Uber has massively subsidized users for years, but they don't have the cash to keep doing this for very long or buy a fleet of self driving cars. When self driving cars do take off you can expect a spike of sales as people really want that feature. So, Uber would need to survive ~15 years before any major car companies feel the squeeze and I doubt they can make another 5.
Beyond the geo-fenced solution, and system like Super Cruise, I doubt that we'll see truly self-driving cars for another 30 - 40 years.
What fascinates me is that company like Uber believe that they can use their current business model to finance the development of a self-driving car and the start to make profit when those cars a ready. That would mean investors pumping money into the company for at least 25 years more.
It makes more sense to slowly develop self-driving cars for technologies like Autopilot and Super Cruise. Gradually improving the solution until one day it can safely navigate a leaf covers dirt road.
Even if they make a breakthrough in self-driving cars tomorrow, it could still be many years before laws are updated to enable them to legally operate self-driving cars (without drivers present) in all the different states and countries that they do business in. Insurance companies would also need to be willing to insure these cars before they'll be legal to drive.
To operate self-driving cars, they'd need to buy or finance the vehicles, which is a huge expenditure. They'd also need to hire people to clean and maintain them, since drivers wouldn't be doing that anymore. They'd have to bear the cost of fuel (whether gas or electricity) and insurance, which drivers currently pay for. Once they pay for all that, would it cost more or less than paying a driver who provides their own car? I certainly don't know.
Also, even if all the factors noted above balance in favor of self-driving cars in the long term, it may be a while before self-driving cars come down enough in price to compete with human drivers in conventional vehicles - it takes significant engineering work to evolve a design from a prototype to mass production.
The question is whether Uber can stay in business long enough to reap the benefits of self-driving cars. I don't think the answer is obvious.
Given the amount Uber has spent on self driving cars, I doubt they'd let themselves get replaced.
Given the money the entire industry has spent on self driving cars and gotten little reward for, I don't think anyone is getting replaced for a very long time.
Drivers don't care! No one thinks they are going to be an Uber driver forever most think its a temporary thing.
I am pretty confident self driving cars are going to create more jobs than they destroy. Whole new businesses will be economically viable once the transportation costs are super low, traffic is less of a problem and when you don't need parking. On demand economy 2.0.
With heavy investments in self-driving cars, I doubt if Uber would really want to improve drivers' income. It'll all become irrelevant when self-driving taxis become available. It may not happen soon, but it's quite worrisome if people are using as one of their primary income sources.
I don't see how self-driving cars will be legal, let alone cost-effective for Uber by 2020. A cycle in the auto industry is 5-7 years and no amount of pixie dust will change that :)
That said, I think Uber will fuck themselves hard, and that Uber's robotics efforts will be viewed as a massive mistake within the next ten years. This is a situation where they should buy or borrow, but they're trying to build out of greed.
Autonomous driving technology is not going to be a differentiator. It's going to be a commodity. Everybody will have it. Investing heavily in a commodity product is a waste of money.
But it's exactly the sort of mistake that one could expect an egotistical asshole like Travis to make.
Uber won't be dead in ten years; they'll be the myspace of transportation. I guarantee it.
No. Uber will always have the incentive to keep drivers happy, as they are competing with every other job. If another position values their time more they will move there.
On the topic of self driving cars, full saturation is at least a couple of decades away.
Probably for the best. Right now Uber is NOT among the leaders in self-driving. So it would be better for them to buy or lease vehicles from those leaders than wait some additional years for their own project to be successful.
All those drivers will be out of business in a few years when Uber roles out its autonomous cars. (which is not a bad thing per say; these people will be forced to find other work)
Self-driving isn't binary. Human drivers aren't going anywhere for the next 10-20 years at least in most parts of the world.
Uber is fine, they have a healthy business in their hands and a lot of potential to expand into a number of verticals with their operational expertise.
Sure, but we’re still easily 5 years from “all traffic, all weather, all situations” car AI, which is necessary for fully autonomous vehicles.
They already have the cheapest solution for having a driver and a car go around town, so sending drivers with their “autonomous” cars in good conditions is an impressive step, but insufficient for full autonomy and not enough to fix their business problems — they need to be able to send the cars in real life situations with no driver.
So 5 years of technology and 5 years of regulation before widespread adoption is a long time for Uber to have to be spending investor money before they spend investor money on autonomous car fleets in every major city. (Or are they going to lease cars from other people? — it may be then that the cost of leasing vehicles from others never comes low enough.)
The better hope for their investors seems to be the rumor they’re profitable in large, established cities and their costs are expansions and turf wars.
There is absolutely no way Uber will have fully self-driving cars in a few years (a car that picks you up without a driver). If anything is going to save Uber, it's going to be Otto. Self-driving trucks are a much easier technical problem and the market is the better part of a trillion dollars just in the US.
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