[fmihaila]

> Is there likely to be some magic secret that allows one company to dominate self-driving cars [...]?

I actually agree with you that this is not a given, but it wasn't clear from my phrasing. I should have started my comment with "Even assuming you will print money with a self-driving fleet, etc".

That said, whoever deploys a self-driving fleet first should enjoy a significant cost advantage against human-driven taxis, at least for the initial period before competitors finalize their own transition. Insurance costs should get lower if SD cars prove to be safer (if not, they wouldn't pass regulation), and taxi customers are very price sensitive, so the $10-15 per hour cost advantage will certainly matter. Taxi drivers hate the price competition from upstarts already. If anybody figures out how to make those prices economical, they win, at least until the market commoditizes itself at a lower price level.