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They're betting on self-driving cars. My expectation is that self-driving cars will be promptly disintermediated. "Google Rides", maybe, or "Amazon Prime for
by jacques_chester 10y ago
They're betting on self-driving cars.
My expectation is that self-driving cars will be promptly disintermediated.
"Google Rides", maybe, or "Amazon Prime for People", scatter-gathering over thousands of small companies owning 1 or 2 cars. Prices will fall to the marginal return.
Uber's investor fountain will run dry and they'll be stuck with the same economics as everyone else. There will be no brand loyalty once price-finding apps enter the fray. They'll still be a major competitor, but the fevered dreams won't pan out.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- gaadd33 10y agoHas anyone tried a self driving car in Manhattan rush hour traffic (or similar cities)? I assume SV rush hour is more slow moving traffic/etc on expressways rather than tiny congested streets. In any case wouldn't their self driving car implementation be improved by a better mapping and navigation algorithm in dense traffic?
- CPLX 10y agoNo. The reason I know the answer is because there is no such thing as a self driving car.
- petra 10y agoUber losing could happen, sure. But why would tiny companies win ? big companies still have somewhat better economics(volume discounts, vertically integrated maintenence, a variety of ways to raise capital, maybe a bit of branding(with regards to reliability, cleanliness...), etc).
- michaelt 10y agoA company that limits itself to online dispatch and doesn't own any vehicles itself (a) can expand to new cities at almost no cost, (b) can perform well on certain metrics like return on capital invested and revenue per employee, (c) faces no risk from buying too much capacity and (d) bears much less of the costs of risks like bad routing, mispricing or vandal customers, and so doesn't have to spend money mitigating those risks. Of course, to get those benefits the supply of self-driving cars has to outpace the large companies' ability to expand. The fact your dispatch software can scale to 100 cities in a day is irrelevant if Google, Amazon and Uber are buying all the self-driving cars as soon as they come off the production line.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jacques_chester 10y agoThere are economies of scale, but there are also people who don't know they're going to go out of business for undercutting the major rates. And there will be people who bought a self-driving car et voila, someone pitches "AirBNB for self-driving cars!" and they decide to undercut Uber to make a few easy bucks. There will be constant downward pressure on price and no structural way to build a moat against it.