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Comment by le-mark

1 day ago

This exactly; self driving was a large part of their valuation iirc.

The part I don't fully understand is what leverage this gives Uber over anyone else? Uber doesn't have the fleet management, mechanics, cleaners or even storage facilities. They do have the most used taxi app, but that seems like a very small edge.

There's nothing stopping the car makers from running their own taxi service and they already have networks of mechanics and cleaner as well as some level of storage. They'd need to scale up, but they don't need to start from zero.

Ubers success is in large part build on not having to own AND MANAGE their cars. With self-driving cars that advantage disappears, unless they're gaming that "drivers" will buy the cars and lease it to them.