[InvisibleCities]

>I still think Uber has the right idea long-term with a completely autonomous fleet...

I really disagree here. I think the biggest strength of Uber's business model is that they offload all of the maintenance, fuel, liability, registration, etc. costs (as well as the cost of managing all of that) to the drivers. In addition, local regulators have been treating Uber with kid gloves in a lot of markets because Uber "creates jobs"; when Uber starts getting in the business of putting drivers, both their own and drivers for other companies, out of work, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of markets start making it even harder for them to operate. Don't get me wrong, I'm very excited for autonomous cars, and absolutely think they will be omnipresent in the long-term future, but I don't think Uber will be the company that dominates that market, at least not in the short-to-medium term, and trying to do so will be their Waterloo.

[samscully]

Uber could still offload maintenance, fuel, liability etc to other entities and license the self driving software to them. Those entities would still have much lower operating costs than human drivers. They could even open source the self driving software to commoditise their complements [1].

Personally I hope that regulators do a bait and switch on Uber by allowing them to build a temporary monopoly and then reintroducing competition by introducing the "right to be represented by a bot" [2].

[1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/StrategyLetterV.html [2] http://continuations.com/post/108912689660/big-and-bot-polic...