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Autonomous cars and owning their fleet or leasing from large fleet companies is probably the end goal for increasing the share. I don't see this going any othe

• Barrin92 7y ago
  I don't understand this autonomy angle for several reasons. One is of course that legally (and technically) full autonomy is a long, long time away so we'll still have drivers in cars that want to be paid, but more importantly, Uber doesn't even own autonomous cars. Are they really, in addition to all their other costs, going to stock up on millions of expensive autonomous vehicles? That's unrealistic. And if they don't, what stops for example peer-to-peer solutions to emerge that let's people rent out their cars directly? It's very possible we don't need a middleman here when autonomy is ready. I'm usually sceptical of all the decentralised, smart-contract stuff, but renting your car to some agreed upon destination or for some time through a open-source free application sounds actually doable.
  • jacques_chester 7y ago
    There's also the small problem of car manufacturers saying "Oh yeah, that's a great business model. Yoink." People talk about being "a Ford family". "This is a Chevy household". They cheer on their favourite brand in races. I don't hear much in the way of "we bleed Uber blood".
    • Barrin92 7y ago
      Yes, that's a good point. Car companies could gobble up a tech startup or even social networks could try to leverage their userbase to connect people. A company like Uber really only has a better relationship to the drivers, which is precisely who they're trying to get rid off.