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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

#101

Post by freyir »

adventured wrote: post #66
forgetsusername wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I pay extra to get my groceries delivered because it saves me time. That vast majority of Americans do everything they can to save a few bucks, even when it's an inefficient use of resources (time and money). I'm not sure "nickel and diming" a few wealthy people for home delivery is a $60BB business. There's not a huge barrier to entry and margins are low. But what do I know.

> I'm not sure "nickel and diming" a few wealthy people for home delivery is a $60BB business A few? With between 11 and 13 million millionaires in the US, it's a $60 billion business. And that's ignoring the vast number of people in the US earning $150,000+ in a household while not being millionaires; people that can easily afford such services. And then there's this: "The Richest Generation in U.S. History Just Kee…

By this logic, you can say "We'll do X for rich people. Since there are so many millionaires, it's a $60B business" for just about any hare-brained scheme.

If Lyft is burning $50M/month driving me across town for $15, or me and two strangers for $5 each, how does substituting a person for a dress or a shaving kit or a bag of groceries suddenly make it hugely profitable?

And if this is the case, why isn't Postmates / Instacart/ etc. getting billions in VC money to expand and corner this underserved market? Why did all the courier startups immediately go belly up in the dot-com bubble last time around?

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

#102

Post by msandford »

mikeash wrote: post #93
msandford wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 autopilo…

What part of that article do you think is a point against what I'm saying, exactly? Autoland and taxiing? That requires a Category III airport which many airports, even those served by airliners, aren't. It also requires pilot supervision and pilot intervention in the event of emergency. Hardly autonomous! And there are plenty of systems below that. For example: http://sarasotaavionics.com/category/autopilots/certifi…

Find ~10 normal people and ask them what an autopilot does on an airplane. They're all going to say something along the lines of "it flies the airplane" and their intuition lines up with reality for about 90%+ of flights that are done with autopilots.

Ask those same ~10 people what an autopilot does for a car. They'll say something like "it drives the car". Given what the Tesla Autopilot (tm) is capable of doing, their understanding of what the name means and what the software can actually do only has maybe a 20% overlap.

So yes I would call that torturing language. It's an autopilot that can drive the car under a very limited set of circumstances AND it requires that Jesus (you, the driver) is always 100% alert and ready to snatch the wheel the second the car starts to do an unsafe thing.

It's a totally different control problem in cars than it is in airplanes, and it's impressive that they're doing well enough to where people will trust the system enough to get into this kind of trouble. But right now it seems like Tesla's in the uncanny valley of self-driving. Good enough to make people say "huh, it works" but not so good that it works 100% of the time, always, forever, no matter the conditions, other crazy drivers and all the freak occurrences that are literally 1 in a million, but given that there are 1.1 billion car trips per day in the US will happen 1100 times a day. Even at 1 in a billion it'll still happen once per day.

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

#103

Post by mikeash »

msandford wrote: post #102
mikeash wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What part of that article do you think is a point against what I'm saying, exactly? Autoland and taxiing? That requires a Category III airport which many airports, even those served by airliners, aren't. It also requires pilot supervision and pilot intervention in the event of emergency. Hardly autonomous! And there are plenty of systems below that. For example: http://sarasotaavionics.com/category/autopilots/certifi…

Find ~10 normal people and ask them what an autopilot does on an airplane. They're all going to say something along the lines of "it flies the airplane" and their intuition lines up with reality for about 90%+ of flights that are done with autopilots. Ask those same ~10 people what an autopilot does for a car. They'll say something like "it drives the car". Given what the Tesla Autopilot (tm) is capable of doing, the…

I'm dubious about the idea that normal people will think of airplane autopilots as autonomous. There's even a common English idiom, "on autopilot," meaning to act brainlessly.

But let's say it's true. Why would people think that, when that's not how they actually work? That's an honest question I asked above when I said, "Where did everybody get the idea that 'autopilot' implies full autonomy?"

Do we at least agree that actual factual airplane autopilots are fairly analogous to Tesla's? If so, how is it "torturing the language" to use the term that way? Overestimating the intelligence of the public when creating a term is a long way from "torture."

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

#104

Post by kin »

It's kind of crazy that they lose so much money just so people could start using Lyft but as soon as they can't afford to do that anymore Uber is just going to capitalize. Unless there's some sort of Loyalty program (like airlines) I'm just going to go with whichever is cheaper at the very moment I'm interested in getting a ride. If one has Surge then I switch and vice versa.

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

#105

Post by msandford »

mikeash wrote: post #103
msandford wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Find ~10 normal people and ask them what an autopilot does on an airplane. They're all going to say something along the lines of "it flies the airplane" and their intuition lines up with reality for about 90%+ of flights that are done with autopilots. Ask those same ~10 people what an autopilot does for a car. They'll say something like "it drives the car". Given what the Tesla Autopilot (tm) is capable of doing, the…

I'm dubious about the idea that normal people will think of airplane autopilots as autonomous. There's even a common English idiom, "on autopilot," meaning to act brainlessly. But let's say it's true. Why would people think that, when that's not how they actually work? That's an honest question I asked above when I said, "Where did everybody get the idea that 'autopilot' implies full autonomy?" Do we at least agree t…

> Do we at least agree that actual factual airplane autopilots are fairly analogous to Tesla's?

