I have often thought of this as well. One option is that they still outsource the financing to local owners, not necessarily your traditional car owners, per sa

I have often thought of this as well. One option is that they still outsource the financing to local owners, not necessarily your traditional car owners, per say, but more like local companies that buy AVs and place them in service. However, I think an interesting approach would be to use a traditional Project Finance scheme [0] to obtain cheap, non-recourse loans in order to acquire and deploy large fleets. These schemes are common for infrastructure projects, which occasionally amount to billions of dollars. Under such a scenario, then the actual owners might end up being entities familiar with setting up these deals, and Waymo et al selling the technology/cars/platform (arguably of higher margins). [0]http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/projectfinance.asp http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/projectfinance.asp