Barrier to entry absolutely is not low with transport automation, and network effect will prevail. Rest assured Uber will happily ditch their drivers for computers at the first possible opportunity. They are investing heavily in this in fact.
Uber's biggest asset is the installed customer base. Uber's drivers are technically their biggest liability... as this ruling well demonstrates!
Uber has another big asset that I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned. Their ride data will probably be hugely valuable for routing automated vehicles. I'd wager they have people working right now to find the optimal distribution of self-driving cars over a given metro area/time of day.
I'll also speculate this this is a pretty big competitive advantage. Collecting that much ride data is not trivial.
That won't be static in the age automated vehicles. Vehicles will be networked and this dynamic will change constantly. Uber's ride data is useless at that point.
Why do you believe the network effect would prevail when self-driving transport is available?
When I want to get from point A to point B, it doesn't really matter what my friends or other people are using, I just personally want good service at a good price - and I don't think I'd be particularly loyal to any one provider.
I expect that smaller regional providers of self-driving taxis would be able to compete on even footing with larger companies, once self-driving vehicles are purchasable commodities without heavy R&D costs.
What most people want is a car to arrive very quickly (perhaps in seconds) of predictable quality for the best fee. The largest operators with the best software and economy of scale will win this game. You won't be able to automate a single car and compete, not the least of the reason being users aren't going to jump through 15 apps to request a car, and big players will not hand you their customers.
If Uber can operate 100,000 robo-cars in San Fran you can walk up to the sidewalk and press Hail and presto you have your ride. They can dynamically balance load between nearby cities on a day-by-day even hourly basis dispatching streams of robo-cars from their garages when the surges hit. Large events which drive demand are pre-scheduled and automatically reflected in both car distribution and the number of gasoline futures they trade on the options board for the upcoming week, etc. etc.
You can bet these robo-cars will be getting robo-tire-rotations and any other effeciencies they can squeeze out. (Imagine a line of them going through Uber's robo-washers)
5? 10? 15 years out? Doesn't really matter but I'm convinced it will eventually happen. It will be awesome and terrible all at once.
Laws aren't perfect. We would never have progress if we never challenged them (in reasonable contexts, not committing outright crimes). This is clearly a case where millions of people are benefiting from a modern approach and it makes sense to review the laws to see if they still work in the current era/culture/society.
Hardly. The only way you can possibly launch something like Uber is to adopt the "Act first, apologize later" model.
Companies like Uber face problems most of us can't even imagine, such as regulatory capture by the incumbent taxi industry. Yes, Uber plays dirty, but to some extent I think they have to, because it's a dirty game.
Uber's biggest asset is the installed customer base. Uber's drivers are technically their biggest liability... as this ruling well demonstrates!