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by tiplus
3439 days ago
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It's phase two (2020+). Once the tech is ready, Uber will have to order at an enormous scale with large discounts from whoever gets the contract. There were rumors that Uber considers Daimler as a car hardware platform partner.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-daimler-uber-idUSKCN0WK1C8 However, quickly there will be many new local competitors. Who wouldn't start such a business in their own local town anywhere? Buy a few cheaper autonomous cars (10 Model III+upgrades) and have them drive around your neighborhood. Call it 'EcoGreenCar LLC'. There will certainly even be an open source software platform to manage autonomous micro fleets. |
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Truck and car manufacturers will have to disrupt their business models, as their customers will be fewer, but larger - known as Service Providers.
This is exactly what is happening in the IT Hardware business, where small companies can't motivate the cost of having their own internal datacenter (having to pay for staff, infrastructure, real estate, electricity etc). Rather, they outsource to "Local Service Provider LLC" (Managed Private Cloud), or AWS (Public Cloud)...
Both IT Hardware providers and truck manufacturere are experiencing "commoditization". The HW itself becomes less important. Why do I care if my truck has the latest V8 with Bosch 2.34 injection? I just want my fleet to operate smoothly. Many companies can no longer sell "just products", they must evolve and sell the services to create outcomes that a) reduces costs or b) generates extra revenue or c) reduces risk for their end-customers.
It's a major change for any large corp, which I believe many will not be able to achieve in time.
Good article on this topic: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/27/business/dealbook/1-billi...