Drivers are just temporary anyway. Uber is going to be the company to beat when autonomous cars make Autos as a Service a huge business. I see that, and not some low-margin package delivery service, as the driver of their future growth.
Uber won't be able to compete in the age of automated drivers. Uber is successful because of their drivers, not despite them. The network effect of having the most drivers lets Uber maintain its dominance in the market. Autos as a Service will be a race to the bottom and there will be a smaller gateway to entry than there is now.
You act like it's a big binary shift one day. But it's not.
Uber has massive consumer mindshare, and its still growing fast. When they start phasing-in self driving cars you will have a day where your UberPool ride to work was driven by a human, but your UberPool home happened to be an autonomous car.
Uber is building a brand as the go-to transportation service and that won't be displaced just because another company deploys a fleet of autonomous cars with their own app. Even if that company is Google. Sure, it's a competitive threat, and I have no idea if Uber will be a brand people know in 25 years. But in 5-10? I think they are positioning themselves for dominance as the provider of autonomous transportation.
It's still a race to the bottom. Competitors will compete on price (the only thing that really matters at that point) and those with larger wallets or who manufacturer the automated cars (or likely both) will be able to out-price them.
Yes, this is exactly the point. The situation is going to be that Google will be in control and Uber will be a thing of the past. Google has the money to enter the automated taxi game. Uber does not have the money to compete with Google. They may get lucky and profit from Google just buying them up, but that's about it.