Nope! That's the whole point of contention, actually. Autopilots are very advanced and can do almost the whole flight. Because the control problems for airplanes and cars are very, very different.

If something goes wrong with the autopilot in an airplane you've got minutes (at least) to figure it out and not die. ~30,000 feet of altitude and huge glide ratios and nearly empty skies do wonders.

In a car your average car-to-car separation in rush-hour traffic is a few seconds along the line of motion, and perhaps less sideways. If you're not on the freeway you might be a jerk of the wheel and half a second from a head-on collision.

Now you might say that the technical capabilities of both systems are the same, but nobody really cares about that. They care that it can meet some criteria that they already have in their head and they aren't going to go to school for 5 years to understand that it's not the autopilot's fault that their kid enabled in bad circumstances and died, they're going to sue Tesla to hell and back. And judges and juries will quite likely be sympathetic.

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

#106

Post by tedmiston »

tim333 wrote: post #85
stepanhruda wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Lyft seems to be a bit (10–20%) cheaper, at least in Ohio.

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

#107

Post by mikeash »

msandford wrote: post #105
mikeash wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm dubious about the idea that normal people will think of airplane autopilots as autonomous. There's even a common English idiom, "on autopilot," meaning to act brainlessly. But let's say it's true. Why would people think that, when that's not how they actually work? That's an honest question I asked above when I said, "Where did everybody get the idea that 'autopilot' implies full autonomy?" Do we at least agree t…

> Do we at least agree that actual factual airplane autopilots are fairly analogous to Tesla's? Nope! That's the whole point of contention, actually. Autopilots are very advanced and can do almost the whole flight. Because the control problems for airplanes and cars are very, very different. If something goes wrong with the autopilot in an airplane you've got minutes (at least) to figure it out and not die. ~30,000 f…

Some airplane autopilots are very advanced. Others are extremely simple. Tesla's system is analogous to something near the simpler end.

I keep talking about the simple end of what "autopilot" covers and you keep countering me by pointing out the advanced ones. I'm not denying the advanced ones exist, I'm just pointing out that the simple ones exist too, so using the word "autopilot" for simple systems is entirely appropriate.

I'm not terribly interested in the legal aspects of it, I'm just curious where everyone got this idea that "autopilot" implies autonomy (if in fact everyone does have that idea, which I'm not sure about), and I strongly disagree with your assertion that using "autopilot" to describe Tesla's system is "torturing language," given that using "autopilot" to describe a simple wing-leveling system is perfectly acceptable.

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

#108

Post by antisthenes »

serg_chernata wrote: post #77
hyperdeficit wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why anybody thinks that Uber and Lyft will be the ones to capitalize on a fleet of automated cars. Once auto manufacturers have solved the arguably harder problem of creating automated vehicles, why wouldn't they then just run the fleet of cars themselves? Especially if there is as much profit in it as people assume. Even if they didn't run the fleets themselves, it seems like they already have a g…

This! I think that's why Lyft has also partnered with GM, if I'm correct. I bet they saw this from the same angle and wanted to get as close as possible to the actual manufacturer of vehicles.

It's not a bad exit strategy. Align yourself with a manufacturer, let them integrate your tech with the cars coming straight off the production line, get acquired when ready.

Wouldn't be surprised if that's exactly the way it happens. Lyft OnStar.

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

#109

Post by msandford »

mikeash wrote: post #107
msandford wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do we at least agree that actual factual airplane autopilots are fairly analogous to Tesla's? Nope! That's the whole point of contention, actually. Autopilots are very advanced and can do almost the whole flight. Because the control problems for airplanes and cars are very, very different. If something goes wrong with the autopilot in an airplane you've got minutes (at least) to figure it out and not die. ~30,000 f…

Some airplane autopilots are very advanced. Others are extremely simple. Tesla's system is analogous to something near the simpler end. I keep talking about the simple end of what "autopilot" covers and you keep countering me by pointing out the advanced ones. I'm not denying the advanced ones exist, I'm just pointing out that the simple ones exist too, so using the word "autopilot" for simple systems is entirely app…

I can call a bicycle an gyroscopically-stabilized carbon-neutral human transportation device but that doesn't somehow make it fancier. It just sounds fancier.

I have argued that when people hear the word "autopilot" they think that it's very advanced. You argue that technically, something that just keeps the wings level is also an autopilot. I agree! I just disagree that the average person would know enough about the finer points of what a particular word actually means versus what just about everyone thinks it means.

Finally I would argue that if just about everyone thinks that a word means a particular thing, that's what it means. It might technically be incorrect, but words are just noises that people say to convey an idea from one brain to another. If you know what someone meant well enough to correct them, they probably used the word correctly.

Here's a major news website reporting on what an autopilot is and is not in the wake of the germanwings crash about a year ago. It maintains that autopilots on commercial jets (what people tend to think of when you say "airplane" or "flight"). This was the 3rd or 4th google hit for the phrase "what is an autopilot" http://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/26/autopilot-what-the-system-can...

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

#110

Post by dredmorbius »

_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #13
stormbrew wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the play is more or less to strangle the higher priced and over-regulated patchwork taxi industries and build a more uniform national/international regulatory framework that's more amenable to these kinds of businesses. At that point prices will probably rise, and (they hope, and I think they're right) customers will see value in the better product that keeps them in.

You've picked my interest, how would lowering regulation increase customer prices?

s/picked/piqued/
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