Hopefully this means they won't be around for much longer. I will not miss them when they're gone.
Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue
81–90 of 424 posts
Re: Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue
#82Also on track to have the first self driving car AND a ride hailing application to boot. That can't be cheap.
I don't know how people get this impression, unless it is by only reading the comments on this site and never reading any primary sources. Uber's "self-driving" tech is currently unable to do things that other companies were doing years ago. Google's car took a blind man to Taco Bell in 2012. Uber's car has two engineers in the front seat and still blows stop lights and can't make a right turn.
Re: Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue
#83Presumably this is intentional -- Uber could raise prices and make more money, but right now they're choosing to keep prices very low in order to undercut Lyft and the cab companies with the assumption that having a monopoly will return more profits in the future. At least anecdotally, here in SF Lyft is almost always more expensive than Uber.
> right now they're choosing to keep prices very low in order to undercut Lyft and the cab companies with the assumption that having a monopoly will return more profits in the future.
So they're even shittier and greedier than I thought.
Re: Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
In this particular iteration of the game, what exact benefit does running a $800M losing ride-hailing service confer? If the entire value proposition is "taxi using self-driving cars", then surely they would be much better off dropping the money burning ride-hailing operation with cars they don't own to spend more on R&D...
> what exact benefit does running a $800M losing ride-hailing service confer Market share. Or more precisely, establishing market dominance by undercutting the competition.
It's an app. If competitor X beats them to the self-driving-punch, I'll simply install their app and start saving. A first-to-market competitor will have 747s full of money landing on their doorstep begging them to take it.
There is simply no scenario where having a network of poorly paid drivers, their heterogeneous fleet of unmaintained cars and a load of debt is an advantage in a rollout of self-driving cars, the first useful version of which will surely be limited to one particular manufacturer, model and sensor suite.
Re: Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue
#85Uber is making the rest of us in SV look terrible. 1. Collect a huge pile of money at sky-high valuations from those who really should know better. 2. Ignore any sensible unit economics and undercut local taxi/transport services until those small businesses go bankrupt since they don't have Uber's money pile. 3. Evade local regulations that everyone else follows in the name of 'innovation' even though the reality is…
Huh? What's the end game? The end game is a company with self driving cars, having SIGNIFICANTLY less overhead than they currently do with human drivers. And, probably a ton of technology patents to boot? Yea, they're definitely a brazen company, but do you really expect anything less from a unicorn company? Very few make it this big without cutting some corners, having some connection, etc.
Self driving or driverless? I don't see any significant savings for self-driving cars, you still need to pay the person and you have the significant added expense of fleet maintenance. Not to mention liability concerns, unless they plan in passing that off onto the 'drivers'.
Driverless cars on the other had and still decades away, whether the tech is ready or not. Society is not yet at a place that will allow the use of full driverless vehicles on public roads. It doesnt matter how much statistically better a driverless car is than a human, every single accident will be magnified. Driverless cars could be our first foray into truly autonomous robotics within the general public, it is not something that will occur lightly.
Re: Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue
#86Presumably this is intentional -- Uber could raise prices and make more money, but right now they're choosing to keep prices very low in order to undercut Lyft and the cab companies with the assumption that having a monopoly will return more profits in the future. At least anecdotally, here in SF Lyft is almost always more expensive than Uber.
I would just take Juno. The drivers here in NYC are only doing Uber to get enough ratings to qualify for Juno. Uber went way too far squeezing drivers, it's a mess. I've seen their Uber pool earnings ... It should be illegal.
Well this article makes it clear that Uber isn't shafting the drivers for their profit. It seems no one is making a profit and Uber has figured out how to have drivers help them fund their growth.
Re: Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue
#87Re: Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue
#88My understanding is that in mature markets, Uber is profitable. The issue is that it takes a few years to become profitable in a market and so it's extreme growth pushes out profitability on the whole for a few years
From the article: > Even in the U.S., Uber's home market, the company continues to lose money. After turning a slight profit in the in the first quarter of this year, Uber lost $100 million in the U.S. in the second quarter. The loss increased in the third quarter, the person said. I thought that they'd turned the corner in the US too, but go figure. I guess the claim that Travis makes about driverless cars relates t…
The US is not a mature market for Uber, it still includes a huge amount of cities where Uber is still relatively new and has yet to reach profitability. My understanding is that the profitable markets are places like SF or LA where Uber has been around for 5 years
Re: Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue
#89Presumably this is intentional -- Uber could raise prices and make more money, but right now they're choosing to keep prices very low in order to undercut Lyft and the cab companies with the assumption that having a monopoly will return more profits in the future. At least anecdotally, here in SF Lyft is almost always more expensive than Uber.
That's such a terrible strategy I can't believe that's really what they're doing. The short term problem is that they can't burn through money long enough for it to work. The barrier to entry to create an Uber or Lyft competitor is very low - anybody with a car and a laptop can create a viable Uber competitor. Nobody's doing it because Uber, Lyft, and taxis are everywhere, but when there's only Uber, and they're sudd…
The local startups are going to kill them. Juno is so much better in NYC. Nobody misses uber in Austin with Fasten and Fare. Each major city will beat Uber with their own local competitor with better service and better driver relationships.
Re: Uber's Loss Exceeds $800M in Q3 on $1.7B in Net Revenue
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not before destroying any competition with cripplingly low rates. That's the problem: I can't hail a goddamn taxi anymore, despite it being cheaper by any back of the envelope calculation for society as a whole.
> despite it being cheaper by any back of the envelope calculation for society as a whole. Can you explain this? Not challenging, just curious.
The gig economy is going to be terrible for society, everyone is a couple of bad reviews away from the street.