Does anyone know what's happening at Toyota ? They Gil Pratt (from DARPA/CMU?) leading TRI in SV, Boston (and now apparently in Tokyo). They have a TTI in Nagoya, have $100 M in PFN, and have an in-house autonomous driving effort. ...<p>Yet, they invest $500+660m (with Denso) in what is empirically proven to be a reckless team in Pittsburgh.
I wonder how much of all uber investment is actually an investment in self driving cars, and uber's ability to get a big piece of that.<p>Uber's q4 revenue was $3bn ($1bn loss)<p>Lets say they triple revenue to $40bn pa in 10 years, while growing into profitability... call it 10% profit margin over the 10 yr period... it'd be impressive, considering margin is currently negative 30%.^<p>That makes <$30bn profit in 10 years. Uber's IPO valuation is estimated around $100bn.<p>In any case, lets also say you believe L5 self driving will be rolling out by 2030. Uber seems to. At this point, the current business model (uber of driving) starts declining. Self driving is the only obvious replacement.<p>You really need to expect <i>very</i> big things from uber in the self driving space. If self driving is coming, there isn't time to make money from the current business model. If it isn't, uber is betting on the wrong things.<p>^You could assume even faster growth but given their current losses, size limitations, etc... it starts getting beyond optimism to expect <i>any</i> profit. This isn't google or fb. Uber have competition.