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Once we have self-driving cars, Uber can and will replace their current fleet of drivers with robots.
by dailo10 11y ago
Once we have self-driving cars, Uber can and will replace their current fleet of drivers with robots.
- beat 11y agoAbsolutely. But the general idea of the gig economy will (probably) stay around, even if specific examples die out in the face of new technologies.
- bryang 11y agoThe gig economy will only die when humans price-gouge each other so immensely that robots are the only viable option - even though they can carry a higher entry cost.
- dougabug 11y agoOk, but then Uber will have to bear the full purchase, financing, depreciation, maintenance, garaging, inventory, theft, and insurance cost for potentially millions of vehicles.
- lifeisstillgood 11y agoNo because the cars will be the electrical storage for most of the non baseline load in a city. So cars will be part private property and part public transport - fleets of mini vans driving around and nipping off to the charging station at peak demand times.
- discodave 11y agoNo, all of that could still be outsourced to a 3rd party.
- prawn 11y agoIf it's not Uber, someone else offering a similar service will eventually allow people to submit their own self-driving car to a driving pool when they're not personally using it. Or people will buy a car and submit it to Uber's pool for some return, as an investment. Minimises Uber's costs which will mean they can expand aggressively.
- s73v3r 11y agoThat seems unlikely considering Uber's entire business model is based around offloading as much of the liability and risk as possible onto their "contractors".