
Lyft is building a self-driving platform with auto supplier Magna - coloneltcb
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/14/lyft-is-building-a-self-driving-platform-with-auto-supplier-magna/
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otakucode
This seems to me like it would be an extremely short-term play, wouldn't it
be? Company X gets an early source on self-driving cars and begins taking over
Ubers market. Then consumers start getting self-driving cars. And someone else
develops an app to let those people rent their cars when not being used and
destroys Company Xs market. In the extreme, a company pops up and offers
people free or drastically reduced cost self-driving cars so long as they
dedicate a certain number of hours a week to the self-driving rental network.
At the end of the day, the whole rideshare thing is an information service. A
few servers running an API that client apps can communicate with. And the
servers are optional. Building a purely p2p version of it would be slightly
more challenging, but one would think market forces might pressure towards
that. And at that point, only the people actually offering value, the ones
providing vehicles, will be the ones making money from ridesharing.

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brokensegue
People stop owning cars once SDC is dominant is the theory

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drb91
I’m extremely skeptical lyft is replacing anyone’s car. The “sweet spot” is
cities, and you probably already didn’t need a car if lyft is all you need.

Meanwhile, leaving the city would be extremely expensive and unreliable with
lyft.

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220V_USKettle
You can't take a self-driving Lyft to the airport or the self-driving bus
terminal?

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drb91
I don’t think either go to where I would like to spend time. If you want to go
into the country, you need a car. A bus could get you to a place, but
everything would be so spread out you’d have to hitchhike or use crazily
expensive taxis—i’m talking 1$/minute here.

But, I see your point about going to other large public transit areas and I
agree wholeheartedly. It’s already about twenty times cheaper to BART to SFO
than to grab a lyft. Yet I grab the lyft anyway....

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progfix
The info-link to Magna is wrong. This is Magna:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_International](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_International)

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an4rchy
Is this another round of investment, from Magna, or has this already been
accounted for in the previous raise?

