tim... wrote:

"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.

Just curious, how much have you invested in VC funds? How any are you
invested in?

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.

VCs stop investing early in the many early stage companies that aren't
likely to make it. They don't participate in funding round after funding
round in the flops. Can't you see this in the many reports you get from
your VC investments, as I do from mine?
[I have investments in dozens of VC funds, as I'm sure you must too.]


How much did Microsoft lose buying Skyp?

What is Skyp? It sounds like like a rubbish bin.

If you're referring to Skype, it wasn't Microsoft that first bought it. The
original investors in Skype did rather well when it was bought for $2.6bn
in 2005, only two years after its first release. The later VC investors did
even better when MSFT paid $8.5bn in 2011 (a huge increase from the
enterprise value of $2.9bn in 2009). So Skype has been a huge success for
VCs.

As MSFT hasn't sold Skype, and probably won't, I don't know how you are
trying to calculate the loss you think it's made. But whatever it is, MSFT
isn't a VC. It does numerous acquisitions, some of which it handles well,
and many that it doesn't. But it enriches VCs along the way. I have
first-hand knowledge of this -- do you?


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.

Again, you seem to live in a different world. Initially, autonomous cabs
will simply replace existing ones, and only in mapped cities. So the
numbers are not huge, and they should be no harder to fund than other
business vehicles.

And, again, if you have such amazing knowledge of the VC industry, why
aren't you selling it to the people who are already making billions, to
help them become even richer? Perhaps they'd like to be as successful in
business as you presumably are?


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

I dare say the current cars cost a *lot* more than that. But for someone
as knowledgeable about investing as you, who is presumably a billionaire,
that would be a cheap car...