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Lyft losing as much as $50M a month, president confirms

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Re: Lyft losing as much as $50M a month, president confirms

#81

Post by kasey_junk »

brianwawok wrote: post #74
ForHackernews wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> customers will see value in the better product that keeps them in. How is Uber a "better product" than a taxi? As far as I can tell, it's competing on price, and that's it. If cabs were the same price as Uber, I would take a taxi every time.

Apaprently you have never taken a taxi in Chicago? Rusty car. Driver doesnt speak english. Smoking out the window and talking on cell phone in another language. Floors it and slams on the brakes. Seatbelts broken. Credit card machine broken. Hum why would I take a lyft.

Don't forget, doesn't service large swaths of the city either by population or location.

Re: Lyft losing as much as $50M a month, president confirms

#82

Post by phatfish »

puranjay wrote: post #39
jahnu wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm probably in the minority here but I'm not convinced we are particularly close to real self-driving cars. It's definitely possible but I strongly suspect there are more challenges ahead than most people believe.

I feel that the hype for self-driving cars is the same as it was for VR in the 90s We had to wait another 15-20 years for those feverished VR dreams to become a reality I reckon it'll be the same for self-driving. We are 20-25 years away, not 5-10

In 5-10 years i see self-driving on freeways and maybe other main roads that have standard junctions, markings and signs. Maybe with lanes only for self-driving.

A self driving vehicle would do the long-haul and a human would do the tricky city/country lane leg of the journey.

Automating the whole journey is a long way off as you say.

Re: Lyft losing as much as $50M a month, president confirms

#83

Post by WordyMcWordface »

mikeash wrote: post #76
msandford wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long do you think they're going to be allowed to call it "Autopilot" when it's clearly not, and that confusion causes customers to trust it in ways that they shouldn't, and end up dying? I'm not saying Tesla should be stopped or that Elon should go to jail. But I think it's a clear case of false advertising, where lives are on the line.

Actual airplane "autopilots" can be something as simple as automatic wing leveling or altitude hold. Using that name for Tesla's technology is only inaccurate in that they don't make airplanes. Where did everybody get the idea that "autopilot" implies full autonomy?

I expect an inflatable driver to appear and take the wheel, requiring only an occasional top up of air to keep things on the level.

Re: Lyft losing as much as $50M a month, president confirms

#84

Post by treebeard901 »

mikeash wrote: post #76
msandford wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long do you think they're going to be allowed to call it "Autopilot" when it's clearly not, and that confusion causes customers to trust it in ways that they shouldn't, and end up dying? I'm not saying Tesla should be stopped or that Elon should go to jail. But I think it's a clear case of false advertising, where lives are on the line.

Actual airplane "autopilots" can be something as simple as automatic wing leveling or altitude hold. Using that name for Tesla's technology is only inaccurate in that they don't make airplanes. Where did everybody get the idea that "autopilot" implies full autonomy?

For most people the word autopilot historically has meant full autonomy.

Re: Lyft losing as much as $50M a month, president confirms

#85

Post by tim333 »

stepanhruda wrote: post #61
supercoder wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah my Uber driver when I was in SF gave me $50 Lyft credit, so I just switched over, used the credit and then went back to Uber when it was finished.

Why did you go back to Uber?

I did the same. Advantages of Uber - no tipping and the pool service usually combines two users rather than three with Lyft.

Re: Lyft losing as much as $50M a month, president confirms

#86

Post by zanny »

pjmorris wrote: post #68
jahnu wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm probably in the minority here but I'm not convinced we are particularly close to real self-driving cars. It's definitely possible but I strongly suspect there are more challenges ahead than most people believe.

And, even once we get to self-driving cars, it changes the ride-sharing service's economics greatly... those self-driving cars aren't going to buy themselves.

Uber can hedge its insane market cap to buy a fleet, and then make effectively free money from that point forward selling rides.

Re: Lyft losing as much as $50M a month, president confirms

#87

Post by msandford »

mikeash wrote: post #76
msandford wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long do you think they're going to be allowed to call it "Autopilot" when it's clearly not, and that confusion causes customers to trust it in ways that they shouldn't, and end up dying? I'm not saying Tesla should be stopped or that Elon should go to jail. But I think it's a clear case of false advertising, where lives are on the line.

Actual airplane "autopilots" can be something as simple as automatic wing leveling or altitude hold. Using that name for Tesla's technology is only inaccurate in that they don't make airplanes. Where did everybody get the idea that "autopilot" implies full autonomy?

Sure, let's torture language for Tesla's benefit! Why not? I mean, we shouldn't let a silly thing like people's lives get in the way.

Since you know about historical autopilots I suspect this will be redundant, but here it is anyhow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopilot#Modern_autopilots

"Modern" autopilots have been around for a while, something like 40-50 years. Sure if you go back 80 years you can find autopilots that aren't as advanced. If you want to move the goalposts like that, relative to what a reasonable person might expect, knock yourself out.

Re: Lyft losing as much as $50M a month, president confirms

#89

Post by jamesroseman »

sfifs wrote: post #71
alsetmusic wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay extra to get my groceries delivered because it saves me time. I also tested same-day delivery services from Amazon and Apple in the last several months. Amazon is a little different, but my local Apple Store and supermarket are pretty close. However, I used to suffer a grueling commute and it made me hate driving. I'm now happy to pay someone to reduce the time that I have to spend behind the wheel.

In most economies, it's only the top 5-10% that really can afford to value time over cash. The rest are happy to trade off their time and effort to conserve cash. That's a market for sure - but really not such a big market.

I think you might be underestimating the size of the "on-demand industry"[1]. I'm hardly in the top 5-10% and I tried out Drizly in place of my beer run on Friday night and paid a $5 premium for my 6 pack to be delivered. I valued my time in the moment more than $5 and told myself it was a once in a while thing. I'm sure on-demand groceries, dry cleaning, etc all just hope for that market of people who tell themselves they don't use these services too frequently.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/the-on-demand-economy-2014-7

Re: Lyft losing as much as $50M a month, president confirms

#90

Post by rimantas »

wildmusings wrote: post #40
oblio wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And even if we do get self-driving cars, people forget that there will be an FDA clinic trial like process before they are allowed on the roads, which will take years. Multiply that by the number of states/countries where you want to operate and by the level of bureaucracy in each country. I'd say that from the day the tech actually works properly (which might be many years away, still), it will take at least 10 year…

The number of people who die every year in car accidents is so massive that any big regulatory hold-up for automated cars, which would almost without a doubt reduce deaths by at least an order of magnitude, is politically untenable.

I don't know about US but there majority of fatal accidents are the results of deilberate misconduct, i.e. someone doing knowingly stupid things. Unless self-driving cars become mandatory they will help very little in this regards, because road hooligans won't be their target market.
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