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.
People keep saying the Lyft and Uber endgame is self driving cars, but there are not going to be fully autonomous self driving cars for at least 10 years. It's not a realistic business plan and I very much doubt that's actually the strategy at these companies.
Just a load of nonsense. Uber is not particularly at the forefront of autonomy and there's no reason to expect them or anyone else to break out in 2025... 2045 maybe.
The article talks about end-users purchasing autonomous cars, and replacement of taxis in one breath...those are two different things.
Autonomous cars are not going arrive for 10 to 15 years. If Uber can't reduce costs by 20% or increase prices by 20% or some combination of the two, then they are making the wrong kind of bet's.
Personally, I believe their bet is on not needing a large advertising budget once enough people know about their service.
The idea that there's going to be a robo ride-sharing service by the end of 2017 is... optimistic. Maybe 2037? Maybe 2047? Longer?
It's not so much that Uber is behind on self-driving but the idea that Uber is in any way dependent on self-driving as a business. If they're covering their bets just in case that's one thing. If they think their business model depends on it, I wouldn't go anywhere near them as an investor.
Autonomous driving in the sense of door-to-door taxis is not going to happen in a timeframe remotely relevant to companies like Uber. Maybe in a few decades. Uber needs someone not betting on that.
As I see it, the only acceptable outcome for Uber at this point is gaining a huge lead in the establishment of an autonomous driving fleet.
I don't see any way its current businesses (e.g. app-based taxi service, food delivery, etc.) justify its valuation. The question then is whether reliable fully-autonomous cars are 2 years out, 10 years out, or more; even the experts can't agree. Uber needs it more than Google needs it, more than Tesla, more than anybody.
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.
As valuearb has pointed out in other comments, it's not at all clear that Uber needs to be in the self-driving car game to the point of making self-driving car technology, any more than they need to be in the human-driven taxi game they're in now to the point of buying an automobile manufacturer.
It's not at all unreasonable to think that the way to save Uber is to ruthlessly cut costs and focus on the business of fleet and driver management, without banking on the assumption that the drivers are all going to go away within a decade. They should certainly still be watching autonomous cars, and perhaps find someone to partner with the way Lyft has with Google/Waymo, but I'm not at all convinced that's a business they should actually be in.
(I also suspect that the belief that we're going to have "level five" autonomous cars within the decade is far too optimistic. Also, an awful lot of discussions apparently assume the vast majority of consumers will, as soon as it becomes practical, stop buying cars and switch to autonomous taxis for all transportation needs. At least among American consumers, I'm going to stamp that with "[citation needed]" until further notice.)
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.
I think both Uber, Lyft and (to some extent) Tesla have been working on autonomous cars because it's not an immediately implausible way for them to turn profitable.
I personally agree it's a multi-decade (if ever) thing, but if Uber et al. claim they'll have it in 2 years, without facts on the table it boils down to who the investors believe in.
A decade is being generous. Early adopters maybe by then but they'll be sharing the road with human driven cars for a long time to come. It's not clear to me how Uber profits from this scenario. My sense is that driverless cars are the shiny dangly toy that Uber is using to distract investors. But maybe I'm being too pessimistic.
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 :)
Uber has an advantage bc the transition to fully autonomous self-driving will take years to decades to realize, not only on a technological level but on a political level. In the meantime we’ll introduce self-driving more and more with humans-in-the-look, and uber is in a great position to take advantage of that.
Fully autonomous cars that don't require a driver are decades away, Uber may not have that much time. When they do arrive there's sure to be a lot of competition in that space.
Unless a competent CEO comes along with a plan that is better than betting the companies existence on solving autonomous vehicles in the next two years they are going to run out of money either way.
If Uber wants to be a player in autonomous vehicles they have to become profitable enough to survive long enough to realize that goal. Kalanick's plan was always a pipe dream. Driverless cars just aren't going to be ready in time.
From all the automakers who are also developing autonomous technology?
In any case, the door-to-door 100% driverless tech that Uber/Lyft/etc. require to eliminate drivers is almost certainly many decades away. It seems unlikely they can sustain massive losses for a fraction of that time even if they did have some sort of competitive advantage once that future arrives.
Having human drivers for over a decade is not a "short term strategy" for most reasonable definitions of short term.
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