Waymo will be first to market and will not likely sell their self-driving software to other would-be rideshare players (or their suppliers) for several years. All other OEMs, Tier 1s and startups in this space will be quick to follow with a comparable self-driving system by 2021. With all the new regulatory hurdles in mobility (as seen with scooter mania), I doubt that Waymo will just be able to throw money to scale fast enough to push out future competitors.
Once those self-driving systems hit around ~99.99% reliability, they will be indistinguishable from each other. Therefore, self-driving systems will be commoditized and sold to any vehicle manufacturer. Generally speaking, existing Tier 1/2 suppliers already plan to do this.
From there, anyone with $25M can probably just lease a bunch of vehicles, software, parking space and routing software to launch a regional TNC. Given a single region focus, these new regional TNCs should be able to outcompete Uber/Lyft. Remember that Uber/Lyft's greatest advantage is their supply of drivers; riders will happily download an app that delivers cheaper rides.
Today, it doesn't make sense to build core self-driving technology unless you have a strong resume to do so. Just wait 4-5 years and you'll be able to buy it off the rack (more or less). I am very happy that Waymo isn't the only one building because otherwise we wouldn't have strong enough market forces to drive down the cost of mobility.
>From there, anyone with $25M can probably just lease a bunch of vehicles, software, parking space and routing software to launch a regional TNC. Given a single region focus, these new regional TNCs should be able to outcompete Uber/Lyft. Remember that Uber/Lyft's greatest advantage is their supply of drivers; riders will happily download an app that delivers cheaper rides.
If you are willing to lose money like uber was, why wouldn't you be able to launch a competitor with drivers? I bet drivers would download a new app to make more money even faster than passengers would download such an app to save money.
I mean, if anything, a system where you own (or lease in an inflexible way) the cars makes your up-front costs higher; I think new driver incentives right now are on the order of a few grand; a lot less than the cost of a new car with top-end tech. I mean, double the signup bonuses of uber, and you'll quickly get drivers to open your app, and you've still spent a lot less up-front.
Of course, your long-term profitability looks a lot better if you can just own the cars, but make no mistake about it; uber's moat is that you have to lose money at first to build up a critical mass of vehicles (and that uber is willing to continue to operate at a loss)
Directly owning/leasing the vehicles rather than paying owner-operators per mile might be cheaper long term, but it doesn't lower the up-front cost of getting a critical mass of vehicles on the road.
Once those self-driving systems hit around ~99.99% reliability, they will be indistinguishable from each other. Therefore, self-driving systems will be commoditized and sold to any vehicle manufacturer. Generally speaking, existing Tier 1/2 suppliers already plan to do this.
From there, anyone with $25M can probably just lease a bunch of vehicles, software, parking space and routing software to launch a regional TNC. Given a single region focus, these new regional TNCs should be able to outcompete Uber/Lyft. Remember that Uber/Lyft's greatest advantage is their supply of drivers; riders will happily download an app that delivers cheaper rides.
Today, it doesn't make sense to build core self-driving technology unless you have a strong resume to do so. Just wait 4-5 years and you'll be able to buy it off the rack (more or less). I am very happy that Waymo isn't the only one building because otherwise we wouldn't have strong enough market forces to drive down the cost of mobility.
Disclaimer: Founder of an AV related startup.