Uber should borrow your new driverless car

It’s reported Uber have plans to reduce their dependency on human drivers and their vehicles through introducing driverless cars.

Uber is currently the modern day equivalent of your old school taxi company - just without many of the limitations and drawbacks that these have. However, if it does continue down the route of purchasing driverless cars and operating these directly - it becomes a company managing what could be an extremely large fleet of driverless vehicles.

Given that the rise of driverless cars will also happen within the private car ownership space initially - it strikes me there is actually a better opportunity adopting a hybrid model.

If the current appetite from people for car finance (either ownership or user-ship) continues and there is still a desire to have their own vehicle, would they be willing to offer it up during non-use for companies such as Uber?

When you think about it, people are already willing to fork out money each month for a vehicle which remains unused for the majority of the day, minus the morning and evening commute. So, why wouldn’t this continue with the introduction of driverless cars?

Though this time, your vehicle could have an Uber navigation app installed and be turned into a taxi during it’s downtime - all while you sip on your morning coffee.

Sounds good to me. Uber continues to have a relationship with human drivers, but begins to dip into driverless cars without having a massive upfront investment.