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Comment by clusmore | Hacker News Reader

So how is Uber's runway looking now? This article [1] from August suggests they had just over three years of runway at the end of June ($6.6b burning at about $2b/yr). So this extends the runway by only six months? Are they going to survive long enough to see autonomous drivers? How will this deal affect future funding?

[1] https://venturebeat.com/2017/08/23/uber-is-still-burning-cas...

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They did just sign a contract with NASA to help fly taxi aeroplanes [1]

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-portugal-websummit-uber/u...

Whoa that's pretty crazy. 200 mph flying cars in LA in 3 years? Interesting that it's a NASA project. Hopefully that means we'll get the see how the system works even if it doesn't doesn't pan out.

They might spin off the autonomous program into another company to raise fund, prior to IPO, perhaps, just a thought. I think that's a better option financially.

If the autonomous stuff works (HUGE if) it would completely change the core business. I can't see why they'd spin it off. Why sell your future unless you think it won't work out.

I am not really good at this stuff, but I see separating focus. Call it UberAuto, Uber would become UberAuto's parent company. UberAuto could receive new VC rounds and a new CEO appointed, focus on the autonomous development, while the parent company focuses on its core business and get ready for IPO.

Waymo is a spinoff from Google (and Alphabet is Google's parent company). Ebay, HP all have its own spinoffs.

Edit: In fact the new Uber CEO Khosrowshahi guided Expedia spinoff. See [3]. So a spinoff isn't unlikely. The spin-off could be just a research entity, but license to parent company later.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/13/technology/google-parent-...

[2]: https://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/10/15/companies-seeing-the...

[3]: https://qz.com/1063313/new-uber-ceo-expedias-dara-khosrowsha...

In business, spinoff typically refers to creating a new company with separate ownership. E.g., PayPal is a spinoff of Ebay and Agilent is a spinoff of HP but Waymo is not a spinoff from Google, because they share the same ownership.

There is no future for Uber without automated cars. Think of it this way: as soon as someone else has an automated fleet, Uber is finished unless it has its own. This is an existential requirement.

They can still live for 20+yrs very profitably on other markets.

Even US and high tech markets like japan and korea will take several years to transition to self-drive cars. Specially because this will start either with trucks or very high cost cars so they can offset support and iron out bugs.

And that's my guess assuming self-driving cars are ready tomorrow.

Self driving cars would be such a dramatic improvement to the public, it would be adopted much sooner than 20 years after being implemented. Cars that require a human driver would depreciate so quickly and the safety benefit would be so clear, people would upgrade incredibly fast.

We don't really know that though, do we? I mean, I can see this being true eventually but I'm still very perplex that we'll see cars able to drive autonomously in all conditions any time soon.

It's one thing to drive on the wide streets of american cities literally built around cars. It's an other to navigate the narrow, crowded streets of many european cities, with scooters and bikes zooming left and right, people parking anywhere they can, passing where they shouldn't be etc... Let's not even talk about some places in Africa and Asia where it seems that driving is more art than science.

I'm expecting self driving cars to start on friendlier turf (large avenues, highways connecting cities etc...) and then expand iteratively to "wilder" areas. I'm sure it'll take a while to completely take over though.

> Think of it this way: as soon as someone else has an automated fleet, Uber is finished unless it has its own. This is an existential requirement.

But the converse is not true, i.e. even if Uber is the first large scale company operating autonomous cars, this is by no means a guarantee for success. This is where the whole "betting on Uber" investment scheme kind of falls flat in my opinion: even if all goes according to plan, Uber does not have anything special (since by that time, autonomous driving will be open to its competitors, too). They probably bet on "hacking" the regulatory process to allow only their cars for a certain period, but this merely delays the issue of competition a bit.

You are missing the point. If spinoff, Uber is the parent company. Spinoff is not to remove the new company entirely, just financially and operationally. It's only telling the world "our main company - the one in IPO, will strengthen core business so we burn less money, while our research team is working in the new spinoff company." That's how I would run my company. YMMV. When UberAuto is ready, Uber can merge or have Auto license back. This should be seen as a wise move for the new Uber, given it is burning so much money in the core business already.

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