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Comment by prawn | Hacker News Reader

Maybe their plan is just to subsidise drivers until self-driving cars arrive, by which time they will have brand dominance and can carry on merrily.

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This is always my thought whenever I see a conversation like this come up about Uber. I understand they're all important issues, but why care so much about whether their drivers are employees or contractors when they're intending to lay them all off ASAP? They're just buying time and taking market share until self-driving cars arrive.

Don't remember the link, but Kalanick was recently quoted about how he'd buy a bunch of Tesla self-driving cars in 2020. Whether it will be Teslas or not, I believe it's clear that their whole strategy is to move to self-driving cars as immediately as feasible.

Because that employment aspect is important to those people now. Let Uber do it and what argument do you have against others doing the same? "Soon they'll be robots anyway."

I don't know why people think self-driving cards benefit Uber uniquely. Everyone else would get to use them too, after all, so Lyft's costs also go down.

It's like saying, "whoa, tomato prices have skyrocketed -- I bet grocery stores are making record profits!"

To be sure, there might be some differential advantage, but not enough to justify subsidizing everyone in the hopes they won't jump ship after competition comes in from other brands without these "legacy costs".

Well, to the argument I was trying to set up (whether cities should regularize Uber or fix taxis), one important change is that Uber now has the capital to make self-driving cars happen, and will continue to have the capital to make them continue to improve, and the taxi industry and transportation agencies don't. That is, I'm not drawing a huge distinction between Uber and Lyft, since both are questionably legal, but between Uber/Lyft/etc. and taxis. You could argue that letting Uber run self-driving cars is better than trying to have government-run self-driving cars.

Depends a lot on whether Uber themselves are making this happen, or we're looking to Tesla, Google, etc. If self-driving cars are going to happen anyway, then there's an argument from the other direction that permitting Uber has no long-term benefits.

Uber would have an entrenched brand worldwide and benefits of scale and purchasing power. Would you tackle McDonalds with an international effort to roll out burgers? You have access to the same teenage workers, same buns and potatoes and so on, right?

Ignoring other car services, the public would have the option to buy their own self-driving car, but we'll get to the point where the majority won't. You'll be choosing between:

Own car - larger cost, garaging, cleaning, insurance, power, depreciation, fixed format (sedan, van, truck), etc.

Their car - pay per use, or subscription to use as required, hire the type of vehicle you need when you need it.

It seem highly unlikely that they're planning on waiting 20+ years it will take before fully autonomous vehicles are able to reliably navigate busy city streets and are licensed to do so without a driver behind the wheel.

I don't think it will be 20+ years in their initial, primary markets.

It'll be less than a decade, people are already talking about replacing trucks with self-driving trucks and there's been lots of research and experimentation with self-driving cars and synchronization. The pieces are slowly falling into place and the key things remaining are the laws need to accommodate autonomous vehicles and larger scale tests need to happen.

When the law catches up, insurance companies will have something in place.

When there's a large scale test, production/distribution have to ramp up.

Even if Uber can replace just 1% of their drivers with self-driving cars it would be worthwhile.

What makes Uber a competent owner/operator of a car fleet, compared to someone like Avis?

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