Uber Buys Autonomous Truck Company Otto

Uber also made a deal with Volvo to cooperate on self-driving cars. Self-driving cars are an existential threat to Uber if Uber doesn ' t develop them first. Suppose Ford makes self-driving cars viable a few years before does and rolls them out in many cities. Uber gets wiped out by Ford ' s ability to charge less for a ride. Uber ' s big competitive advantage from a large set of recruited drivers could vanish as fast as sufficiently safe autonomous vehicles can get manufactured. Sufficiently safe: that ' s the challenge. But autonomous vehicle makers who limit themselves to some urban markets can lower the bar for their initial roll-out by just excluding any streets and corners that are too tricky to handle. They ' ll lose some...

Source: FuturePundit - August 18, 2016 Category: Research Authors: Randall Parker Source Type: blogs