"Recliner" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 23 Sep 2016 11:01:31 +0100, "tim..."
wrote:



I know

but they can afford one city as a trial on the basis of their current
funding

but scaling it up to 10,000 cities just isn't going to be cheap, and I
defy
them to find the funding for such.

They won't be rolling driverless cabs worldwide in one go.

That's my point

if, once proven, they don't roll out in London/Paris/Rome/loads of other
places at the same time, someone else will

The resident of London, Paris, Rome and loads of other places are not going
to sit back and wait for Uber to reach them with the benefits of driverless
cars, they are going to expect it to arrive today. And there *will* be a PV
prepared to fund that.

It'll
happen in stages, and I wouldn't expect large, complex cities to be
among the first to get them. And Uber isn't exactly facing a cash flow
crisis: it has around $4bn in the bank. That will pay for mapping
quite a few cities.

But it won't pay for the capital costs of the taxi fleets for 10,000 cities

It will pay for one (100,000 cabs at 40K each - 100,000 is half the number
of taxis in London, and I very much doubt that first generation autonomous
cars will cost under 40K).

But I'm sure Uber's investors will be keen to seek your expert advice
on Uber's prospects, as you appear to know so much more about the
company than they do.

PVs simply do not put all their eggs into one basket (they expect a failure
rate of 2 out of 3).

funding the autonomous taxi needs of 10,000 cities will require more than
the few tech companies currently prepared to fund Uber. It will require the
whole capital market.

And the whole market is not going to put all its eggs in the Uber basket.

And ISTM likely that many of the backers know diddly squat about Uber's
prospects, they are backing a punt and hoping for the bigger fool.

I have seen many a company, backed by PVs who talked up their prospects in
the same way that Uber are, that ultimately failed. Rhetoric is worth
nothing. The only difference her is that Uber are bigger (and then the
fallacy of sunk cost helps to keep them alive longer than they might
otherwise be allowed to prove themselves - this may be enough, it may not)

tim