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G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

nytimes.com

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Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#211

Post by rhino369 »

hiddencost wrote: post #97
x5n1 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GM is not in the taxi business and has never been in the taxi business. They see this as a way for manufacturers to get into the taxi business and perhaps one day dominate the taxi business. Cut out all the middle men.

Surely it reduces the total number of cars, though? The vast majority of cars spend most of their time idle. With this model, you could supply the same total need with many fewer vehicles. Unless GM owns the whole fleet and Jacks up the price, losing that much demand strikes me as pretty rough.

Better to capture the biggest share of the smaller pie than to ignore the sea change. Blockbuster ignored a similar shift bcause it wasn't as profitable.

Plus the downshift won't be as great as some predict. You'll still need enough cars for long commutes. And cars lifespan are measured in miles not years. Autonomous cars might actually increase the number of miles driven (commute while sleeping, alternative to public transit, or driving instead of flying).

A car sitting in a driveway will last longer than one doing stop and go traffic 23 hours a day.

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#212

Post by josh_carterPDX »

tommoor wrote: post #112
cpwright wrote: post #111

"G.M. will also work with Lyft to set up a series of short-term car rental hubs across the United States, places where people who do not own cars can pick up a vehicle and drive for Lyft to earn money. Daniel Ammann, president of G.M., will join Lyft’s board of directors." This reminds me very much of the taxi model; where the driver is going to start the shift in the hole and has to work their way out of it.

Maybe they could paint them in a special livery so that you could tell it's a Lyft from a distance ;)

I actually thought that's what was happening here. Why not make both brands more recognizable? Have GM cars with special "Lyft" paint jobs such as painting the pink mustache on the front. I think it's an interesting angle beyond just creating some taxi pods.

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#213

Post by david_shaw »

anthonybsd wrote: post #150
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #140

It is predicted that autonomous cars will reduce America's fleet of vehicles by something like 10-fold [1]. I think it will unfold something like this: FIRST, instead three cars for mom, dad and kid, the average family has one car that drops mom off to work, then dad, and then the teen off to school. SECOND, aforementioned car makes use of its down time to drive strangers around via Uber, Lyft, et cetera. The car's o…

>(Note: people already do this in cities like New York, where car ownership is relatively scarce.) Car ownership is 45% in NYC. Not sure why this is considered "scarce" :)

According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_most_...), the jump from NYC (56% car free) to the next most car-free city (38%, Washington DC) is pretty massive.

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#214

Post by hyperliner »

Aloha wrote: post #149
askoxyz wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edison being the guy who ripped off Tesla?

Yes, Edison who also invented the lightbulb, phonograph, motion pictures, carbon microphone, fuel cell, stock ticker, and alkaline battery.

Edison invented the lightbulb? I thought it was Humphrey Davy or maybe Warren de la Rue.

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#215

Post by wadenick »

anthonybsd wrote: post #150
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #140

It is predicted that autonomous cars will reduce America's fleet of vehicles by something like 10-fold [1]. I think it will unfold something like this: FIRST, instead three cars for mom, dad and kid, the average family has one car that drops mom off to work, then dad, and then the teen off to school. SECOND, aforementioned car makes use of its down time to drive strangers around via Uber, Lyft, et cetera. The car's o…

>(Note: people already do this in cities like New York, where car ownership is relatively scarce.) Car ownership is 45% in NYC. Not sure why this is considered "scarce" :)

In Manhattan it's 23% (http://www.nycedc.com/blog-entry/new-yorkers-and-cars). This is quite scarce relative to the rest of the USA and indeed even relative to the suburban boroughs of the greater New York City metro area. For the US the last average I saw (World Bank data http://web.archive.org/web/20140209114811/http://data.worldb...) was 81%.

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#216

Post by CognitiveLens »

BookmarkSaver wrote: post #166
axplusb wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about Mom, Dad, and Junior share rides with other Moms, Dads, and Juniors who are headed in the same direction?

Because that is already a possibility (carpooling is an established idea), and the critical reasons why it isn't more popular don't significantly change with automated cars. People don't want to spend their commute with random people who just happen to be going the same direction. Perhaps more important is that it creates a strict commitment to be prepared to leave on time and a reliance on others leaving on time.

This is true with current car economics, but in a shared car economy, it will become increasingly expensive to have exclusive ownership, and people will vote with their wallets.

Shared-car design could also be drastically different. I don't want to share a Honda Accord with random people, but I wouldn't mind sharing a road-train that had private compartments for each set of passengers...

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#217

Post by [deleted] »

swax wrote: post #176
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #140

It is predicted that autonomous cars will reduce America's fleet of vehicles by something like 10-fold [1]. I think it will unfold something like this: FIRST, instead three cars for mom, dad and kid, the average family has one car that drops mom off to work, then dad, and then the teen off to school. SECOND, aforementioned car makes use of its down time to drive strangers around via Uber, Lyft, et cetera. The car's o…

Aren't Uber and Lyft middle-men? Why wouldn't car companies themselves offer a subscription service for access to their cars? You don't pay more to own a BMW, but you do pay more for a BMW subscription over a Honda one. Uber would probably be a cheaper subscription service for 'used' autonomous cars.

[deleted]

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#218

Post by wadenick »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #140

It is predicted that autonomous cars will reduce America's fleet of vehicles by something like 10-fold [1]. I think it will unfold something like this: FIRST, instead three cars for mom, dad and kid, the average family has one car that drops mom off to work, then dad, and then the teen off to school. SECOND, aforementioned car makes use of its down time to drive strangers around via Uber, Lyft, et cetera. The car's o…

> Instead, they subscribe for access to a fleet–such as Uber or Tesla's. (Note: people already do this in cities like New York, where car ownership is relatively scarce.)

Parsing this took me a moment - what they already do is subscribe to a fleet, and for years it has been the taxi fleet. That's shifting shape and I guess we'd both predict it will be Uber- and Tesla-like in the future (I don't know what mix of public / private ownership might look like).

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#219

Post by freyr »

CardenB wrote: post #154
anthonybsd wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>(Note: people already do this in cities like New York, where car ownership is relatively scarce.) Car ownership is 45% in NYC. Not sure why this is considered "scarce" :)

Relative to other areas, it seems scarce to me.

When something is scarce, this implies there is scarcity, or inability to meet demand. Colloquially, "scarce" is used synonymously with "rare", but rare isn't a good word choice for something occurring 50% of the time.

Re: G.M. Invests $500M in Lyft

#220

Post by stevebmark »

I like Lyft quite a lot as a company. However, partnering with another company is often a bad sign. It means Lyft needs more cash and isn't able to innovate enough on its own to survive in the market. Additionally, $500 million to "work on developing a so-called autonomous on-demand network of self-driving cars" is a demoralizing statement. 500m is not enough to complete this goal, especially for such a large company as General Motors. From the uninformed sidelines, I predict this is a hail mary pass with a minimal chance of success and long term support.
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