Is it really the case that those charges are high because the drivers are getting paid so much, or because the vehicles and things like deadheading are expensive? Uber’s been driving driver compensation down for years but there’s only so much room for further reductions and it’s not like the hardware or support for self-driving systems is free.

yeah, I'm not familiar on the economics of it, and I'm not saying you should buy stock in autonomous vehicle companies. This was more of musing that in theory, if the economics of ride sharing are low enough, it could compete with people buying or leasing cars.

> If it ended up being in the low hundreds, well, that's lower than a lot of people's car payments. Couples or roommates could share a car for non commuting purposes or trips.

So the leap here is based on "Autonomous taxi companies will charge less per ride than rideshare"?

perhaps.