Everyone is assuming customers are price sensitive, it could be that the losses are designed to achieve monopolies and drive out competition while establishing a large two sided network and once achieved they use monopoly pricing power to extract value from price insensitive customers. It’s a reasonable thesis based on history.

I just personally thing this class of company will never achieve positive unit economics because people are price sensitive, and the service is a commodity with no meaningful network effect

I’m pretty sure price sensitivity is already well studied and proven in this case given all of the surge pricing they already experiment with

I agree, that's why, despite understanding the investment thesis, as I point out in my last sentence, I am skeptical.

It is completely valid to question the value of being first to market. Will anybody care about Uber or Lyft if a new player, Company X, has a fleet of hundreds of thousands of autonomous vehicles in all major U.S. cities? Consumers have shown us just how easy it is to switch to a new app.

I concur that the branding wouldn't matter-- if the existing rideshare companies couldn't strike a deal with makers of autonomous vehicles, they won't be getting a share of the autonomous profits. Of course, these companies are actually developing their own technology. But that is far from their singular focus today.

Quietly, I assume there are folks operating on the thought that market dominance doesn't matter. We don't hear about them today very much, because they don't get much media attention.