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Comment by ForHackernews | Hacker News Reader

What, why? There's no winner-take-all aspect to shuttling people around. Taxi service is a commodity and taxis-without-drivers will also be a commodity. The switching costs for users are essentially zero.

That's how we get Uber, Lyft, DiDi, Grab, Bolt, WeRide, BlackWolf...

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But Waymo or their competitors are not in the "shuttling people around" business. They're developing a driver. Robotaxi is one of the applications.

The winner-takes-all aspect comes from economies of scale for example. If Waymo is several years ahead and has better economics, how can Cruise catch up? They will have lower cost of capital. Top people will want to work at Waymo rather than Cruise. It will be hard to close the R&D gap. When Cruise is where Waymo is today, Waymo will already have a lightweight package that will be used by Ford, VW or Toyota and capable to drive everywhere in any weather conditions.

I don't know how you can write that list and come to the conclusion that it's not winner-take-all. In their home market (US), Uber is ~75%, Lyft is ~25%, and all other competitors are sub-1% combined. Didi is similarly dominant in China, and so on. "Completely different markets have different winners taking it all" does not counteract the claim of winner-takes-all in any way, nor does listing utterly insignificant players like BlackWolf. Do you think people saying "winner-takes-all" in business contexts mean one company with literally 100% marketshare globally?

People who drive their own cars are larger than all. You can find single markets where those people are more than all combined world wide.

I think there is probably a healthy subset of people on here who take Uber etc. all the time. I, on the other hand, maybe take it a half-dozen times a year (plus some private cars to the airport).

I'd love a really good driver assistive system for my car (ala FSD today) but I likely wouldn't actually get driven around a lot more unless the economics were more compelling than seem likely anytime soon.

For most people the economics won't every work out. Uber/Taxis make sense if you only need them a few times per year. However even if the driver is free, if you are using your car daily as most people do it won't work out.

People who yell "share" forget that most people are driving during rush hour, and so the car will be idle the rest of the day anyway. As such there isn't that much money to save by sharing a car.

In my observation, some cities that have "OK" public transit, people can make-do without cars if they Uber, Zipcar, traditional rentals, walk, and use transit. I also observe that it involves a lot of juggling and probably not regular well-outside-of-town trips.

Absent driving yourself at all, you're going to be very limited most places. Which may be OK for continuing a college lifestyle but mostly doesn't work unless you have a partner who handles the driving.

Try to raise prices and see how fast those regional "monopolies" evaporate. MoviePass was the winner in the "unlimited movie tickets" subscription space.

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