Uber After Driverless Cars Mature: Anticipate the Biggest Problems and Plan Responses
Company: Uber
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
Imagine it is 2050 and fully driverless cars are a mature, solved technology. As a product manager, identify the problems Uber is likely to face in that world and explain how Uber should address them. State the assumptions you make about this future.
```hint Replace the driver
Today a driver brings the car, the labor, the in-ride service and on-the-spot judgment. List each of those roles, then ask who or what fills it once the driver is gone, and whether that shift moves value away from Uber.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- In this future, who owns the driverless cars: Uber, carmakers and autonomous-vehicle companies, fleet operators, or private individuals?
- Does "perfected" mean the cars are also legal and accepted everywhere Uber operates, or only that the technology works?
- Should I cover all of Uber (rides, food and grocery delivery, freight) or focus on ride-hailing?
- Are you more interested in threats to Uber's business model or in the problems riders will run into day to day?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- Explicit assumptions about vehicle ownership, regulation and cost, and how they shape which problems arise
- A structured inventory of problems across riders, vehicle owners or fleets, cities and regulators, and Uber's own business model, rather than a flat list of app features
- Prioritization of the problems by impact and by Uber's ability to act, with the risk of fleet owners bypassing Uber addressed directly
- Concrete responses for the top problems, including what replaces the driver's service and safety role
- Metrics for the responses and the trade-offs they create, such as in-cabin monitoring versus privacy and staying asset-light versus owning fleets
### Follow-up Questions
- If carmakers launch their own ride apps, why would they keep putting their cars on Uber?
- What should Uber do about the people who earn a living driving for it today?
- How would you know the in-ride experience without a driver is good enough to replace a human-driven ride?
Overview: A product strategy prompt set in 2050, when driverless cars are fully mature: identify the problems Uber would face and propose how to address them. It tests structured thinking across riders, vehicle owners, cities and Uber's business model, along with prioritization, concrete responses and success metrics.