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I disagree. They were in a prime position to be "the" self driving car company, if anyone was. Instead, hyper aggressive business tactics (which were largely un

I disagree. They were in a prime position to be "the" self driving car company, if anyone was. Instead, hyper aggressive business tactics (which were largely unwarranted) has backfired.

untog 10y ago
> They were in a prime position to be "the" self driving car company, if anyone was. I disagree: they don't make cars. That's a huge impediment. The prime position company is surely Tesla. Or, really, any car manufacturer.
- shrewduser 10y ago
  i disagree again, making cars isn't the competitive advantage it's being able to run and service large fleets of cars, taxi / bus companies with all the physical plants would have the competitive advantage out of the gate.
  - jaimex2 10y ago
    I disagree, if you make the cars you can create them from the ground up to be self driving taxis. Think of all the improvements you could make to make better use of the cabin. If you are retrofitting existing cars you are wasting a ton of money and getting a half baked solution to a dedicated provider.
ghaff 10y ago
The issue is that autonomous tech that's good enough to do what Uber would need it to do (reliable door to door transportation without a human available to take any degree of control in a wide range of conditions) isn't close. Even a decade or two--which IMO is optimistic--isn't really a useful timeframe for Uber.
deleted 10y ago
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TillE 10y ago
What position is that? Having a popular taxi app? That really isn't much; that advantage can disappear in an instant when a cheaper/better competitor appears. Actually developing self-driving tech and then deploying it is almost entirely unrelated to the business that Uber has developed thus far. It's an enormous undertaking, and they were starting from almost zero.
- thrill 10y ago
  Having THE popular app can be everything.
cityhall 10y ago
They're a decade late and have no engineering culture. All they could do was throw money at the problem. If they weren't hyper aggressive they would have looked to partner with someone more experienced or to play vendors off each other.
pratap103 10y ago
Prime candidates for sure but I don't know about prime position as they clearly had a lot of ground to make up on the tech. I agree with you on the hyper-aggressive business tactics, I bet there was an Aha! moment where they were like..wait, what if we get rid of the drivers?!

I disagree. They were in a prime position to be "the" self driving car company, if anyone was. Instead, hyper aggressive business tactics (which were largely unwarranted) has backfired.

untog 10y ago

> They were in a prime position to be "the" self driving car company, if anyone was. I disagree: they don't make cars. That's a huge impediment. The prime position company is surely Tesla. Or, really, any car manufacturer.

shrewduser 10y ago
i disagree again, making cars isn't the competitive advantage it's being able to run and service large fleets of cars, taxi / bus companies with all the physical plants would have the competitive advantage out of the gate.
- jaimex2 10y ago
  I disagree, if you make the cars you can create them from the ground up to be self driving taxis. Think of all the improvements you could make to make better use of the cabin. If you are retrofitting existing cars you are wasting a ton of money and getting a half baked solution to a dedicated provider.

ghaff 10y ago

The issue is that autonomous tech that's good enough to do what Uber would need it to do (reliable door to door transportation without a human available to take any degree of control in a wide range of conditions) isn't close. Even a decade or two--which IMO is optimistic--isn't really a useful timeframe for Uber.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

TillE 10y ago

What position is that? Having a popular taxi app? That really isn't much; that advantage can disappear in an instant when a cheaper/better competitor appears. Actually developing self-driving tech and then deploying it is almost entirely unrelated to the business that Uber has developed thus far. It's an enormous undertaking, and they were starting from almost zero.

thrill 10y ago
Having THE popular app can be everything.

cityhall 10y ago

They're a decade late and have no engineering culture. All they could do was throw money at the problem. If they weren't hyper aggressive they would have looked to partner with someone more experienced or to play vendors off each other.

pratap103 10y ago

Prime candidates for sure but I don't know about prime position as they clearly had a lot of ground to make up on the tech. I agree with you on the hyper-aggressive business tactics, I bet there was an Aha! moment where they were like..wait, what if we get rid of the drivers?!