Thread by @ReflexFunds

Some thoughts on Self Driving Cars:

This is unsolved tech & will be a radically new product with very different cost structures vs current options; the future is highly uncertain.
This justifies a huge disparity in opinions but many may have too high certainty in their views.

Key questions:

1) Will self driving cars require 2x or 20x average human safety to achieve regulatory approval in a given jurisdiction?
2) Will it take 1 year or 20 years to get to this level of safety?

3) Is the Tesla-like deep learning heavy, hardware lite, incremental progress on driver assistance, general solution approach best? Or is the Waymo-like deep learning lite, hardware heavy, moonshot leap, geofenced approach better?

4) What is the current monthly rate of progress for each company in errors per mile? What bottlenecks might this progress hit in the future? What de-bottlenecking steps do companies have up their sleeve to solve these?

5) Will self driving taxis A) Take a niche share of the taxi/ride hailing market, B) Take nearly 100% share of this market or C) Dramatically increase the size of this market by reducing personal vehicle ownership and taking share from public transport.

6) How will consumers balance factors such as privacy, affordability, safety, entertainment, time utilisation into their preferred transport solution?

7) How easy will the self driving software/hardware/infrastructure/network solution be to copy? Will this be a winner takes most market with network effects, feedback loops, first mover moats etc, or will it be a crowded market?