It's clear to me the economics moving forward point towards the elimination of personal cars in favor of on-demand uber type driverless cars. The cost to own a vehicle will be prohibitively high relative to just ordering a self driving car whenever people travel due to the far greater utilization percentage for shared cars.
I think everyone sees this and are therefore competing to end up with a self driving uber type fleet. The massive advantage Tesla will have is the ability to transition without massive balance sheet absorption of millions of cars. Uber, Apple, Google will all need to build, buy or lease mass quantities of self driving cars. Tesla on the other hand is purposefully making autodriving hardware standard in all their cars. That's because the entire fleet can be flipped to act as Tesla's mobility fleet on demand and gradually through different cities/states as the specific laws allow for full autonomy.
I believe Part 2 of the Model 3 unveil will be Elon Musk letting everyone know that all Tesla's will be able to be rented out as soon as full autonomy is legal in the owner's geographic vicinity. So anyone ordering a Model 3 will actually be able to earn a fee for renting out their car by the hour/mile. The car will be able to drive away when not in use by owner and pick up other drivers and pay the owner a fee. This all won't be ready by the end of next year but Elon will let everyone know the hardware is in place. I believe by 2018 they will switch all Tesla's from the current autopilot hardware to the newer full suite hardware that will eventually be capable of full autonomy when the software/legal structure is ready.
I think everyone sees this and are therefore competing to end up with a self driving uber type fleet. The massive advantage Tesla will have is the ability to transition without massive balance sheet absorption of millions of cars. Uber, Apple, Google will all need to build, buy or lease mass quantities of self driving cars. Tesla on the other hand is purposefully making autodriving hardware standard in all their cars. That's because the entire fleet can be flipped to act as Tesla's mobility fleet on demand and gradually through different cities/states as the specific laws allow for full autonomy.
I believe Part 2 of the Model 3 unveil will be Elon Musk letting everyone know that all Tesla's will be able to be rented out as soon as full autonomy is legal in the owner's geographic vicinity. So anyone ordering a Model 3 will actually be able to earn a fee for renting out their car by the hour/mile. The car will be able to drive away when not in use by owner and pick up other drivers and pay the owner a fee. This all won't be ready by the end of next year but Elon will let everyone know the hardware is in place. I believe by 2018 they will switch all Tesla's from the current autopilot hardware to the newer full suite hardware that will eventually be capable of full autonomy when the software/legal structure is ready.