In the short term, the autonomous vehicles are 5% of a large market fleets (like NYC). Uber plays around with how to deploy their literal robots (not unreliable

In the short term, the autonomous vehicles are 5% of a large market fleets (like NYC). Uber plays around with how to deploy their literal robots (not unreliable contractors) in surge situations. Also they try new flavors of ride hailing: there's cross-country ubers, and wait-for-you-at-pickup-without-getting-mad ubers. These pilot programs give them a chance to learn how to maintenance the fleet with economies of scale. As the tech becomes cheaper and more available, some people do end up owning an autonomous car. They'll own them mainly for keeping a clean vehicle with their supplies packed into them. But in urban areas, most people chose to rent, which is a pretty tricky business: it's an unsupervised $50k asset you're renting at $5-$10 a pop without a deposit. Very few people are going to want to touch that business, especially when first mover already has a rating on everyone - meaning your first "customers" are the ones uber identified as troublemakers and already banned.