[bunderbunder]

I can't fathom how.

If you maintain a fleet of thousands of driverless cars, there are at least some economies of scale you can leverage: More negotiating power with your suppliers, the ability to purchase consumables like fuel and tires at wholesale prices, the ability to have your own in-house team of mechanics who can specialize in just your fleet, etc.

If you crowdsource it, a lot of that stuff is going to have to be purchased at retail prices, which will raise the bottom line. You might be able to hide from that by capitalizing on some information asymmetry, by paying the people you crowdsource cars from less money than it's costing them to let you use their cars. But that's presumably only going to last for a short time, until private car owners wise up.

[microtherion]

> You might be able to hide from that by capitalizing on some information asymmetry, by paying the people you crowdsource cars from less money than it's costing them to let you use their cars

People are notoriously bad at properly pricing the depreciation of their cars.

[B1FF_PSUVM]

Until they starve, but P.T.Barnum covered that point.

[giarc]

>the ability to purchase consumables like fuel and tires at wholesale prices, the ability to have your own in-house team of mechanics who can specialize in just your fleet, etc.

But they don't purchase any of that stuff now, so doesn't matter if you get to economies of scale. I understand that when you remove the driver, a huge cost goes away, but it's replaced with having to own and maintain a vehicle.