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Re:SpaceX Profitable as Musk Pulls in NASA Contracts, Google... by frandroid on Wednesday March 04, 2015 @03:54PM (#9147260)
The business model in a self-driving car is THE SELF-DRIVING CAR...
Re:SpaceX Profitable as Musk Pulls in NASA Contracts, Google... by manicdee on Wednesday March 04, 2015 @06:58PM (#9148321)
… that deliberately takes routes which maximise your exposure to its owners advertising, services and products.
Re:SpaceX Profitable as Musk Pulls in NASA Contracts, Google... by edgyswingset on Wednesday March 04, 2015 @04:10PM (#9147377)
... unless they're interested in taking in a loss for each vehicle or only selling to the richest people in the world.
Re:SpaceX Profitable as Musk Pulls in NASA Contracts, Google... by jdpage on Wednesday March 04, 2015 @05:17PM (#9147768)
The business model for the self-driving car is a computer-scheduled, dynamically-provisioned taxi service cheap enough that nobody needs to own a car in the city. Because self-driving cars don't need to park (they can just move on to the next assignment or deprovision), if they catch on then in-city parking decks can be redeveloped into business space or park space.
Re:SpaceX Profitable as Musk Pulls in NASA Contracts, Google... by lazaroclapp on Wednesday March 04, 2015 @06:22PM (#9148140)
You forget transportation of goods. Pretty much all over-land cargo in the U.S. and most of that elsewhere (less so, because trains) could be transported by self-driving cars/drones. Not sure if that is larger or smaller than transportation of people at this point, but it's still an astronomically huge market.
Re:SpaceX Profitable as Musk Pulls in NASA Contracts, Google... by eru on Wednesday March 04, 2015 @10:38PM (#9149095)
US is actually pretty big in freight trains.

Mostly because, freight and passenger trains interfere badly. No passengers = easier freight. A big wave of deregulation of the market a few decades ago helped, too. The Economist ran a special about the US market a few years ago.

Re:SpaceX Profitable as Musk Pulls in NASA Contracts, Google... by manicdee on Wednesday March 04, 2015 @06:56PM (#9148310)
Transport is something like 30% of the world economy isn't it?