Quote:
Originally Posted by Mihkel05
Drivers are a temporary problem.
This is like saying "workers are a temporary problem", because robots are going to do everything humans do. Well sure, but not yet. Labor still matters to any real company.
Quote:
The real money will be in logistics. Ride sharing is just the beach head to a multi trillion dollar market.
The problems of logistics businesses don't suddenly get turned on their head because drivers aren't there. All the backup and support systems still need to exist. You still need marketing and market share and all of the rest. The driver or lack thereof, although a large expense, is perhaps the least important determinant of success of a logistics business.
Quote:
How people don't understand these two basic facts is mind blowing.
Every man and his dog understands that autonomous transport going to be big.
The non-idiots also understand that there's an uncertain time frame until the first autonomous transport exists (somewhere from 5 years to 20+ years depending on what problems come up), and the ones that'll be around to leverage their foothold into autonomous logistics need to first make it there. Which involves dealing with laws and drivers and unions.
At this stage you don't even know if autonomous logistics is going to be profitable. At the moment, a major source of differentiation between companies (and the reason Uber survives at all and gained market share) is that there is a pay differential and a legislation differential. Uber can pay their drivers far less and avoid paying the government money by getting around taxi legislation. They pocket some of this difference and pass the rest on to consumers. The murky legality also discourages competitors.
What happens when the pay differential and the legality differential disappears with autonomous cars? How do Uber have an edge over taxi companies or other corporates who enter this space?
In other words, you're rather ******edly putting the cart way before the horse. What matters is how Uber deals with the real world, right now and in the near future.
Even if we accept that autonomous driving is coming in 5 years, who will own the first software? Will it be ultra high-resolution, ultra-reliable-map dependent for the first 10 years of so, as is the current direction of technology (since object recognition is insufficient with current sensors)? Who will make and own these maps? Will they license to Uber? Car companies? Or use them for their own profitable ventures?
This is all just pie-in-the-sky bull****. What matters right now is drivers and regulations and competitors. Making out like there's a "beachhead" to driverless logistics and that it's the biggest issue, is just stupid.
For the long term I'd actually be far more inclined to bet on someone like Amazon to own the logistics space, rather than an Internet app maker with no hardware, no warehousing, no local presence, and no clue about anything other than driver background checks and app making.