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Turn what around? Tesla and Uber both offer a great product priced well below its actual costs, in a world awash with capital (so much so that there are trillio

• sailfast 7y ago
  I mean... if drivers aren’t in the picture it might work, no? That said, the odds of that happening any time soon or that Uber / Lyft are the first to do it are pretty low - but markets can be irrational for a long time! Not where I’d put my money, but plenty of folks have more than me to burn up.
  • twic 7y ago
    > I mean... if drivers aren’t in the picture it might work, no? Driver wages are a cost to Uber, but the drivers supply the cars, so they're also a source of working capital. A driverless taxi company would save on the wages, but would have to put up all the capital for the cars itself. This is not a slam dunk. And yes, Uber is a bit more complicated because they often finance drivers' purchases of cars. But since they make money doing that, you can't make Uber more profitable by taking that out of the equation! But on the gripping hand, we are not going to get replacement-level self-driving cars within the next decade, so whether Uber could make money with such cars just doesn't matter.
    • sailfast 7y ago
      You know that, I know that, but is that the model investors are using and how long will they throw money at it before it becomes obvious? A conundrum.