1. Self driving cars are not coming fast enough, but their impact on Uber's business model is unclear. They've been investing in self-driving cars [1], but they

1. Self driving cars are not coming fast enough, but their impact on Uber's business model is unclear. They've been investing in self-driving cars [1], but they've also been expanding into parcel delivery, which needs a human to perform the actual contact with the customer [2]. 2. Like the article says, Uber indeed is collecting sensor data in Pittsburgh, to train self-driving algorithms. They may or may not be able to deliver an algorithm rivaling the quality of Google or other players. It's contradictory to say Uber has access to no car data, while pointing out that Uber is collecting car sensor data on their own. The passengers who use Uber may not be very brand-loyal, but that assumes their business model is entirely predicated on customer fares. In truth, their business model is entirely predicated on burning VC money to establish first mover advantage and mindshare, and if they successfully pivot into profitability they will presumably alter business models. Licensing self-driving tech, charging for rush parcel deliveries, providing concierge services -- those are all viable directions in which they can pivot. 3. Being in the business of fleet maintenance is not so fun, and location-aware dispatching, load balancing, etc, requires the sort of secret sauce that, among a few others, Uber has developed. Car manufactures won't engage in this as their core business; they're far more likely to partner with some startup Uber competitor, or Uber itself. But car manufactures aren't like airplanes where the cost of a single unit is so high that it's much more economical to lease indefinitely. Many people in fact own cars -- the very, very profitable used car market is evidence of this, which unlike most new cars, actually has decent margins. While it's true that carmakers have subsidiary banks that offer financing, those instruments enable a larger portion of people to 'buy cars' than otherwise, increasing the total volume of cars delivered. Extremely widespread, mainstream car-hailing on demand would drastically drop the demand for car ownership (in terms of raw numbers) across the board, making it an awful value proposition for car manufactures. [1] https://newsroom.uber.com/us-pennsylvania/new-wheels/ https://newsroom.uber.com/us-pennsylvania/new-wheels/ [2] https://rush.uber.com/how-it-works https://rush.uber.com/how-it-works