThey aren't creating jobs thou? They are creating a cheaper/better car service?
- archildress 11y agoThis article is a pretty good discussion on your exact point: http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2015/04/uber_says_it_ll_generate_1_million_jobs_this_year_depends_how_you_define.html http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2015/04/uber... "Back in September of last year, Kalanick said at a conference that Uber was creating 50,000 new jobs for drivers around the world every month—more than doubling the 20,000 new monthly jobs Uber estimated it was generating in May. ... Usually when we talk about job creation, we’re thinking in terms of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly payrolls report. So the economy added 126,000 jobs in March and 264,000 in February, while the unemployment rate was basically unchanged. That’s the language of the labor market. Because the drivers who use Uber’s app to accept your request for a ride and pick you up are independent contractors, they fall under the BLS’s umbrella of “alternative employment arrangements.” "
- ghostly_s 11y agoWhen that happens, skirting the law will no longer be necessary. A company with no personnel costs, rather than low personnel costs, should have little trouble cutting a more attractive deal with municipalities. Or they can just lease the technology to the existing medallion-holders.
- usaphp 11y ago
- ebbv 11y agoIf Uber really is buying 100,000 cars, or anywhere near that number, it totally undermines their argument that they are a ride sharing app and not a straight up taxi/limo company.
- ethana 11y agoThe S Class has been Mercedes platform for autonomous driving cars. The current generation actually has a very capable installed sensors for autonomous mode. Per https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fhDqgh6DClo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fhDqgh6DClo
- sixQuarks 11y agoVery telling that Uber is trying to go with Mercedes, when Tesla is really their first choice. It's an open secret that Elon Musk will be launching an Uber competitor using Tesla vehicles. I expect a "surprise" announcement from Tesla within 18 months.
- akhatri_aus 11y agoThe other thing is Tesla can't make this volume of cars yet & it carries a certain amount of risk for such a large deal. They only made about 50,000 cars last year and have capacity for around 90000 this year. Even if Uber's order was spread on a number of years, Tesla will have trouble filling the order.
- jfoutz 11y agoUber has some of the best researchers in the world. I'd bet Mercedes builds the cars, specialized with Uber specified additional sensors and hardware for self driving. Uber customizes the source to deal with tough driving conditions, and turns the code back over to Mercedes. Uber gets it's fleet, Mercedes gets the tech. It's getting competitive. Mercedes will get the tech perfected, but this kind of deal could get them there much faster. Access to Uber's team, and more importantly mountains of data that Uber is taking the risk for will probably speed up refinement of the tech.
- BinaryIdiot 11y agoThis has to be the answer if the rumors are actually true (the article does say one source said this, one source said this wasn't happening). All auto companies need to get into the self driving space. Uber wants to get into this space for transporting people. If Uber and a car company work together Uber could get a discount, help develop the tech and share with the car company; it's a huge win for both sides. At least that's how I'd try structuring the deal. You know, from my billion-dollar-company-CEO-arm-chair.
- SilasX 11y agoWait, is the S-Class even a legit SDC?
- dsr_ 11y agoI am reminded of Lucent, who built the best hardware for the end-user ISP market in the form of the Ascend MAX TNT, which would terminate a DS3, break it into individual dialup lines, and handle all of them as modem calls. Cool stuff. It's just that they sold all this stuff to ISPs who didn't have any good credit lines, so Lucent extended them credit (bing! interest payments!) using the MAXen as collateral. When the ISP dialup market collapsed, the ISPs returned the equipment in lieu of payment. That equipment had no value whatsoever, because anybody who wanted one and could afford one already had two. Presumably there's some sort of secondary market for cars -- but a hundred thousand black S-Class is about what they've sold in the US over the last 7 years combined.
- bliti 11y agoThe maintenance cost of these cars in the US is high. Whoever is making this deal should probably stop by the Lexus dealership before they sign any papers.
- desireco42 11y agoLexus is nowhere near Mercedes
- bliti 11y agoAbsolutely. One is headquartered in Germany and the other in Japan/USA. Lexus cars are more reliable, though.
