One Big Problem With Driverless Cars: Figuring Out How They Make Money

As it turns out, making cars drive themselves may have been the easy part. The hard part is yet to come. Over the past few days, the Financial Times has detailed in two reports how the autonomous vehicle businesses of Silicon Valley are beginning to reckon with a new issue: being functioning businesses. I understand this must be a new and troubling development for any Silicon Valley startup, but here, it sounds like a profound wakeup call. Increasingly, industry insiders recognise that commercialising their technologies may be more difficult than anticipated -- due to questions around "government approval, public trust, brand marketing, the ability to manufacture at scale and the technical knowhow to manage a fleet that competes with the likes of Uber and Lyft on timely pick-ups", Patrick McGee reports in his weekend Big Read.