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The vision for robotaxis at this stage it pretty obvious and like you say undeniable - the profits though will be mostly there for those with first mover advant

The vision for robotaxis at this stage it pretty obvious and like you say undeniable - the profits though will be mostly there for those with first mover advantage that can make their brand name the verb for driving somewhere. It didn't take great vision or foresight to see the uber app back in the early 2010's and see how things will play out vis-a-vis getting rid of the driver - and my money is still with them (literaly) from a brand name perspective only.

delusional 2y ago
> It didn't take great vision or foresight to see the uber app back in the early 2010's and see how things will play out vis-a-vis getting rid of the driver It's not clear to me. The Uber we have today seems to be paying the third party drivers around cost price per kilometer, and doesn't have to allocate capital for purchasing vehicles, nor for cleaning or maintaining those vehicles. An Uber that had to buy a bunch of self-driving vehicles that they would also then have to maintain, clean, and service, seems like a worse, more risky, business than what they are running today.
- ekr 2y ago
  > The Uber we have today seems to be paying the third party drivers around cost price per kilometer That doesn't make sense, as the drivers are obviously not operating at a loss.
  - tialaramex 2y ago
    Wait why "obviously"? Is this like how "obviously" the friends you have in an MLM scam must be making money? Or "obviously" Wall Street wasn't packaging dogshit "no job, no proof of income" mortgages as triple-A securities before the crash? If by "obviously" you only mean "That seems dumb" then, yeah, welcome to planet Earth.
- rob74 2y ago
  They will surely find a way to make that into a "gig job" too. Like the guys who currently pick up e-scooters, drive them away using various conveyances, charge them and drop them off again - maybe robotaxis can drive themselves to a charging station, but cleaning them will surely still be a gig job.
Seanambers 2y ago
What does Uber have? Except exceptional losses in the 50B range? Like do they have any hardware at all? The entire Selfdriving/Robotaxi space goes the same way that ASIC miners for bitcoin did - the producers find it most profitable to run it themselves while selling expensive hardware to end users.

delusional 2y ago

> It didn't take great vision or foresight to see the uber app back in the early 2010's and see how things will play out vis-a-vis getting rid of the driver It's not clear to me. The Uber we have today seems to be paying the third party drivers around cost price per kilometer, and doesn't have to allocate capital for purchasing vehicles, nor for cleaning or maintaining those vehicles. An Uber that had to buy a bunch of self-driving vehicles that they would also then have to maintain, clean, and service, seems like a worse, more risky, business than what they are running today.

ekr 2y ago
> The Uber we have today seems to be paying the third party drivers around cost price per kilometer That doesn't make sense, as the drivers are obviously not operating at a loss.
- tialaramex 2y ago
  Wait why "obviously"? Is this like how "obviously" the friends you have in an MLM scam must be making money? Or "obviously" Wall Street wasn't packaging dogshit "no job, no proof of income" mortgages as triple-A securities before the crash? If by "obviously" you only mean "That seems dumb" then, yeah, welcome to planet Earth.
rob74 2y ago
They will surely find a way to make that into a "gig job" too. Like the guys who currently pick up e-scooters, drive them away using various conveyances, charge them and drop them off again - maybe robotaxis can drive themselves to a charging station, but cleaning them will surely still be a gig job.

Seanambers 2y ago

What does Uber have? Except exceptional losses in the 50B range? Like do they have any hardware at all? The entire Selfdriving/Robotaxi space goes the same way that ASIC miners for bitcoin did - the producers find it most profitable to run it themselves while selling expensive hardware to end users.