[alexlatchford]

The potential for autonomous point-to-point freight shipping should pay off sooner than it's consumer business, allowing it to reduce it's investment requirements. Debatable on the timelines though.

You assume though that the network they've built up isn't valuable when you talk about self-driving vehicles. I agree the car tech will be commoditised and to my mind Uber owning their own fleet isn't the best option. It'd be very capital intensive and not a great use of cash.

I liken the switch to self driving cars to the same market as buy-to-let home rentals. If you've got the money why not buy a one (or more) of them, send them out and rent them through Uber/Lyft etc. and keep the money rolling in around the clock. Uber takes a smaller cut but also doesn't incur anything like as much risk.

[mcguire]

What prevents other logistics providers from driving the price down to commodity levels?

[rtkwe]

Normal logistics providers have their own fleets and have to deal with the depreciation and maintenance costs. Uber shifts all those costs onto their drivers.

[mcguire]

That doesn't sound sustainable.

[rtkwe]

Car depreciation is a hard thing to get a real handle on so I bet a lot of drivers aren't really thinking about exactly how much each mile is costing them in the long run.