Uber could adapt. If they invest in these at the right time they could flood out all the car rentals and taxis in their target areas, in fact.
This has me thinking about Zipcars. (
Car Sharing, an alternative to car rental and car ownership) I'd say this is the most desirable format for these autonomous vehicles, just sitting in parking spaces all over town ready to drive to you like taxis do today when you need them.
Taking that to the next level, we could set each car up as a DAC (Distributed Autonomous Corporation) that has its' own bank account (bitcoin wallet) and never needs a thing from any human to keep on humming along by itself... We could buy shares in ownership of that car's DAC, and make a profit from its' operation while it goes about being a taxi for anyone anywhere 24/7/365, including taking itself in for gas and maintenance, paying for them itself with bitcoin, without anyone's approval, ever.
If that car is successful, and makes enough profit, it could theoretically "give birth" to it's own workforce inside the DAC by buying more cars and taking a cut of their action. (Which pays shareholders more, of course.) Any cars that do poorly will sadly no longer be able to afford to stay in business, and will likely 'die' while the most successful cars have 'offspring.' Boom; natural selection will make these cars better and better a their jobs over time!
This idea was Google employee Mike Hearn's first thought when he realized bitcoin was programmable money. He's now on the bitcoin Dev team and is writing software for robots/drones to use their own bank accounts.
It'll likely go to quadcopter-based drones first for use as couriers before it goes to cars.
That's awesome. Another great income stream for the owner/owners of these cars.
I'm pretty sure you are refuting yourself here.
Privacy-conscious folks are trusting browsers LESS as time goes by, and with bitcoin we won't need to trust them at all soon. So if it's safe to assume that some people will want to have a private life that google doesn't drive them around to and be able to drive places that googlecars can't navigate, then clearly there will always be a market for driven/driveable cars.
