GM
General Motors Company
stock NYSE

You are overlooking a lot of big factors: primarily Volkswagen, Mercedes, Hyundai, GM, Toyota, and Rivian. The first three have L4 autonomy. The last three are nearing it. Ford, Honda, and Nissan ain’t rolling over, either. And those are just the legacy giants. Not even counting other startups like May Mobility and WeRide.
You miss the fact that the industry is expected to 10x in the next decade and there’s a lot of major producers that manufacture cars for a lot less than Waymo can at their current $70k-$200k per car rate. Most manufacture cars cheaper than Tesla does, too.
Tesla only manufactures less than 1.5-1.8 million vehicles a year. Waymo only produces about 2k a year. 100 million vehicles are sold each year.
Let’s generously assume both will produce a combined 5 million AV’s each year. 100 million vehicles are currently sold every year and it’s projected that AV’s could reduce that by 30-50%, creating an implied demand for 30-50 million AV’s annually. So even with my generous assumptions, Tesla and Waymo combined can only supply at most 13% of the projected demand.
This is why Waymo and Tesla’s efforts to be a stand-alone provider are unlikely to be successful. Even if one happens to be available near you (which appears improbable), maybe you want/need a Mercedes or Rivian. Most likely, you’ll just want the car that is available when you need it and not care if it’s a Waymo or Tesla or anything. That’s where Uber comes in.

You think Uber should get out of ride-hailing? Do you realize how crazy that sounds? Uber is to ride-share what Google is to search engines and Coca-Cola is to soda. Their brand name is synonymous with their industry. And their industry is expected to 10x over the next decade.
I don’t think you actually understand Uber’s role or the potential for AV’s.
AV’s are coming up at the same time remote work is expanding and increasing housing costs are moving more people towards urban living.
Car ownerships costs (vehicle, financing, insurance, maintenance, and parking) right now average $12-$14k a year and it’s increasing 10% annually. That means at the current rate, the cost of car ownership will be around $33k a year in 2036.
It’s projected that 40-50% of jobs will be remote by 2035-2040. For those people, we can reasonably expect their driving habits to be cut in half to around 6k miles a year. That means they’ll be paying over $5 per mile.
Uber costs only $1.10/mile (with drivers). Mature robotaxi’s project to cost 50-80 cents per mile.
So the thesis is car ownership goes the way of owning DVD’s/CD’s and Uber becomes the Netflix/Spotify of transportation.
Do you think Toyota, GM, Volkswagen, Honda, Ford, and Hyundai are going to abandon/significantly reduce their auto manufacturing? Do you think they’ll all successfully launch their own networking platform? Or do you think they’ll become like film studios, who license their content to Netflix, use Uber as their new “dealership” to connect cars with riders?
Just like Netflix, I expect more competition. Maybe Waymo and Tesla will be among them. But I have doubts. My guess would be Tesla is at the most risk. Amazon has the most potential since they already have a massive logistics network.
But just as Prime Video didn’t sink Netflix, I don’t expect Zoox to sink Uber.

They’re currently getting them from Rivian and Lucid. Uber also has a long partnership with Toyota.
I like Uber’s flexibility more than Zoox, Waymo or Tesla. General Motors expects to have hands-off/eyes-off driving on the road by 2028. Toyota, Mercedes, and Volkswagen are also developing their own with a less certain timeline. Ford and Honda have tried but appear further behind.
So I can see two possible scenarios, both of which are good for Uber.
Scenario 1:
Uber becomes like Netflix, both an aggregator for other AV providers and a provider of their own fleet (original content), which will be purchased from Rivian, Lucid, GM, Toyota, Volkswagen or anyone they want.
Scenario 2:
If AV’s become the future, car sales are likely to decline 30-50% in the next 15 years. This would be ruinous for most auto makers. If this is the case, Uber probably won’t be the loser in the AV movement. I suspect it will be car dealerships.
In this scenario, Uber essentially takes the place of dealerships: the person connecting the car to the customer. Toyota, GM, Volkswagen, and anyone who wants to remain in the car business builds AV’s to use as Robotaxi’s on the Uber network. Uber may even provide fleet management services and make it a seamless transition for OEM’s.
Scenario 1 provides more total revenue and profit potential. Scenario 2 keeps Uber lean and has greater margin potential.
I think the whole market misunderstands Uber’s position. Either they take off and Uber benefits or they don’t and Uber still benefits.

