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There is nothing that differentiates Uber from lyft, or another ride hail company. Drivers could easily switch between the companies. Driverless tech will be t

There is nothing that differentiates Uber from lyft, or another ride hail company. Drivers could easily switch between the companies. Driverless tech will be the differentiation. Whoever gets there first, even in limited urban centers will win the taxi industry

api 9y ago
> Whoever gets there first, even in limited urban centers will win the taxi industry Why "win"? There's no moat. I suppose there will be patents, but those expire or can be worked around. More likely is that whoever gets there first will make all the mistakes that others can learn from. Every major car company has a self-drive effort now. Apparently Tesla, GM, Ford, and BMW are pretty far along. Lyft has a few partnerships here. It's only a matter of time before most cars drive themselves to some degree.
- jordache 9y ago
  yeah expiring patents, and effective partnerships, give enough cushion for one company to get far ahead enough to dominate the business. self driving hardware+software is much more complex than just writing some software... a non player can't trivially get into the game just because someone else have higher advancement
  - rhino369 9y ago
    Competitors won't have to develop this stuff on their own. They just need to buy a self driving car that has an API. Trying to vertical integrate the self driving software is a moonshot.
    - jordache 9y ago
      guarantee you that for the initial years, self driving car will take the form of proprietary units, used for specific purpose, in isolated locations. Akin to self driving rail transportation. No mass produced self driving appliances that any dumb human can use improperly. The industry won't take that chance of a poor impression and destroy public's confidence all together. In urban/high density locations, a ride hail company leveraging driverless vehicles can make a killing.
  - sah2ed 9y ago
    I think you meant "exclusive" partnerships, similar to how the iPhone was exclusive to the at&t network on launch and for a few years thereafter.

api 9y ago

> Whoever gets there first, even in limited urban centers will win the taxi industry Why "win"? There's no moat. I suppose there will be patents, but those expire or can be worked around. More likely is that whoever gets there first will make all the mistakes that others can learn from. Every major car company has a self-drive effort now. Apparently Tesla, GM, Ford, and BMW are pretty far along. Lyft has a few partnerships here. It's only a matter of time before most cars drive themselves to some degree.

jordache 9y ago
yeah expiring patents, and effective partnerships, give enough cushion for one company to get far ahead enough to dominate the business. self driving hardware+software is much more complex than just writing some software... a non player can't trivially get into the game just because someone else have higher advancement
- rhino369 9y ago
  Competitors won't have to develop this stuff on their own. They just need to buy a self driving car that has an API. Trying to vertical integrate the self driving software is a moonshot.
  - jordache 9y ago
    guarantee you that for the initial years, self driving car will take the form of proprietary units, used for specific purpose, in isolated locations. Akin to self driving rail transportation. No mass produced self driving appliances that any dumb human can use improperly. The industry won't take that chance of a poor impression and destroy public's confidence all together. In urban/high density locations, a ride hail company leveraging driverless vehicles can make a killing.
- sah2ed 9y ago
  I think you meant "exclusive" partnerships, similar to how the iPhone was exclusive to the at&t network on launch and for a few years thereafter.