I think the odds that Uber would make money developing self driving cars was approximately zero. Look where Tesla Motors is after fourteen years in terms of producing and selling automobiles and without internal competition from another primary line of business.

Self driving vehicles will have the same profile as the existing automotive industry: high capital costs and commodity margins. The existing automotive mega-corporations already have the capital investment and distribution networks like ships and rail cars and lots and auto-carrier semi-trailers. Tesla is building some of that and the jury is still out on whether Tesla will make a meaningful dent.

Even the idea of Uber rolling out a self-driving fleet means a massive infusion of capital that is at odds with its current cost structure. And the existing automotive mega-corps can step into the ondemand business with a cost advantage in regard to rolling out vehicle fleets.

What still isn't clear to me is why Uber is involved in the development of self-driving cars, vs. profiteering and duplicating once the first viable examples have been released.

On the surface autonomous vehicles appear to be a long-term capital draining exercise. Do they view the first mover advantage as that beneficial in this case that they'd risk all their future growth to be first to market for something that they could, conceivably, get a better ROI for being "second" to market with a more durable option?

Uber reached its current success with a first mover advantage.

But I think the real reason is that everyone building self-driving cars today - including the big car manufacturers - will have little interest in selling to Uber. They will be running their own Uber-style Car-as-a-Service.

IOW, Tesla will be to Uber as Uber wants to be to its drivers.

I agree, especially considering the uber was not considered at fault. This gives uber press in a different light.

The 'Uber Driver' may not be at fault, however the car failed to prevent or avoid an accident. It suddenly appears self-driving cars are no safer than human driven cars. Of course these are purely speculations but valid points.

Interesting to see it's flipped itself somehow, too, I wonder what the computer decided to do that it maybe shouldn't have done? I suspect Uber will keep very quiet on this one, as there's all kinds of assumptions to be made.

There's also a difference between the other driver being responsible for the incident because they failed to yield and pulled out in a dangerous and illegal manner and it not being possible the Uber vehicle could have responded better to the other car's dangerous driving.

One would need to know more details. Yields in particular is one area where, under many conditions, you have to expect drivers to do reasonable things. Of course, you don't expect a driver to just blow through a yield sign. But maybe the driver with the right of way slows down a bit or changes lanes to let someone in or because they see someone edging out into traffic.

During the behind-the-wheel test, I slowed down toward the 4-way junction in which I had the right of way.

The examiner marked it as a minor mistake; He told me that I could get rear end for that. I didn't argue with him as he was the examiner. But I'd prefer 10 rear ends over one t-bone.

When implementing a self-driving car, I'm not sure if we can explicitly write code that is against the DMV guidelines. For example, human seems to slow down at the junction even with the right of way and drive 5mph over the speed limit.

"It suddenly appears self-driving cars are no safer than human driven cars," says the guy who just read an article about a crash caused by a human while a self-driving car was not at fault.

You quoted me out-of-context.

I'm certainly no Uber apologist, but talk about damned if you do, damned if you don't.