The postwar-advantage part is true and it's Econ 101, but the rest of your post skips a lot...
US manufacturing output is near record highs in dollar terms. What collapsed was manufacturing employment, and automation ate way more of those jobs than China or Korea did. A modern US factory makes more stuff with a fraction of the headcount from 1970; that's productivity, not just "getting cooked."
Also the electronics/auto framing cherry-picks the losing categories. Nobody's buying American TVs because the US basically ceded consumer electronics decades ago — no tariff wall, no industrial policy, nothing like what protected autos. Meanwhile the US still dominates the categories WWII destruction has nothing to do with: aerospace, semiconductor equipment (ASML/TSMC can't build fabs without Applied Materials and Lam Research), ag equipment, defense, pharma, chemicals. Those aren't relics of 1946 — they're current comparative advantage.
And "no one else cares for American cars" undersells it. GM sold more cars in China than in the US for over a decade. Tesla is the best-selling car brand on earth in dollar terms in several markets. Ford/GM chose to retreat into trucks/SUVs domestically because margins are fatter there, not because nobody wanted a Focus.
TL;DR: the war-recovery story explains the *shape* of the 50s–70s boom, but by the time Sony/Samsung/TCL show up it's competing with automation, deliberate corporate offshoring, and different countries specializing in different tiers of the stack, not one long slide off a WWII cliff.

Lol, buddy heard about China wanting to replace all the shuttered US car plants in Canada with their own plants and now he gets jealous and wants in on it.
Stellantis, GM and Ford better smarten the fuck up before they get wiped out by the competition.

It's not the app that is the issue.
It's the billions in fees that self-driving companies will NOT want to pay Uber which Uber will need to become sustainable.
What self-driving company that engineered a marvelous revolutionary technology will say to themselves, "But let's stop at the app and connect with Uber instead... we want to pay them billions of dollars in fees." No sane company will do that worth a lick.
You comparing social media companies to a self-driving app is a bit ridiculous. Social media apps are free. Facebook can succeed alongside TikTok because while being direct competitors, to the consumer, there is no benefit to only picking one.
For a consumer looking to hail a ride, the cheaper option will be directly with the self-driving company because again, no fees to Uber. Once they experience a driverless vehicle at a cheaper price, they'll ditch Uber. They no longer need it. To a consumer, there is no reason to ditch say, TikTok, to use Facebook.
IDK anyone who said PayPal was going to kill Visa.
Amazon was never designed to beat Walmart. It was designed to beat local stores that don't offer good prices. Walmart offers great prices.
I'm not understanding your regulation argument nor do I understand your better vehicles argument. GM/Toyota/VW are vastly behind in self-driving technology so who are they licensing the technology from?

>**Trump signals he would allow China to build cars in US**
>"If China wanted to come in and open a plant to build their cars here, I'd be okay with it. Japan does it, but they hire our people," Trump told Fox News in an interview.
>"What I don't want is them to build in Mexico and build it inexpensively and ship it across the border," he added.
F DED, GM DED, STLA DED, TSLA DED, KIA/HYUNDAI DED
Gyna absolutely dominates in the "boring suppository-shaped crossover" category, and that's the only thing that makes money in America

I’m old enough to remember when people were certain Google+ was going to kill Facebook. Turns out it’s easy to launch an app. It’s very hard to build a regular user base.
History is full of these examples. “Amazon is going to kill Walmart”, “PayPal is going to kill Visa”.
I think you (and the market as a whole) have the Uber thesis exactly wrong. AV’s are an opportunity for Uber, not a threat.
Waymo/Tesla AV’s can fall behind or fail to meet regulations in many markets. If GM/Toyota/Volkswagen (or whoever) comes out with better vehicles, Uber can purchase a fleet from them much more easily than Waymo/Tesla can build and maintain Uber’s network.

lol you definitely are speaking out of your ass. We in the US subsidize our car industry WAY more than China does. China’s subsidies today are almost non existent. In 2008 alone the US gov gifted For and GM over 200 billion dollars. Tell me how that is not a subsidy. Have you heard about the import tariffs on trucks we have to protect GM and Ford? Of course that’s totally fair and open competition. When it comes to the car market our country more resembles a communist country than a full open market. I think the most fair example is Australia where they have no car industry to protect. I don’t think Tesla gets killed, it’s obviously a great product, but so are Chinese offerings.

Nearly anything. GM.

GM from NW 🇬🇧Have a gr8 day all. Let’s gooooooo! 🚀🔥💥📈🤑🍻

GM Mrs. London ✅🫡🍻