Dara Khosrowshahi
Management
Yes, absolutely. In terms of peak and trough, while we haven’t disclosed the numbers, there are very, very significant peaks during rush hour both ways, obviously in the mornings and going home, during after-hours drinks, etc. We are able to shape demand and supply--actually, demand through surge when we need to, and supply, obviously positioning our drivers through incentives either on a temporal basis or on a geographic basis, if there’s a concert going on, etc. The good news there is that through our incentive structure, essentially those are variable costs for us. We will pay more during those peak periods and then when we don’t need supply, we can take incentives out, so we have a model where essentially we’re able to shape supply to match demand in a variable basis. I think that in an AV world, the car is there at all times, so you kind of have to pay the overhead for the car and the amortization of the car during all periods, so we think kind of hybrid network that can--that consists of both humans and robots can handle the peaks and valleys much more effectively than a pure play network. In terms of AV partnerships, etc., I would tell you, Nikhil, that based on the conversations that we’re having, we are highly, highly confident of being able to acquire AV content, if you want to call it that, on a global basis. The fact is this is not turning out to be a winner take all market - originally, I think that was the concept why Uber wanted to develop the technology itself, but every single OEM is investing in some L2 or L3 technology. If you look at some of the newer tech coming in terms of imitation learning technologies that have taken the imagination of folks through LOMs, that same technology, we believe can potentially introduce a new wave of AV through imitation learning at substantially lower capital costs that was necessary historically, so we think there are going to be many, many AV providers. If there are many, many AV providers, the marketplace--and our marketplace is by far the largest marketplace, global marketplace both for mobility, delivery, and then freight as well, the marketplace will have a very, very strong position. At this point, we don’t see any signal that a Plan B will be necessary. Also, take note that we have investments, strategic investments in a number of AV players - Aurora, we’re working with Waymo, for example, and there are other investments that we have in AV players to make sure that Plan A is the right plan going forward. So far, I’d say so good, and as I mentioned in my remarks, we will have more partnerships to announce in the next weeks and months, and I think the market will see--you’ll see that Plan B isn’t necessary.