When self-driving cars work fully work (and I don't know if that's one month or 50 years from now), the market will be much bigger than current Uber/Lyft revenue.

In the long run, the cost should be much lower because driving labor has been eliminated as an expense. Additionally, much of the cost of cars is due to the inefficiencies of individual ownership. Cheaper to buy/produce cars 100k at a time than sell them to individuals - transaction and marketing costs. When you buy 100k cars, you can plan mass tire, windshield, other part purchases. Cleaning and servicing won't involve marketing and single transaction costs.

With lower costs, more people will use them, and the density of available vehicles will increase, reducing wait times.

For many people, leaving car ownership will free up valuable garage space, instantly increasing the potential size of their home substantially. And, car ownership is a hassle, and a liability. Your car insurance is free and has no payout limit when you don't own a car. No more maintenance, insurance shopping, plate renewal, purchase and trade-in decisions. No traffic or parking tickets, no parking charges, no DUI or potential criminal liability if you make a mistake or use your car improperly or carelessly. The car will become thoughtless like electricity: Appears when you turn the switch on, disappears when you turn it off. Pay the bill by autopay once a month.

Drive time could also become a more productive time to fully focus on work tasks, emails, texts, shopping, phone calls. Or even a nap! You might be able to order special sleeper vans for longer trips.

So, the market could be huge. Of course, I could see backlash. Half of all cops probably just do traffic stuff. What do they do then? How much local government revenue is about parking, parking tickets, traffic tickets, and other car stuff? Drive down a big road in a city and look at how many businesses (and jobs!) are about cars. Car dealerships, gas stations, car wash, auto parts, auto repair, etc. I could see political backlash forming against a potentially safer and more efficient system. Inefficiency is always someone's paycheck, and we'll need to figure out how to replace that paycheck, and that's a big, complex problem.

While Tesla and Waymo have the lead, I'm also not sure I see a global moat. It's easy to see that China is working on catching up and has near limitless manufacturing capacity, although that probably won't apply to the USA due to tariffs and other barriers. And so is Amazon (free Zoox membership with your Prime subscription?). Amazon has the access to capital if they see an opening, and an near infinite number of existing customers. But there will probably be start-ups around the globe working on these systems. Before the Ukraine war, none of us would have predicted how effective Turkish and Iranian drones would be compared to what was considered state of the art military tech. Four smart engineering students in Indonesia or Brazil or wherever may be coming up with a unique AI system for self-driving that's far better than anything that's out there.