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Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source

reuters.com

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Re: Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source

#91

Post by danvoell »

usaphp wrote: post #87
archildress wrote: post #80

Uber is an interesting company for a number of reasons, but here's the part that interests me the most: Uber operates in a grey-area legal environment in the cities it operates in. Uber's defense / view on this is that they generate such a societal positive in terms of jobs that it outweighs the legal constraints. But, when your goal is to eventually use a fleet of self-driving cars and eliminate the job possibilitie…

> "über's defense/view on this is that they generate such a societal positive in terms of jobs that it outweighed the legal constrains" I doubt they care a bit about the amount of jobs they are creating, I would say their view is "they generate such a positive amount of cash that it outweighs the legal constrains" and if they see a possibility of removing their highest expense of getting that cash - they won't bat an…

I think it will be very interesting to see what happens with self-driving car regulation. I foresee the money going from taxi drivers -> Uber -> Gov/Uber Split & no more jobs.

Re: Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source

#92

Post by [deleted] »

bertil wrote: post #43
f_allwein wrote: post #38

This is the (German) article this is based on: http://m.manager-magazin.de/unternehmen/autoindustrie/a-1082... It says they plan to buy "a six digit number of cars", and they're only interested in self driving cars.

It Daimler can deliver cars that are able to handle Uber rides without a driver, including driving empty to location (considering Uber would send a destination location) then 100k vehicle does not sound like a lot. That feels like a big if, though. Having a deal in stock rather than cash also makes sense: it is unlikely that many people would buy cars from Daimler or anyone if Uber charges at cost (gas + maintenance)…

[deleted]

Re: Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source

#94

Post by ucsdrake »

tixocloud wrote: post #77
timme wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's not. Most of them are E-classes.

How do taxi drivers afford them?

Unfortunately I don't have any articles to back this up, just anecdotal discussions with drivers in Germany, but;

First: they're a domestic car manufacturer, lower cost to deliver to local drivers. Second: they're able to offer specific taxi options, such as manual front seat adjustment (vs automagic). Third: they offer a substantial discount to taxi drivers (they justify the discount through the marketing value of having large number of individuals ride in their cars).

Such discounts for marketing purposes is quite common in the industry. I've also heard dealerships sell cars to rental car companies at a loss, just to make sure customers have access to their cars (and will possibly consider buying that type of car for the next purchase).

Re: Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source

#96

Post by sirkneeland »

williamcotton wrote: post #72

How does this benefit Uber? Imagine Daimler can produce 100,000 self-driving cars. They would continue to produce and sell self-driving cars to other people as well. They could sell self-driving cars to Lyft. Individuals could operate their own self-driving car services. They could organize in to cartels and have a single app that competes with Uber or Lyft. Uber is destined to be a commodity in an open marketplace o…

I think the other function Uber serves is not just an aggregator of supply (of cars and drivers) but of demand (passengers). It is far from a trivial effort to have a sufficient amount of users know of your app/service, download and install it, trust it enough to add payment details and use it.

While not quite as insurmountable an obstacle as, say, making a new smartphone platform (sorry Palm/Nokia/BlackBerry/Microsoft), it is enough of one to make this far from a perfect, liquid market.

Re: Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source

#97

Post by danvoell »

adamt wrote: post #36
mmakunas wrote: post #6

Maybe I'm missing something but that number sounds hard to believe. An S-Class in the US is $100K. Even if a stripped down "utility" version was available at $50K that's $5B worth of cars. Yes, it's a "long term" order (i.e., not paid for and delivered at once), but that seems way beyond anything even Uber would do.

The deal is probably similar to the way an airline buys planes. E.g consider when Ryanair bought 200 737s for $22Bn [1] which is about the same in it's entire market cap. An order like this is probably: * For a delivery spread over 10+ years * The vehicles will almost certainly be leased/finance * Each vehicle will probably assume a 5+ year working life and have a residual of about perhaps 25% of list after 5 years g…

Thanks for the breakdown, it was a helpful analysis.

Re: Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source

#98

Post by jellicle »

mixedbit wrote: post #76
nikkwong wrote: post #66

Another concern for uber is what are people going to do to the inside of these driverless cars now? Passengers today are respectful to ridesharing vehicles they sit in--because the owner of the vehicle is close at hand and the human connection commands some respect. But when its just a group of (maybe drunk) passengers in an empty vehicle--where's the accountability?

Passengers won't be anonymous and Uber already has reputation system. Also you can already rent a car, and rented cars are usually not vandalized.

Rental cars aren't vandalized because they are inspected before and after every rental by rental company employees.

Driverless rental vehicles will very quickly look like the back of public buses. "Dave {hearts} Christina" inscribed on every surface.

Re: Uber seeking to buy self-driving cars: source

#100

Post by mikejarema »

Someone wrote: post #62
mixedbit wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if they expect to use them as self driving cars (which the article mentions), the investment can pay out pretty quickly. Say they can make on average 5$ per ride. To make $60k they need 12k rides. A self driving car should be able to easily make 12k rides in one year (only 32 rides per day).

Only 32 rides per day? I would think that's pushing the limit. You will have to buy cars for peak times, so most of them will see only a few hours of use each day. At a guessed 6 hours of busy service a day, that's 5 trips an hour, or 6 minutes to drive to a customer and 6 to drive him where he wants to be. Also, a risk here is that other large parties will make the same calculation, flood the market (anybody with mo…

Perhaps they're purchasing these to handle the constant/baseline load of riders throughout the day, and then will continue to use human drivers & contractors to supplement demand beyond that, eg. the peaks times you mention.

So it'd be the best of both worlds for Uber: being able to put the self-driving vehicles to use around the clock and not having to make a capital investment to handle spikes in demand, which would just continue to be handled by existing drivers (for now). Just call in the human backup to help out when required.

I'm also wondering if they made the huge order so that they'd be able to influence and guide the requirements for the vehicles to Uber's specs. It seems that the requirements for a self-driving car for an individual's use differs from that for commercial taxiing.

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