The key factor in the Uber/Lyft business model is not so much anticipating self-driving cars, as offloading the overhead costs of inventory (who owns and maintains the cars) onto someone else, so they can focus on just being a service broker and not have to get into all the messy details of large, expensive physical objects. From that viewpoint, self-driving cars really improve things more for the car owners, by decoupling having the car provide a service from having to drive the car yourself, thus reducing the overhead to the car owner.
It's certainly interesting. But I am doubtful about the self-driving cars being a factor. There are at least 4 companies developing the technology and there is really no indication that it will prove a barrier to entry at this point.
Paywall: https://www.economist.com/business/2019/04/27/can-uber-ever-...
Really excellent post by OP - thank you.
Ostensibly both Uber and Lyft are doing the same thing, but with the item that will bring the marginal cost down being self-driving cars. They've both bet big in order to capture the market, because it's likely that whoever owns the market before that transition will own it afterwards as well.
It does seem like there was probably more optimism that the technology would materialize sooner than it really has, but assuming it materializes some time in the near future it's likely that whatever company manages to hold onto the market until then will reap massive rewards.
It's clearly a risky bet, but at least from my view doesn't seem like a pump and dump type of scheme.