Today, the competitive advantage in this market goes to whoever has the largest network of drivers and can summon a vehicle quickly and at a low cost to a waiti

Today, the competitive advantage in this market goes to whoever has the largest network of drivers and can summon a vehicle quickly and at a low cost to a waiting passenger. The tech is marginally better or worse from Lyft to Uber to competitor X, and the ride quality is similar enough. When self driving cars become a reality, I don’t see the technology or the data becoming a real sustainable competitive advantage for any one player. Once the last technical hurdles have been overcome and society has adapted in whatever way it needs to, it just won’t be that difficult for every auto manufacturer to figure out how to get in on the game. Fragmentation across local markets also has to come into play at some point. It’s only a matter of time before cities and towns get their acts together and figure out how to extract revenue to at the very least cover the real but indirect costs they are incurring as a result of ridesharing. They could pretty easily make it next to impossible for their non preferred vendor partners to operate in a city.