Not necessarily. There are a lot of reasons for a car manufacturer not to enter the transportation market:
They have no history of operating in that market. It's a major undertaking to compete across the globe. The other transportation companies will now be their competitor, and will refuse to buy their cars. They may not be successful because of marketing, positioning, etc.
If they refrain from that.. they can sell their cars to Uber, Lyft, et al.. which we already know the manufacturer is good at. They can sell their cars to multiple transportation companies that can offer varying levels of premium features; differentiate themselves with marketing; etc. And they can sell a large number of cars to Uber more immediately, since Uber is already in so many cities. They also won't need to deal with cab regulators in each city, etc.
Manufacturers sell their cars to dealerships who stock their cars on their lot until they sell.. this lets the manufacturer turn over inventory faster. If they built a transportation network, they would need to maintain those assets on their books.
If it were simple, I think we would see more manufacturers operating rent a car services. But we don't.
"and yet those companies dont dominate the rental car market.." this is a fair point, however I feel there's more to rentals that stands in the way of that, such as real estate. There's only room for so many car rental places in a convenient location at an airport, for example.
I'm not saying setting up and running a company like Uber is an easy task, and I acknowledge that not every company vertically integrates everything they possibly could, but I don't feel like the hurdles to running a taxi app are as significant for a car company as they would be for entering other related markets.
Uber and Lyft don't even have taxi stands, drivers have to come from a much larger distance than even cabs, yet their usage is some multiple of taxis even with the inconvenience.
With SDC, having access to monopoly power locations will be less of an issue. And with Mercedes and BMW already sprinkled throughout an area, cars are usually close.
I think there is merit in someone having learned all of the issues with running a transportation company, but it isn't a billion dollar lesson, it is a low tens of millions of dollar lesson.
But I don't think being first has much merit, I think the margins will quickly shrink to zero within 5 years of SDCs and we will see a couple major auto manufactures go bankrupt. Ironic if the self driving car of the future is a bipedal android that makes any car a self driving car. Turning a 15k Hyundai electric into an autonomous vehicle.