- lsc 11y ago> The maintenance cost of these cars in the US is high. You are correct, of course, but I think the majority of that would go away if you hired the mechanic yourself and bought parts direct. My theory is that most of the German luxury vehicle surcharge is the "hey, it looks like you've got money, how about you give me some of that" surcharge. I mean, I've owned a BMW 325is and a Toyota Sienna. Similar vehicles in that the vehicles had similarly sized engines/transmissions and brakes to match. Sure, my experience agrees with your assertion in that rolling into the mechanic in the 325is is going to cost me north of twice what rolling into the mechanic in my Toyota Sienna will cost me. But if you are doing the work yourself? the German car isn't any harder to work on. If anything, I think the german mechanical aesthetics agree with me in ways that make working on it easier than working on a Japanese car. Sure, they need a little bit more love in that they're just not as advanced as a Japanese car, or at least not as much effort is put into maintenance free operation, so you need to do more to keep them running, but that difference isn't huge. Parts are also not hugely more expensive than similarly specc'd parts on the toyota (e.g. brake rotors cost about the same on my 325is as they did on my toyota sienna; they were similarly sized, too; it's just the 325is was a much smaller car, so stopped dramatically better.) I mean, I'm generalizing about German luxury vehicles from my experience with another brand, but yeah, if you hire your own mechanic, I bet most of the maintenance cost differences become much smaller.
- hodder 11y agoIf/when someone develops fully reliable, fully autonomous cars, what makes them need Uber?
- psophis 11y agoUber is positioned to be the platform for transportation as a service. In their ideal world no one would own a car. Owning a car, like a plane or boat, would be come a luxury item.
- BinaryIdiot 11y agoThey wouldn't but that's like saying computer manufacturers don't need the OS manufacturers anymore. They wouldn't necessarily have to have Uber but Uber providing the payment, route planning and logistics and someone else providing the vehicle seems like a pretty good match. Though I'll admit the self driving vehicle delivery is probably another level of difficulty than Uber's current capability. But I suspect Uber and the car manufacturer may work on the self driving together.
- TheHegemon 11y agoPossibly so they don't have to buy one themselves? Similar to Car2Go.
- bsbechtel 11y agoIf this is true, this is an incredibly risky move. I know self-driving cars are more or less inevitable at this point, but there are hundreds of unknowns that still need to be figured out. How will passengers treat the vehicles? What happens when there is a problem, and there isn't a human present? How secure will the cars be? Is the 'call a car from an app' business model the one that will win? Committing this amount of capital this early in the game seems like a big gamble, unless there are a large number of contingencies worked into this deal.
- mtgx 11y agoThey should make sure that in the contract it says the cars are virtually unhackable, too, or Daimler-Benz is responsible for any liability from security breaches: http://qz.com/642648/the-fbi-is-warning-drivers-your-car-may-be-vulnerable-to-hacking/ http://qz.com/642648/the-fbi-is-warning-drivers-your-car-may...
- Animats 11y agoWhy would Uber want to buy non-self-driving cars? Right now, they have their drivers buying the cars for them. Their current business model shoves all the capital costs down onto the driver. If Uber owns a lot of cars, their business model looks far different, more like Hertz. This will reduce their valuation substantially.
- zerooneinfinity 11y agoProbably looking into the future which will likely be all taxing services will be self driving.
- smacktoward 11y agoPresumably they believe the savings from being able to stop paying drivers will more than make up for it.
- foobarqux 11y agoBecause they are going to lease them out to drivers to compete with Lyft, which earlier this week announced a similar program.
- Animats 11y agoUber already has a financing deal for drivers.[1] This may just be a mod to that plan. [1] https://get.uber.com/cl/financing/ https://get.uber.com/cl/financing/
- foobarqux 11y agoI think it's a response to Lyft, whose plan is more convenient because it allows drivers to rent the vehicle.
- Toenex 11y agoYes I wonder if this is a little short sighted. Currently Uber needs to hire drivers who use their own cars. Once self drive vehicles become available they only need the cars. Given that most peoples cars spend the majority of their time parked, waiting to be used, that is an awful lot of potential cars for Uber to rent. I'd be very interested in having my car earning money while I'm at work or asleep.
- msoad 11y agoTLDR: It's not self driving. It's data collecting cars for now. I know a little bit about this. It's not "self-driving" car per se. You know with current technology we can't have completely driver-less cars. But to get there we need a lot of data. Uber and Lyft saw all the rides on their systems and thought if we had a lot of sensors in cars and recored all of that we could have the winning factor for self driving cars which is data. In order to record that data they need customized cars. They also need to own the car to own the data associated with it (this is my assumption).
- ghaff 11y agoInteresting from a couple of angles. First, there's this widespread handwaving around getting the very detailed map data that is at least useful for even limited autonomy. At one level, it's a solved problem that that doesn't mean it won't take a huge investment to collect all this data. The second is the idea that this mapping data may be a source of competitive advantage for individual firms working on improved assistive driving systems followed by autonomy--initially under limited circumstances. On the one hand this makes a lot of sense. On the other hand, it means that a lot of work probably ends up getting duplicated.
