It's the question on the lips of just about everybody involved in the transportation business--and a few who aren't. The ranks of those offering ride-sharing services have swelled far beyond the likes of Uber and Lyft, past the self-driving gurus like Google sister company Waymo, past even the established automakers. Now they include companies like Bosch, the German company best known as an automotive parts supplier, which last week acquired American ride-sharing startup SPLT. And Sony, which just announced it will partner with Tokyo taxi companies, lending its artificial intelligence tech to the tricky business of dispatch. And even rental company Avis, which purchased car-sharing company ZipCar and is working with Waymo to support a self-driving taxi rollout in Arizona.

Welcome to California Inc., the weekly newsletter of the L.A. Times Business Section. Investors climb back on the bus Monday after the troubling news Friday that job growth slowed sharply in May to just 138,000, an unexpectedly lackluster figure that raises concerns about the labor market -- but probably not enough to derail an expected Federal Reserve interest rate hike this month. The unemployment rate ticked down a tenth of a percentage point to 4.3%, the lowest since 2001. Totally awesome: Marketing and design professionals will gather in Los Angeles this week for "PromaxBDA: The Conference 2017," which promises to be "100% awesome." The event will run through Thursday at the J.W. Marriott Hotel.

Carmakers have always designed vehicles for individual drivers and families, not groups of strangers. That could pose a problem going forward. In fact, it already has. Look at the tensions that arose when services like Uber transformed personal rides into public transport. The advent of self-driving cars--vehicles for which codified user interfaces and social norms have yet to emerge--will only complicate matters further.

It's hard to believe this is my 10th annual predictions piece for VentureBeat. VentureBeat founder Matt Marshall asked me write my first prediction piece in 2007 for the year 2008. The tech landscape has changed a lot since then. In 2008, Microsoft offered $44.6 billion for Yahoo, and now Verizon could acquire Yahoo for $4.8 billlion. Cloud computing made its mark in 2008, back when no one could have imagined Amazon would be leading the space.

Like most cities around the world, New York City suffers from horrendous traffic. A new MIT study suggests that UberPool and Lyft Line (the two apps' carpool features that allow strangers to share a ride for a reduced fare) could be the key to cutting down on urban congestion. If New Yorkers switched from private taxis to carpools, traffic would decrease dramatically, according to the researchers. Using data from 3 million taxi rides, they designed an AI algorithm that would both reduce congestion and wait time for the vehicles. The researchers used taxi ride data to understand how New Yorkers move by car (Just 23% of Manhattan households own personal cars).

Like most cities around the world, New York City suffers from horrendous traffic. A new MIT study suggests that UberPool and Lyft Line (the two apps' carpool features that allow strangers to share a ride for a reduced fare) could be the key to cutting down on urban congestion. If New Yorkers switched from private taxis to carpools, traffic would decrease by dramatically, according to the researchers. Using data from 3 million taxi rides, they designed an AI algorithm that would both reduce congestion and wait time for the vehicles. The researchers used taxi ride data to understand how New Yorkers move by car (Just 23% of Manhattan households own personal cars).

IN THE CLASSIC SCI-FI NOVEL "the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," an alien visiting Earth names himself Ford Perfect based on the assumption that cars are the dominant form of life on this planet. It's an understandable mistake when you look at our cities today. These hunks of metal consume vast amounts of our money, space and natural resources--and sit idle 95% of the time. At the beginning of the book, the Earth is destroyed to make way for an intergalactic highway. But unless we rapidly reimagine urban transportation, cities risk imploding under the weight of more than a billion cars.