4 ms·
I'm looking forward to hailing a self-driving Tesla directly with no middle man. All the money Uber, Lyft etc are throwing at building a network will be for not
by rorykoehler 11y ago
I'm looking forward to hailing a self-driving Tesla directly with no middle man. All the money Uber, Lyft etc are throwing at building a network will be for nothing.
- nugget 11y agoHave you tried Ubereats? Good experience with potentially interesting network effects for their business.
- batbomb 11y agoWrong, Uber and Lyft will be the operators. You think Google really wants to get into fleet management?
- vasilipupkin 11y agowhy not, if it's a profitable activity?
- stcredzero 11y agoThey'll try to automate it to an even greater extent than their other endeavors. The only way to ever reach a human will be through lawsuits.
- Scirra_Tom 11y agoWouldn't that be a case of horizontal and vertical expansion?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- batbomb 11y agomargins
- ma2rten 11y agoNot Google, but maybe a new Alphabet company.
- chrisper 11y agoYou mean, Alphabet's Lyft?
- mdorazio 11y ago1) That's at least 3-4 years from now before it will be practical in most situations, which is a lot of revenue for Uber and Lyft. 2) Uber is already investing heavily in its own self-driving cars and has stated plans to buy as many self-driving cars as it can if someone else beats them to the punch. So really the choice will be between owning your own car (very high upfront cost and maintenance costs) and using a self-driving car service. I think many people will opt for the latter.
- rockinghigh 11y agoHow do you hail that car? Using an app? What price should you pay? Which Tesla should come to you? These are all problems the middle man is solving.
- Nutmog 11y agoNo middleman and no competition? No business is really altruistic, despite their public image of being the good guys.
- cookiecaper 11y agoThe network is important because we're not going to go from manual driving to self-driving overnight. It's a transition that will take years. For most Uber users, the change will be transparent; the only practical difference would be that there isn't someone in the front seat of the car that comes to pick you up. Growing the userbase and making the investments in becoming the primary method of ride acquisition is useful because that will carry over into the self-driving era.
- lern_too_spel 11y agoThe point is with a demand-supply network where you need both sides to participate in order to have a working system, you have to spend a lot of money to build that initial network in the face of competitors. In the case where you can add more supply without throwing incentives at drivers, anybody can start a local competitor fairly cheaply, and all those billions Uber and Lyft have spent building their networks will no longer matter.
- ams6110 11y agoWhat's the point of a self driving Tesla? A huge portion of the Tesla appeal is the high performance. Self driving cars are going to be the opposite of that: gentle acceleration and strictly following traffic laws and speed limits.