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“No Uber is hemorrhaging money like a cash hemophiliac... they have ZERo prayer at profitability without autonomous vehicles which, in reality, are at least 2 decades away. The fact gullible investors keep giving them cash is mind boggling”

Uber is private equity financed by very wealthy venture capital investors. I think your worries about their naivety are misplaced.

Uber has a market cap, on paper, far bigger than FedEx, but has almost none of the overhead. Of course, there are lower barriers of entry to their market than overnight shipping, but both companies are transportation / logistics companies. So, the comparison is valid.

FedEx has billions of dollars tied up in vehicles, jets, and real estate. Uber has some software and a relatively small number of employees. Drivers supply the most expensive pieces of their business model: vehicles and workers. Uber does not have to spend a dime on vehicles or employees in order to fulfill their main business purpose. After peeling away the complexities of legal, executive management, accounting, acquisitions (including things like GIS software), Uber is essentially a very valuable smart app.

The reason for bleeding money is their efforts to expand while maintaining their first-to-market position in the industry. This entails political lobbying (worldwide), innovating, and marketing (including the expense of new customer acquisition and retention with things like free rides or being a loss leader).

Uber does not have to add self-driving vehicles to become profitable. They are a cost-plus service. They just have to remain competitive and reach a point where their business model does not demand reinvesting all of their revenues into the business.

They are well positioned for when self-driving technology takes off. This will probably be much sooner than you think. My best guess is that it will be commonplace in 5-10 years but this will depend on the cost of insurance for autonomous vehicles falling below the cost of human drivers. The ability to retrofit existing vehicles with this technology will greatly impact the speed at which it is adopted.