> Uber is best positioned to usher in self-driving cars.
Fleet management is all about buying, parking, filling up, maintaining, cleaning and eventually selling the vehicles once they ran their course. Why would Uber be better at all those things?
Fleet management is all about buying, parking, filling up, maintaining, cleaning and eventually selling the vehicles once they ran their course. Why would Uber be better at all those things?
Their economies of scale are akin to those of Avis or Enterprise Rent-a-Car, and those companies are not valued at high multiples, due to high upfront capital requirements, insurance burden, fast depreciation, low barrier to entry, etc.
Current multiples for Uber are there precisely because of the lack of all liabilities associated with car ownership and maintenance.
The prevailing models during those times were revisited which included prices, contracts, payments.
In your specific example about car washes, I envision a huge warehouse with multiple floors to do automated car washes which is super efficient. This will happen as there will be a metric that will show how a minute saved on the car wash floor can save the company millions of dollars because of their scale. There will be no "car wash" dealership to negotiate with.