There's a few interesting things about self driving vehicles. One surprising thing is that for a very large autonomous taxi company, these vehicles could, in th

There's a few interesting things about self driving vehicles. One surprising thing is that for a very large autonomous taxi company, these vehicles could, in theory, operate at a profit while charging less per mile than it costs you to drive your own car. Economy of scale + vertical integration means maintenance, insurance, and other regular costs are going to be substantially cheaper, mile for mile, than consumer rates. And just consider the amount of money in play here. In 2016 US drivers (only considering cars, trucks, minivans, SUVs) drove 3.22 trillion miles. Imagine you get a marketshare of 10% of these miles. And you have a 'negligible' profit margin of 5 cents per mile. That's $16.1 billion in profit. The potential there is quite remarkable. But it gets even more tempting because of some issues with self driving vehicles. Because of above the the biggest company will not only be able to operate for much cheaper than anybody else, but they'll also be able to offer a better service. They can have more regular cleaning/maintenance, and most importantly you'll be able to get a ride more reliably from them than from any other player and in the widest array of locations. And consider the lobbying that will inevitably happen. The instant that self driving vehicles can show a higher average safety rating, companies such as Google/Waymo will lobby governments to start banning non-autonomous vehicles in urban areas, "for consumer safety." Pair all of these facts with rapidly declining vehicle ownership among the younger generations. Things could end up changing incredibly rapidly. And whoever ends up on top is going to control what might end up becoming the most profitable business to ever exist. We talked about 10% at a $0.05/mile profit margin. That meager $16 billion is an extremely conservative estimate for a single country. --- And then you get into meta-aspects. Getting from A to B is one of the most important parts of basic modern living. It's hard to even imagine the implications if a single company was able to start gaining some significant degree of control on this aspect of life. And then there's the data. Not only would you know where huge chunks of the population is going to and fro at all times, but you'd also have a massive real time surveillance network of practically all of 'real life' society as each and every vehicle you control would need to be constantly autonomously surveilling everything around it. The possibilities there are mostly dystopic, but that sort of knowledge and power is going to be a major driver here.