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Uber will have the largest network of customers and that’s far from trivial to build. It easily costs $2+ per customer to get your app installed on their phone,
by valuearb 7y ago
Uber will have the largest network of customers and that’s far from trivial to build. It easily costs $2+ per customer to get your app installed on their phone, and takes years to get hundreds of millions of installs.
- lefstathiou 7y agoIf we can agree that switching costs are low for users, and that the cost of building an autonomous vehicle fleet is very large, then the advantage goes to Google who has both a huge distribution machine (owning Google Maps) and massive amounts of free cash flow to deploy. They could purchase 100k vehicles in a blink of an eye, outfit them with AI, deploy in NYC Chicago Atlanta Austin LA and bam users will convert. They don't need to cover the globe, just the absolute most lucrative cities (which Uber relies on to subsidize smaller cities). Additionally, I am not convinced the transition from largest taxi service to AV will be smooth sailing from a personnel perspective. Not having to manage the politics of a deeply embedded global supply chain is one of Tesla's advantages relative to big auto. At some point, drivers may say F* this in dealing with Uber which Google avoids from the get go.