Mega-startup’s greatest threat: the disappearance of car-owning drivers caused by the rise of autonomous vehicles
All of this is part of what auto makers and ride-hailing companies anticipate will be a larger transition to “transportation-as-a-service”—potentially the end of widespread vehicle ownership in developed countries. Subscribing to such a service for all of a person’s transportation needs within a typical American city could cost anywhere from 10% to 25% what an average consumer now spends on owning, maintaining and insuring a vehicle, says Tony Seba, co-founder of technology think tank RethinkX. Cost savings on that order could lead to rapid adoption akin to the touchscreen smartphone revolution, he argues... Auto manufacturers have a great deal of experience working with the complex web of dealers, financing companies and fleet managers—even car-rental agencies—that could potentially be repurposed to manage millions of self-driving vehicles.Owing to all these factors, Uber, Lyft and their imitators will eventually cease to exist as stand-alone companies, either going out of business or being acquired by car makers
The Scandal That May Haunt the New Nominee for Labor Secretary
R. Alexander Acosta, President Trump’s pick to run the Labor Department following the withdrawal of Andrew Puzder’s nomination, was the head of the civil-rights division of the Department of Justice in the Bush administration during a period in which his subordinates became embroiled in a scandal over politicized hiring.
.. But at the Justice Department, his subordinates skirted the law, seeking to purge liberal attorneys from the division and replace them with conservatives. Acosta told investigators he was unaware of what was occurring.
.. The report states that Schlozman used terms like “real Americans,” “right thinking,” “solid,” and “on the team” to describe conservative attorneys—the ones he wanted to hire—and that Bradshaw was aware of the meaning of those terms.
Schlozman, deploying a colorful metaphor, stated in an email that “My tentative plans are to gerrymander all of those crazy libs rights out of the [voting] section.”