At that point, something like Uber still makes sense as a centralized ride brokerage. Cab companies will have driverless cars that go everywhere, but on many cities, no company will have enough cars for you to just want to go to their website to request a ride.
It becomes a mix of Expedia an an auction site. You say where you are, and where you want to go, and get bids from car companies that claim to be able to get to you in X time, and charge you Y to get to your destination. You get to pick. With automated cars, their bids are all by algorithm.
I'd be shocked if the Uber people weren't thinking about this problem today.
> At that point, something like Uber still makes sense as a centralized ride brokerage.
Since this is such an obvious part of the business model, I don't think they will get the chance to do this.
There's one thing people don't yet understand about robots in the public space. Who carries the responsibility for the driving, and for accidents ? Currently for normal cars this is shared between producer and driver. With self-driving cars both the producer and driver are one and the same company, and obviously the occupants won't feel a great sense of responsibility, they'll feel they are victims, for obvious reasons : they didn't do anything.
So ownership and insurance of things don't make sense for driver less cars. Ownership of them doesn't make sense because the responsibility thing doesn't work if you don't allow the producer remote access to do anything they want to the car. Insurance doesn't make sense for similar reasons.
So yes I'm sure the car companies will allow Uber to take part in some "affiliate" scheme, but I'd expect that to be the limit of their involvement.
I think the general idea behind driverless cars is that they can be JIT-rented, and since Uber would have the infrastructure in place, they would be the natural market leader.
I've always thought that was Uber's endgame. Get in now and establish a brand with existing technology (taxi drivers) so that you're ready to capture the new market when it's ready (driverless cars).
If history has proven anything, it is that evolution always wins.