well the reason there’s only Uber and Lyft is because there are significant barriers to entry into ridesharing at this point. Yes, anyone could launch an Uber-like app fairly easily, but the barrier to entry is the supply of drivers. You wouldn’t be able to onboard enough fast enough to create a service with low ETAs that would be competitive with either in a mature market unless you had a ton of capital to incentivize them to drive for you with bonuses.
With self driving you don’t necessarily have a supply issue assuming you can deploy as many vehicles as you need in a market to achieve ETAs on par with or lower than Uber/Lyft. It’s all going to come down to ETAs, price, and marketing. I don’t think there will be 60 services in a single market but I can see more than the 2 today operating successfully.
I think the barrier to entry in unlicensed taxis is that there are two large companies currently committed to losing money doing it.
Attracting drivers may be hard, but it's not zero sum; drivers can be and are active in Uber and Lyft simultaneously, it's not inconceivable to swap one of those for a different app or add a third. But it would need to be compelling in some way, preferably a not so monetary way, because a race to the bottom doesn't usually benefit a small company.
With self driving you don’t necessarily have a supply issue assuming you can deploy as many vehicles as you need in a market to achieve ETAs on par with or lower than Uber/Lyft. It’s all going to come down to ETAs, price, and marketing. I don’t think there will be 60 services in a single market but I can see more than the 2 today operating successfully.