It’s a very big if, but if Tesla has an autonomous electric-car service on the roads by 2025, as Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas predicts, well, that would change everything. No one, though, can predict precisely what it would mean, except that it likely would be bad for Labor. Still, you have to bet it will take much longer to build such a global, robotic fleet.

From CNN Money:

Jonas believes that within the next 18 months, Tesla will share plans for an app-based, on-demand “mobility service.” Commercial introduction to this Uber-like service could occur in 2018, with the Model 3 serving as the backbone.

The first version of this service would be human-driven, just like today’s other ride hailing services. But then Tesla could move to a model where robots do virtually all the work even though real people sit at the driver’s seat just in case it’s required.

Jonas predicted Tesla could transition to a fully autonomous service by 2025, that it would have nearly 600,000 cars in its global fleet — or roughly the same size as Hertz today.

“The holy grail of shared mobility is replacing the mistake-prone, fatigued and expensive human driver with a robot that drives with greater accuracy and precision,” Jonas wrote.•