If drivers are willing to accept Lyft's regular wages for a day, and refuse the temptation of surge pricing on Uber, price-sensitive consumers will see surge pricing on Uber and turn on the Lyft app.
If the goal is to threaten Uber's brand/customer-loyalty, this play might work?
How will other Uber drivers know if you're driving around and not part of the protest? I suppose they could each book Uber's for pickup and then harass any driver that comes to them - however they'd have to use unrelated-unassociated phones numbers, as Uber likely would block or prevent Uber drivers from booking during days they know there are protests.
I'd certainly not buy Uber or Lyft; out of the two I would have bought Lyft at the IPO over Uber, however certainly not hold it very long-term.
Other than that, it's a self-selected (from how many videos in which things didn't go as smoothly?) video under ideal conditions, used for marketing. Very, very far from what would be necessary for Uber to stop relying on drivers.
I'm with the GP, 20 years sounds reasonable for general-case driverless cars. Or maybe longer.
"Self-driving 99.9% of the time" sounds very close to full self driving, but in order to have fully driverless Uber cars where you don't have to pay the driver, they'd have to not have a "safety" driver. That's the thing that's further away than people want to admit.
I’d consider occasional use of taxis with two more nines, but I’d really want three or four more nines.
Musk is critical of the usefulness of Lidar and therefore I am critical of the usefulness of Elon Musk to driverless cars. He has not embraced critical safety architecture.
Reductive.
Your model assumes demand for Lyft remains constant while supply increases. This ignores the fact that supply is dropping at Uber, which causes a price increase, which causes demand to shift else where...to Lyft which increases demand.
Additionally, many drivers who use both apps will simply stop driving, so Lyft is likely to see a surge as well.
Fair counter. There will be some lock in. Given that both platforms have similar pricing means that there are strong arbitrage forces at play that keep them in check.
That assertion needs some data to back it up. In fact I’d put my money on “most people” having both Uber/Lyft installed.