Hacker News Reader

Comment by maverick_iceman | Hacker News Reader

I think self-driving cars would be a major challenge for Uber. As long as ridesharing companies need human drivers network effects ensure that Uber will remain at the top. But when driverless cars become feasible Uber's moat disappears. What's stopping an upstart company to buy/lease 10,000 self-driving cars and let them loose on the street? There's no reason for customers to prefer Uber over them. (This problem becomes more acute if Uber IPO's by then and have to worry about quarterly results but their competitor can burn through VC money.)

View on HN

> What's stopping an upstart company to buy/lease 10,000 self-driving cars and let them loose on the street?

The most serious obstacle here is the fact that there is no such thing as a self-driving car.

> As long as ridesharing companies need human drivers network effects ensure that Uber will remain at the top.

I think it is the opposite... Uber's only real way to turn a profit while staying competitive is to get rid of the cost of drivers.

> What's stopping an upstart company to buy/lease 10,000 self-driving cars and let them loose on the street?

The fact that Uber is already working on this, has a platform, has tons of data?

The articles I have read have made it sound like a Catch-22. They cannot profit while they have to pay drivers, but self-driving cars will enable competition from both software companies and automakers, especially if an automaker reduces the need for capital by renting out self-driving cars. It's unclear how Uber will not be further commoditized by self-driving cars.

By beating people to market with self driving cars. That's the reason Uber is pushing it.

Is there any evidence that Uber is even on par with the self-driving technology of Google, Cruise, or Tesla?

There's evidence that all the big players have top talent, deep pockets, and are staying abreast of the research, which is humming along. Insomuch as they're committed, there's no good reason to believe any one of them is out of the running, or more than a couple years or so behind the peloton.

Because deploying Robotaxi fleets will be so capital intensive, no single company is likely to dominate the way Uber has in rideshare. There is enough demand spread out across enough different cities that they won't need to compete directly for a long time.

Right, I wasn't suggesting Uber was hopelessly behind the other major players, but that it seems unlikely they'll beat everyone else to market.

If they can't maintain their market share in a driverless car world, it's difficult to imagine how they can justify their current valuation.

What Uber has, that all of the other players don't is a platform, data, and experience operating such a service. All they have to do is add in the self driving cars, whereas all (most) of the other players have to build the whole platform.

There is no evidence of Uber being better or worse than the others, but they are ahead in terms of using self driving cars as taxis.

https://newsroom.uber.com/san-francisco-your-self-driving-ub...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/16/uber-self...

"What's stopping an upstart company to buy/lease 10,000 self-driving cars and let them loose on the street?"

You're right that self-driving cars would be a major challenge/opportunity. Re: what's stopping an upstart, letting self-driving cars loose on the street is inefficient. There is a huge amount learned/accrued intelligence involved in how those self driving cars are orchestrated for optimize the marketplace. So that's where a key capability is going to be important even in a world where self-driving is commoditized.

That's why Uber invests so heavily in self-driving cars.

What investor would invest in a competitor if the market is as commoditized as you foresee? (I agree with you fwiw)

no need for an investor. only need a GM or Tesla or Apple etc to decide to.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com