There's a way out of this that doesn't involve self-driving vehicles if Uber's willing to give up some control: 3rd party integrations.
If they allowed other ride-share/delivery services to integrate seamlessly into the Uber app/driver onboarding process, they don't need to build self-driving vehicles. They just level up from a driver dispatch service to a general dispatch service.
It'd be pretty tough for any one car manufacturer to go their own on a ride-sharing/delivery platform as long as Uber does everything they can to keep competition on both their inputs and outputs thriving.
If they allowed other ride-share/delivery services to integrate seamlessly into the Uber app/driver onboarding process, they don't need to build self-driving vehicles. They just level up from a driver dispatch service to a general dispatch service.
It'd be pretty tough for any one car manufacturer to go their own on a ride-sharing/delivery platform as long as Uber does everything they can to keep competition on both their inputs and outputs thriving.