Welcome back to the latest episode of The Future of Automotive on CBT News, where we put recent automotive and mobility news into the context of the broader themes impacting the industry. I’m Steve Greenfield from Automotive Ventures, and I’m glad that you could join us. Ten years ago, there was a confident prediction circulating through boardrooms and consulting reports alike: by now, every new car on the road would be fully autonomous. Ownership, they said, would be obsolete. Instead, we’d summon a vehicle the way we order a ride today—on demand, seamless, invisible. It didn’t happen. At least not yet. But look closer, and you could argue the timeline wasn’t wrong—just early. Waymo, one of the leaders in autonomous driving, is now expanding into roughly 20 additional cities this year. That kind of momentum suggests the shift many envisioned a decade ago may finally be taking shape. The economics help explain why. According to Cox Automotive, the average cost to operate a personally owned vehicle in the U.S. is about 88 cents per mile. That figure includes depreciation, financing, insurance, and maintenance. Compare that to traditional alternatives: New York City taxis run closer to $2.50 per mile, while Uber averages around $2.30. Now consider the promise of autonomy. A fully autonomous “cybertaxi” could potentially bring that cost down to 50 cents per mile—or even less. At that level, for some consumers—especially in dense urban areas—the math begins to shift. The average U.S. household owns nearly two vehicles. If autonomous ride-hailing becomes significantly cheaper than ownership, a natural question emerges: does that second car still make sense? Or does it quietly disappear from the driveway? And then there’s Uber, the world’s largest Ridehailing company. Back in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, Uber made a decisive move. It sold