Self-driving cars provide no economic moat whatsoever. 1. There will be several wellsprings of that technology, all them with deeper capital pools than Uber.

Self-driving cars provide no economic moat whatsoever. 1. There will be several wellsprings of that technology, all them with deeper capital pools than Uber. Google is now running $5 billion of profit per quarter, nearly $7 billion in pre-tax profit. In any given year they overtake Uber's entire investment capital to this point. Meanwhile the major car companies have hundreds of billions of dollars of collective revenue and possibly more than a trillion dollars of existing, largely fully-depreciated capital and equipment. A century of brand recognition and loyalty, with entire families swearing they'll only buy a particular maker's vehicles. 2. There is no lockin whatsoever. Expect "AirBnB for self-driving cars" that disintermediates Uber entirely. When anyone can buy a car, expect them to rent it out at uneconomically low rates because they don't realise it's uneconomical. Meanwhile every livery company replaces their drivers too. Or expect "Google Ride" / "Amazon Woosh" / "Facebook Gimme A Lift" to enter the market, leveraging their particular strengths. Or subscription services, a la GE's engine-hours concept[0] or NetJets fractional ownership. All you want is a Fiat Funmobile 2-3 hours in peak and a Toyota Tyke-Transporter on weekends. Most of the time you have to buy both. No longer. [0] In fact, Cadillac are already trialling this.