"Recliner" wrote in message
...
tim... wrote:
"Recliner" wrote in message
...
tim... wrote:
"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).
Why do you think Uber will buy its self-driving cabs for cash? That's
not
how most business vehicles are bought.
Someone still has to give them all of that credit. Even if the cars are
lease hired and they don't sit directly on the books for Uber, the hirer
is
still going to need to be sure of Uber's creditworthiness
So how do you think current Uber drivers get credit?
But they are all individuals
they each arrange their credit on a personal basis. The lender is spreading
his risk amongst 1000s of people, not just one company
recent immigrants with no credit history are a better bet than Silocon
Valley's most valuable private corporation?
The idea that the people doing that will give Uber 100% (or even 50%) of
the
worldwide opportunities for autonomous rental cars is just silly
Your sage investment advice is wasted here. You should be earning
megabucks
advising the likes of these naive companies:
https://www.crunchbase.com/organizat...funding-rounds
I have already explained, this is risk capital with the backers expecting a
return on only 1 in 3 of their investments. Uber has been measured against
that criteria. You really can't use the measure that VCs are investing as
proof that a venture is guaranteed to be successful. The world is littered
with VC failures, including some that required investments in the Billions.
How much did Microsoft lose buying Skyp?
The sums of money required to buy the number of cars that you need to flood
the world's markets for taxi with autonomous vehicles far exceeds the amount
of risk capital available and needs to move into the world of normal
business funding. These people will be far more circumspect.
Anyway, here's a recent report of Uber's self-driving tests in
Pittsburgh:
http://www.economist.com/news/busine...cars-pitt-stop
"The cars are not truly driverless yet"
so until and unless they are (and I remain sceptical that the industry is
going to get regulatory approve for that any time soon)
It's all words
No, it's not all words. There is a growing fleet of real cars, driving
themselves on public roads, in multiple cities (soon to include London),
carrying real passengers. Nobody says that fully autonomous, unsupervised
cabs will be released in the next few months, but the technology has made
remarkable progress. It may only be in alpha test right now, but the
commercial release within a few years is entirely believable.
If you're prepared to pay 50 grand for a new car, perhaps
tim