Let's say this happens <i>fast forwards to the future</i>.<p>Now Uber is saddled with a huge inventory of aging vehicles needing maintenance and all the other associated costs that come with that (repaid centers, staff, etc.).<p>A new company "Hypercar" or something is formed that let's people "ride-share" their own personal self-driving Teslas...making maintenance and upkeep the car owner's responsibility. Hypercar splits fairs with the owners.
Isn't the more natural play for uber to position themselves in the market for enabling early purchasers of self-driving cars to offset the cost by having their car go out and be a taxi when they're not driving it?<p>Uber got where they are - managing a massive fleet of vehicles - not by purchasing cars, but by getting other people to purchase cars on the assumption that uber would help them turn that investment into an income stream. Self driving cars raise the prospect of me being able to turn my car into an income stream without me even having to go out and drive it.<p>If uber do it right, people will buy fleets of self-driving teslas just so they can rent them out via uber, and uber won't have to invest a penny in depreciating vehicle hardware.
This article is so trolly. I don't mind the headline even, but it's literally a hearsay quote. That's just the tip of the iceberg:<p>"Tesla Motors now has a huge incentive to get the RoboCar on the road by 2020, but Mr. Musk will need to get the laws rewritten in order to make that happen."<p>Sorry, I laughed so hard at this line. Before, he was working really hard to get them on the road, but now that Uber is "willing" (again, not even a quote, just a summary of something Jurvetson said that Kalanick said) to buy a decent number that they can't even afford EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED!
I've said this before but it strikes me as under appreciated that Uber's main enterprise value is their network of drivers and their logistical expertise in managing and coordinating that network. Once self-driving cars become mainstream, wouldn't that start to erode the value of Uber's critical dominance in this area? A generation from now if I'm choosing between self-driving fleets of cabs from Uber, Lyft, Google, Facebook+Ford, and some Tesla joint venture, wouldn't prices suffer significant downward pressures? The best operators can still make a nice profit but nothing like the monopolistic profits Microsoft, Google, and Facebook extracted from OS, search, and social which seems to be required for a sustained multi hundred billion dollar valuation.
Self-driving cars may be too expensive for one person to own soon after they are available.. It will take a lot of time and resources to build these machines to be safe and reliable, and companies will need to recuperate the costs in some way. On the other hand, most families will not need as many cars as they do now, so the demand will be lower than most people expect, which will raise the price. We can also expect companies to be the first users of self driving cars, as it will make more financial sense for them, so many suppliers will move to service businesses like Uber. Companies like Uber and Lyft will lobby lawmakers to make it harder for people to own self-driving cars, and effectively make it unaffordable to most. In short time Car-As-A-Service will become reality. In the name of safety and cost reduction, many roads will be closed to regular cars, effectively making it pointless to own a car.<p>Source: Crystal Ball
Ah, the old valuation chestnut. There ought to be a journalism ethics rule prohibiting use of the word "valuation" with respect to previous transactions unless every such transaction was purely for common equity. The only idea sillier than that every (or any!) investor actually values Uber at $50b is that they can get their hands on $20b to buy 500,000 fully autonomous cars in 2020. No part of this assertion is sane, and no part will come to fruition. The cars Uber would need won't exist in 2020, and probably not in 2120 either. To the extent that someone does manage to build one, it won't be available for anything like $40,000, and it won't be built in any quantity. Uber itself may not even exist in 2020, and if it does it will likely be a shell of its former high-flying self, reined in by the same regulations its direct competitors all have to abide by.<p>Utter rubbish.
But...Uber's core competency is <i>organizing</i> drivers & vehicles <i>without</i> hiring/owning them. I'm leery of companies making dramatic change to their core; owning a fleet of a half-million vehicles is quite different from just telling them where to go.
I'm interested in a Tesla (or any electric car). I drive more than 100 miles from home maybe once a decade, so range is not a problem--I can just rent something with more range when I need it, if the electrical infrastructure isn't up to the journey.<p>But I'm not interested in the high Tesla price. I would be interested perhaps in a used Tesla. I've never bought a used regular car before, because regular cars can require a lot of maintenance when they get old and I don't want to deal with the hassle and the unpredictable expenses. Electrics are simpler, though, so I think a used electric might be OK.<p>I'm sure there are plenty of people like me.<p>So here's my suggestion to Tesla (and other car companies that might make self-driving cars). Make a ton of self-driving cars. Run your <i>own</i> Uber-like service with them (but be legal, and feel free to put Uber out of business as a side effect).<p>Besides providing taxi service, these cars will serve as roving showrooms for your cars. Many people will ride them as taxis, and then consider buying one when they buy a new car.<p>When a given car has been used for a few years for the taxi service, retire it, tune it up, and offer it for sale used to get people like me as customers.<p>Heck, put a "buy it now" button <i>in</i> your taxis that lets a passenger buy that particular car. It would then take them to their destination, return to your service center, get its sale tune up, and then the next time the buyer calls for one of your taxis you would send his car to him, and it would stay with him after that.
I think Uber will be disrupted/destroyed by something more driver friendly. They offer nothing that will keep a contractor loyal. All it would take is another 'app' that offers more autonomy and a larger share of the profits. Uber's 25% (is this correct?) take for a software infrastructure and brand is outrageous and probably causes a lot of resentment among drivers.<p>Of course, we are talking about self-driving cars here so I'll just shut up. :D
A self-driving car would not necessarily be great for Uber. What is the taxi service currently providing? A way to order/pay for/sell a cab ride, and vetting so you don't feel uneasy with the driver.<p>Take out the driver, and anyone could offer their car as a cab. The app to do so could be Uber, but it the bar is lowered considerably if it's purely a way to book a car.
Uber has been investing heavily themselves in self-driving cars. They know that Tesla won't have a product available to buy in 2020.<p>And here's the source quote:<p>"Jurvetson said Uber CEO Travis Kalanick told him that if Tesla cars are autonomous by 2020, Kalanick wants to buy all 500,000 that are expected to be produced."
I think the change from drivers to driver less cars is a large enough one for people to accept and get used to, that it would make sense for uber to have their own small fleets of self driving cars in test cities, so that customers would get used to the self driving car concept in an environment where they could more directly provide feedback to the ones responsible for the car (uber in this case). It would also allow uber to work out issues that may arise from the change. I agree with others who say that this eventually leads to people having their own cars be taxis when not in use, I just consider the idea of uber managing their own small fleet a step towards that.
I don't understand why they'd do this. My understanding is that the Tesla self-driving cars are not end-to-end autonomous like Google's. What benefit would they be to Uber in this case?
I think this quote was meant to be taken as a bit sarcastic, in an "I'll eat my hat" kind of way. Uber recently poached a bunch of the top people from CMU's robotics department and has announced plans to lease a 53,000 square foot facility. They have no plans to wait for Tesla.