[phyller]

"Uber recently placed an order for 24,000 Volvo cars that will be modified for driverless operation. Delivery is scheduled to start next year."

Wow. The other driverless car players should be all over this lobbying to shut Uber down. If Uber massively deploys a commercial service with subpar quality in order to "win", and then those cars start getting into accidents, the entire field is going to be delayed by 10 years. The general public is not going to just think "Uber is bad", they are going to think "self-driving cars are bad". Politicians will jump all over it and we'll see very restrictive laws that no one will have the guts to replace for a long time.

And honestly if that happens, that's probably what we would need anyway. If the industry doesn't want to be handcuffed they need to figure out some really good standardized regulations on sharing data with law enforcement, how to determine fault for self-driving vehicles, and what penalties there should be. That are fair and strict.

[selestify]

Could Uber be doing this on purpose? They're way behind on self-driving tech, so maybe if they can't have it, no one can.

[phyller]

The more I think about this the more it makes sense in a horrible way. The important thing for Uber is that they are first to market. If they are first to market there are two outcomes: a) they are successful, they make more money with lower fares because they don't need to pay drivers anymore. They basically take over the market that they are already dominating, beating competitors into bankruptcy. The market explodes as it is cheaper to get on demand cars than to own your own. $$$$$ b) they are not successful. They kill a hundred people in a month or two. The self-driving car industry gets shut down, and for the cost of a few hundred million dollars in settlements they keep their current market dominance in the current industry, but have to keep paying drivers. $$

The alternative, they are not first to market, someone else is and immediately replaces Uber with a network of cheaper self-driving cars: a) Uber goes out of business b) They can somehow convince someone to license the tech or sell them the cars at a reasonable price, making them vulnerable and less profitable, with no market advantage.

[phyller]

Interesting thought. They do see it as an existential threat to their company, and if any company would do something like that it would be them. But that would be pretty low, basically purposefully killing people in order to protect their business model.