[lacker]

It's funny to use "the market value of all taxi companies combined" as a proxy for how valuable the self-driving market will be, because that's exactly the reasoning that led people to underestimate Uber. The market value of all taxi companies combined was pretty small when Uber started.

That said, you could be right! Maybe self-driving will never be worth more than that. It's really hard to tell what business models will be like in the future. But this is the cultural mismatch, it seemed like GM leadership did not want to be in a risky business where they were betting billions of dollars on the success of self-driving. Clearly, to some people, that seemed like a really good bet to make. Time will tell.

[Alive-in-2025]

Of course a new genre defining company can do what existing companies did and vastly increase the market if they make it better, more efficient, easier whatever. All taxi companies are not all transportation needs, not even on the road. Busses, planes, etc. There will be really new market niches, how about if your RV lets you sleep comfortably and drives all night, you never need to pay or stop (if you can sleep in a moving vehicle), gas or charge itself up.

I was thinking it won't be just one company with this tech, so they'll compete and reduce the value of driverless cars down, by attacking the profit of each other. That would be healthier than having pseudo monopoly power because there are only 2 of them - like say ios and android are basically the world of cell phones, with a few very tiny other companies.

[gruez]

>The market value of all taxi companies combined was pretty small when Uber started.

Were there even reliable metrics for this? They only seem small like car dealerships seem small - not of consolidation.