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Uber is looking to transform its business to driverless, but any well-funded new entrant that starts with self-driving vehicles will outperform Uber because it
by midnitewarrior 10y ago
Uber is looking to transform its business to driverless, but any well-funded new entrant that starts with self-driving vehicles will outperform Uber because it won't have billions in losses on the books from its early days using humans to drive.
- biocomputation 10y agoWhich is why people say that the pioneers end up with the arrows in their backs.
- fragmede 10y agoWhere are well-funded new entrant going to get self-driving cars from? Uber/Google don't have to sell self-driving cars to the public, and by the time self-driving cars happen, Uber's already got an app and the infrastructure to run the app, as well as the engineering expertise in running that infrastructure. In addition, they already have the installed base of customers that default to the Uber app for their transportation needs. Self-driving cars aren't going to take over instantly, either, so there will be a slow transition period of phasing out manual-drivers. Whether Uber's billions in losses can be amortized over that time so those losses aren't on the books so they can be competitive with a new entrant solely using self-driving cars, remains to be seen.
- ghaff 10y agoFrom all the automakers who are also developing autonomous technology? In any case, the door-to-door 100% driverless tech that Uber/Lyft/etc. require to eliminate drivers is almost certainly many decades away. It seems unlikely they can sustain massive losses for a fraction of that time even if they did have some sort of competitive advantage once that future arrives.