If they want to be profitable, they can pull back on aggressive expansion, and dump the more expensive, less fruitful projects.
Royalties, most likely. Discounts on cars in exchange for licenses. Maybe something to auction off during the bankruptcy process so that investors get a fraction of their money back.
Patents can be the most valuable thing a company has. Google pretty much wound up scooping the patents out of Motorola and selling the rest (you know, the thousands of smart people and hardware and history) for a discount.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/ford-says-it-will-focus-more-on-...
Self-driving is a 'near rality' meaning, the tech has progressed to the point wherein we can feasibly see it working at some point. I think it'll take a little longer, but it's basically going to happen.
It represents an existential issue to Uber, it's a huge competitive issues, as well as a massive opportunity.
Uber would be more readily able to lever the tech, than say Google, who has no fleet, and no ability to build cars.
If GM/Ford get the tech going first, then they'll hold that over Uber in a very heavy hand. Also GM/Ford are slow, big companies and may lag the whole way. Tesla, Google, Uber are the 'big players' who could do it fast and well, smaller innovative shops notwithstanding.
Though self driving might be a little expensive, it's definitely not a moonshot, more of a somewhat risky but highly relevant venture.
If Uber could 'get all the pieces right' - and have driverless cars everywhere before GM/Ford got to market in a material way - Uber would be a multi-trillon dollar company. I mean - not only would it wipe out all their competition, increase market a lot just on the basis of price alone ... but it would fundamentally change how people buy/drive/own and use cars.
As risky as it is - the idea of 'driverless ubers' is just too big to ignore. It's worth 100x the market for iPhones.
Something to remember guys - look at the exports for most countries: #1 is cars. Look at family expenditures. After mortgage/rent - it's cars.
Silicon Valley is used to 0.001 cent CPE's or 25 cent click-throughs. That's peanuts compared to transport.
Disrupting cars is 100x bigger than anything the Valley has done before. The numbers are mind blowing.
Now add in trucking/transportation ... it's basically mind-boggling.
So as long as they can afford to pushing the driverless car front and as long as it's not costing them billions and billions a year in R&D, they should be definitely pushing it as their #1 long term strategic priority.
Sure, disrupting transportation is big, but no advantage in sight for Uber there. They only thing they disrupted was traditional taxis on a wave of dumb investor money.
If uber lays off and decides to get profitable, they risk lyft taking hold because they're the only option in X markets.
On the other hand, up until a few weeks ago it seemed like Uber had enough cash to outlast every competitor, achieve functional monopoly and from there they can charge whatever they want.