- akavel 11y agoDo you write this based on the article (where?), or on information from some different sources (private?)? I couldn't find such information in the article, while it mentions that e.g. "In August 2013, Mercedes-Benz [...] drove [103 km] between the German towns of Mannheim and Pforzheim without any driver input", which seems to have happened indeed (https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/mercedes-benz/innovation/autonomous-long-distance-drive/ https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/mercedes-benz/innovation/au...)
- msoad 11y agoI meant my comment's TLDR. Sorry for confusion -----
- abalone 11y agoThat's not the TLDR.. that's not in the article at all. You are correct however that it's unlikely that Uber would commit a large order for a car that doesn't exist yet. It would make more sense if they were ordering their own fleet of standardized, sensor-laden, optimized UI cars. But that's not what this (dubious) news report is about.
- trepiedle 11y agoUber is overrated.
- konschubert 11y agoIn the German source[1] it is very clear that the order is under the condition that Mercedes delivers an autonomous self-driving vehicle. It is also clearly stated there that Daimler is not expecting to be able to deliver such a car before 2020. Basically, Uber said: "Once you're able to build a self-driving S class, we will buy 100.000 of them". And Daimler said: "We will come back to it." [1]http://m.manager-magazin.de/unternehmen/autoindustrie/a-1082886.html http://m.manager-magazin.de/unternehmen/autoindustrie/a-1082...
- arepb 11y agoOne of the weaker lead quotes I've ever seen.
- nashashmi 11y agoI am not surprised if Uber is going in this direction. In fact, looking at what Uber has done so far , Uber has already planned for this sort of future in 10-20 years. Look at what Uber has done: * Uber buys Nokia Here Maps for their map part and for their street imagery part. * Uber hires robotics department. * Uber knows today's business is supposed to be the transition phase to going into a zipcar like car-on-demand service. There aren't too many data points here, but the only thing I can glean from this is Uber wants to have robotic cars to pick you up and drop you off and will plan that future by storing street imagery, instead of that LiDAR based method the others are doing.
- justsaysmthng 11y agoJust a shower thought, but if the car makers can make self-driving cars, can't they also implement their own versions of Uber ? Why would they even sell the cars, when they can rent them out and make much bigger margins ? Uber's current strength is it's database of drivers, but since we're talking self-driving cars here, that become irrelevant. It's not like Mercedes or BMW lack brand recognition in the transportation space...
- akavel 11y agoIt is actually suggested in the article: "Earlier this week Mercedes rival BMW said it was considering launching its own ride hailing service in what would amount to a rival business to Uber."
- brebla 11y agoThe critical question facing our driverless future is liability. Who owns the risk? If the individual owner is liable, you can imagine the upshot - slow adoption rates, high premiums. If the seller/programmer is liable, expect consolidation. It feels like this is the question of our time. To pay for consolidated services - spotify, netflix, uber, Bernie Sanders - or to remain an individual and accept inefficiency as a natural cost of freedom.
- Johnie 11y ago"Loss-making Uber would make drastic savings on its biggest cost -- drivers -- if it were able to incorporate self-driving cars into its fleet." Umm, don't they get the cars for free now? How many rides will the cars need drive to break even compared to cheap drivers and no capital cost now?
- sandra_saltlake 11y agoThey still have all of those regular drivers,It's hard to come up with a huge number of cars on the spot once self-driving cars are available.
- dsr_ 11y agoFor the sake of comparison: the three largest US rental companies: Enterprise, Hertz and Avis together own about 2 million cars, have about 15,000 locations (most of which are competitive with each other), and have about $25 billion in annual revenue. Why do I bring up rental cars, a market usually considered distinct from taxi and limo services? Because without a driver, there's no difference. Uber is trying to crush the taxi market, but in an age of self-driving cars it needs to watch out for the rental car giants who will happily extend their daily-weekly rental cycles down to per-trip rentals, with pickup and drop-off anywhere in the country. The giants already have purchasing arrangements with the major auto manufacturers, supply chains, maintenance facilities, and parking lots to use as buffers.
- swiley 11y agoSomeone (their insurance? Them?) Won't let you rent until you're 25.
- SeeDave 11y agoI'm kinda curious how it's possible for an organization to go through all it takes to produce self-driving cars (engineering, qa, logistics, sourcing, etc.) but is unable to build an app to find riders for these cars and manage yield of available seat-space. Not really seeing the value-add of Uber at that point beyond the brand and historical data about customer rides as transportation is so fungible. It's not entirely impossible that Uber/Lyft will engage in a race to the bottom while a bold automaker (such as Tesla) offers to buy out Lyft for it's trip data... to then stand on the sidelines as Uber goes bankrupt... to then purchase their data during liquidation. I could be wrong, but it will be interesting to see where Uber executives take the company.