It just seems like Waymo is doing a much better job. The internal problems at Uber are going to have lasting effects even if the problems have already ended.
It just seems like Waymo is doing a much better job. The internal problems at Uber are going to have lasting effects even if the problems have already ended.
For example, Apple gets most of the margin out of an iPhone. Apple could switch hardware vendors. The hardware vendors can't find anyone else who sells the iPhone OS.
Same thing here. If you have the self driving tech, the logistics and a shiny app and the dumb car hardware are the easy part you can buy for the lowest price available from many competing vendors (or conversely, license your technology exclusively to whoever pays the highest price -- either way, you have total leverage here and they have none, because without self driving tech there is no business)
Anyway, Waymo does not seem at all disinterested in the taxi business, probably because they realize that's the easy part. Alphabet engineers can put out a decent dispatch app in a fiscal quarter easily, and it markets itself. Or they could create a bidding war between Uber, Lyft, Via, etc.... Even with massive investor subsidies, nobody will be able to beat the rock bottom prices of a true driverless taxi service.
Uber investors know this, which is why Uber was forced to pretend to develop driverless tech, because if they don't, then Uber stock should be selling at earnings multiples more appropriate for a steel mill, not a software company.