Uber Seeking To Buy Self-Driving Cars (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader writes from an article on Reuters: In order to save money from hiring drivers, ride-hailing service Uber has shown interest in placing a large order for self-driving cars, an auto industry source said on Friday. "They wanted autonomous cars," the source, who declined to be named, said. "It seemed like they were shopping around." Earlier on Friday, Germany's Manager Magazin reported that Uber had placed an order for at least 100,000 Mercedes S-Class cars, citing sources at both companies. [The top-flight limousine does not yet have fully autonomous driving functionality.] Another source familiar with the matter said no order had been placed with Mercedes-Benz. Diamler and Uber declined to comment. Auto industry executives are wary of doing deals with newcomers from the technology and software business who threaten to upend established business models based on manufacturing and selling cars. "We don't want to end up like Nokia's handset business, which was once hugely profitable... then disappeared," a second auto industry source said about doing a deal with Uber.

Comments

"the source, who declined to be named"

[tlambert]

"the source, who declined to be named"

So ... "some guy said Uber wants to buy self driving cars instead of hiring drivers".

(1) Uber does not hire drivers; Uber uses contractors

(2) Uber is not a taxi company

(3) If Uber owned the cars, self driving or not, they damn well *would* be a taxi company

(4) Uber has no interest in *being* a taxi company, because that would cause them to fall under onerous regulations that the taxi companies have lobbied to put in place over the last century, as an anticompetitive measure to keep other taxi companies from coming into existence and competing against them.

It's pretty obvious that about the stupidest thing Uber could possibly do is buy self-driving cars. If self-driving cars ever become a viable thing, then Uber will most likely *contract* with the owners of the self-driving cars, rather than owning the cars themselves, and that way they can remain a ride sharing service, rather than getting sucked into the morass that is the taxi industry.